--- In [email protected], "Ingegerd" 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It is a nice story, Unc. And I agree, it is 
> teachers everywhere. 

Everywhere.

Earlier I talked about the spiritual teachers one 
finds on the street here in Paris.

My teachers today are not even human.  They are a 
series of paintings created by an artist friend of 
mine, and the music that accompanies them.  The 
combination moved me so deeply that I'm writing a 
multimedia presentation about them.

My friend Laurel has an interesting creative style, 
one that appeals to me.  She starts with an empty 
canvas and an empty mind, just as Keith Jarrett sits 
down at the piano for one of his solo concerts with 
absolutely no idea of what he's going to play.  She 
doesn't have the form or content of the painting in 
mind when she begins.  She just begins.

And slowly the painting emerges.  When it does, it 
often has 20 or 30 other paintings underneath it.  
The other paintings are not visible, except as 
underlying texture, but they are essential to the 
finished painting.  Without these passing, inter-
mediary paintings, the final painting would not be 
what it is.

The music comes in when my friend has to actually 
name the paintings for an exposition.  They don't 
have names while she is working on them.  But she 
listen to music while painting, and so lately she 
has taken to naming the paintings for the song or 
piece of music she was listening to while creating 
the work of art that most completely captures the 
nature of the final piece.  In her latest exposition 
last weekend, she played the music during the vernis-
sage, so that patrons could view the paintings while 
listening to the "soundtrack" that goes with each 
painting.

It's a potent combination.  It really works.  So today 
I got up early, walked through the Champs de Mars to 
the marché, bought some vegetables, and then settled 
myself in the first of what will be many WiFi cafés to 
do some creating of my own.  What I'm going to do is 
meditate on each painting while listening to the song 
that goes with it, and write whatever comes to me.  

The page in front of me is as empty as Laurel's canvas 
is when she starts a painting, as empty as Keith Jarrett's 
music stand is when he sits down to play.  It's a little 
scary, trying to create like this, with no plan and no 
clue as to what you will create and whether it will work 
or not.  But when it *does* work, the payoff is enormous. 

Unc






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