Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Doubt and Certainty

Getting lost is a given.  In Venice, if you don't live here, you will get lost.  It is fine when one is wandering. When one is set on being somewhere at a certain time then it is quite frustrating and just slightly scary.  But it happens all the time.  I may be on my way to such and such, and then I don't and can't find it, but I find (always) something else.  Something I would have looked for if I knew it existed.  Then, later, on another day, I find the place I was looking for in the beginning....by accident on my way to find the other thing I found before, which naturally I cannot find now.  Did it ever exist?

Well it is a Venetian joke.  You have to get lost to find your way.  You could end up on a long narrow passageway only to find that it ends in a blank dead end.

This was my first day of really finding my pathway at the Scuola.  Two plates proofed and many other threads or little pathways to navigate my way to wherever it is that I am going.  

The artistic director said that doubt was something she likes very much.  It stays with me.  Not too long ago another mentor said that when an artist is working they might well trust the first instinct.   The thing you think of first will almost always be right. (Make an attack with the brush/camera/the dance step/the word, it will be correct...for example).  How to square that with the doubt?  Could they be two paths that meet?  I think this stretch that I am making is about being open to doubt and embracing it...but I do believe the second truth as well.  




1 comment:

Christine--RHP said...

I think the issue can become less important, the more we become less attached to a particular outcome. To express the most natural way, without doubt, is always 'best' but the doubt comes in as a mental/analytical reflection, no? this is what I'm trying to work on more and more.