“Divine Influx,” watercolor and mixed media on paper, 9 × 12 inches. 2024.
Rachel, who I recently married, drew a portrait of me with a yamaka on my head. I said in response, “I prefer to be represented with the yamaka inverted so that it appears that my head is empty.” She said, “I know, but I like your yamaka.”
Last night, just prior to the music coming on at three am on Kingston Ave. and Albany, in Crown Heights Brooklyn, I indicated to her brother, Ben, that my skull is flipped open, my brain tossed out, my intellect totally set aside, as a part of spiritual work. He agreed.
In taking on Chabad-style Chassidic-Jewish (i.e. Mystically inspired lifestyle), I have found a way to live as an artist. A poem I wrote for Rachel before the Sabbath summarizes this:
“My life dangles on a string, from day to day, month to month, through the years.”
I feel she’s brave to have chosen to love such a man.
Artists in the modern era act like revolutionary figures pushing the envelope of social ideas around freedom, as well as committing themselves to aesthetic exploration. As per whatever I’m up to: My main philosophy of aesthetic is making moments, and my main revolutionary concept is the notion that the mystical path is a social good which involves psychological responsibility to the unconscious, and ultimately the “religious experience” as inspiration to truly live an actualized life of wholeness and meaning.
I resent the word religious, since it’s so totally loaded in our culture. Really, it’s rooted in the latin, “religio,” meaning to link – which is cool. In the jewish context we speak about heaven & earth, and the unity of the Infinite being realized through expression of the two, like a marriage of physicality and spirituality. This is our purpose.
The ritual of the painting helps me in the abovementioned pursuits or commitments. But the going-beyond-my-intellect is the method, or practice I return to during this time of year, as well during other parts of the year (like Purim and Passover).
Whether in business, art-making, relationship, I find increasingly that my life is improved by letting-go of my own desire to control the outcome: I am learning to sink into the now, into the present, and experience process. Rituals and intentions revolving around this “beyond intellect” are the tuning-up, the work-out that prepares me for a life that is unpredictable, exciting, somewhat magical, and ultimately irrational.
At that dancing, until half-past-three in the morning, I saw golden light pouring down from the sky above Crown Heights, Brooklyn. On the way home my thoughts were united with transcendent wisdom, clarifying the big picture, bringing into alignment how to value a shared life with Rachel; this mystical journey, this “religious experience,” is a part of my art. I wrote in my sketchbook regarding artists I currently admire:
Oscar Murillo’s project comments on commodification, ingeniously negating painting and in that way making great paintings.
Rashid Johnson’s project is about inhabiting a ritualistic practice that explores black identity & consciousness more broadly.