The pandemic brought with it something many people of privilege found difficult to cope with - isolation, and the investment of spending time with oneself. I remember growing up on airforce bases with little or no contact with children of my own age, and as I was home schooled till I was seven, I was thrown into the exploration of finding an imaginative world to engage with. This perhaps led me to find methods of discoveries in my life, and most importantly the value of curiosity.
Reading and other frameworks of learning have of course taught me to be receptive to knowing the world, but the key for me in negotiating my reality has been the process of recognising how to expand a thought process and make it into a larger window of perceptions.
To commune with oneself is vital. Today unfortunately we have become way too reliant on the press-the-button culture that takes us to an immediate destination of presumed gratification. Knowledge through quick internet information sourcing has erased the process of substantiated learning in many instances. It has taken away for too many people, the real world of experiences and instead implanted a virtual space from where we quick-fix who we want to be perceived as. To find ones own identity requires concentrated focus where we hold ourselves still for personal self scrutiny - where we attempt to harness the true potential of our energies within a space of deliberate consideration.
I negotiate the world in many ways (as we all do), but perhaps it is through painting where I am most alert in holding my deliberation of consciousness. I don't believe we need a buildup of time to find those frameworks of consciousness either. I scuttle around like a chipmunk some days - and have fractured time on many occasions in my studio (where it can even be as little as 15 minutes in-between supervising repair work in my home or attending to pressing office work) - where I pick up my brush and I am immediately stilled. Everyone can find such moments of mediation - however it can be sought only through the desire to acquaint oneself with who we are, without props, camouflage or pretence. Such paring away of oneself does not always present us with the image of ourselves we may be comfortable with - or of the world as we would expect it to be. But this process of exploration allows one to guide our consciousness to those areas of personal expectation by the endeavour of pursuit.
As I sit late into the night with the silence of the city that engulfs me as I paint in my studio the 9th floor everyday, I gather around me those I want to engage with - those writers and film makers and those nameless women of courage around the world, all drop by to infuse their strength and resonance of philosophy into my mediative space. These amazing interludes with myself have allowed me to live a more comprehended life than if I were to only want answers alone. Time in solitude is not irksome if one has the patience to engage with oneself without fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment