I was 31 in 2011. It was a watershed year for me in terms of assessing what was important. I dived into a “Project Mojo” to get myself back on track. I was living in London and started renting a lock and go studio at Wimbledon Art Studios. When I chose what to study, it had been a very pragmatic acceptance of the idea that, “Not all good ideas are good business ideas”. I loved art and maths, but it was more likely that I could monetize maths/business than art. I kept up at least one painting a year, but that was all I got round to. I had always prioritized later, but decided I need to bring some of that prioritizing into fruition.
Every Saturday and Sunday, I would head to my studio for a couple of hours. I specifically chose to spend the year focusing on abstract expressionism. Trying to turn my mind off and focus on automatic, glutral painting, that came from somewhere else in me. Color and texture. Layers and energy. What makes you an artist? Renting a studio? Selling a painting? Believing you are one? Making a living from painting. I have always loved art. My mother was an art teacher, and I did take it as a Matric subject. Turning creativity, directly and conspicuously, into a career is something I considered… but always felt like a path with lots of resistance. These two or three hours, twice a weekend, had none of that baggage. It wasn’t for anyone else.
Wimbledon Art Studios has two open studios each year. Most of the artists clean up their studio and turn it into a gallery. There is a huge range and plenty of deals on offer. It was also very humbling for me, as you sit for hours with people poking their head in and making snap judgements of whether it is worth coming in. I did sell a few… but certainly nowhere in the range of convincing myself that this is a better career option than Asset Management. Art remained something “for me”. Not something that I would bend and twist into the mould required for paying the bills.
We all need to pay the bills. Even South Africa has to figure out a way towards economic prosperity if it wants to have these indulgent “finding yourself” years I was able to afford. Sometimes you do what you want to do. Sometimes you do what you have to.
Working in investments involves periods of existential crises. Trying to explain underperformance can be really testing even if you are a hardcore believer. Beyond accepting that there are periods of stress and risk, actually going through persistent underperformance is emotionally draining. Which is why people don’t tend to invest in a contrarian way.
It ends up being semi-religious. In the same way as I had to grapple with whether Yoga was religion, many investment companies feel very much like Churches with High Priests. Some people think of yogis as cults and some people think of investment schools of thought as cults. The type of language that gets used can seem culty, evangelical, or defensive. Maintaining some healthy space between “work as an evaluation of self” and things I was doing to rebuild my energy became very important to me.
I started spending my weekends at the Wimbledon Art Studio doing expressionist painting that was non-intellectual and more of an embodied physical art. I was painting, but in a responsive way that focused on texture, colour, and layering. I can thank my school art teacher, Mr Lichkus, for pushing (and pushing and pushing) me to my limits in this space. In one class review, he stood there saying “no one bump me, no one bump me”... then a classmate tapped him on the shoulder and he went “OOOPS!!!” and put shoe polish across my painting... so that it “broke it” and stopped me being so precious.
I managed to loosen up my very earnest, tight, approach... and I used my weekends to reconnect to releasing some of that wilder energy onto the canvas. Between art and yoga, I was trying to reconnect with who or what I was. That was not defined by under- or outperforming anybody's benchmarks or expectations.
A pivotal moment happened in my career when I had a particularly stressful month while on a roadshow to South Africa. I still remember it (and always will) as Red October. A big part of being client facing in the investment world is managing expectations. As a contrarian investor, there are regularly periods of (sustained) underperformance where the price disconnects from a deeply considered view of the value of the underlying businesses. My job was to explain to clients and advisers who were under pressure what we were doing with their money.
One of the colleagues I was with also found it tough... and both of us “headed for the mountains” in different ways. He left shortly afterwards for a year and a half course, that trains you to be dropped anywhere in the world and make it out alive! I just booked a month-long yoga teacher training course I had had my eye on. Taking a whole month of leave seemed unfathomable, but it was over the new year, and my sanity had been pushed to an extreme where I needed this carrot to put one foot in front of the other. Fortunately, I was at the stage of my career where I could approve my own leave. Probably because they trusted me not to give myself four weeks, but a good friend reminded me that “sometimes it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission”.
I also started renting a lock-and-go art studio at Wimbledon Art Studios. When I started work, I had justified my career choice by saying “it is easier to make money from maths and do art as a hobby than the other way around”... but work can be a time vacuum, and I hadn’t painted in a few years. I felt like I was losing myself and getting sucked into the anxiety of work. 2011 became my “year of the mojo” to reclaim my spark.
One of my unlikely financial heroes was Bill Cunningham. He didn’t manage money. He took photographs. The friends who nicknamed me Donkey (“noisy, stubborn, ignorant”) will appreciate why I love his line, “if you don’t take the money, they can’t tell you what to do”.
He was not rich. Quite the opposite. Yet since he lived so cheaply, that gave him the creative license to do whatever he truly wanted to do. That passion fed through to his art.
If you are able to build an engine that earns reliably more than you consume, you can focus on things that aren’t conspicuous. You are wealthy. You can release yourself from the pressure to constantly justify yourself, and prove that what you are doing adds value. You can do things that only have value in the long term.
Rather than disappointing people who expect far too much in too short a time frame, you can wow people who underestimate what you can do in the long term.
Especially if the time you are thinking of is longer than people use to judge.
"If you don't take the money, they can't tell you what to do."
I
have always envied Hole Diggers. Someone whose job it is to dig 6 holes. They
dig 8, drop the mic, and leave work early. The ask and offer is incredibly
clear. I used to love Maths at school. Yes, Mrs Chick used to tease me about
going via Cape Town to a solution, but it was either right or wrong. And she
could show me the short cuts. Mr Lichkus and I would go head to head in epic
battles in the Art Room. I had to lean into chaos. I once let my classmates
have an hour to do whatever they wanted to my piece. Flames and burnt plastic
followed. As I coughed and sneezed black stuff from my nose during the next
period in English class (similarly ambiguous), I did have a break through on
reflection. Much harder won. In the Investment world people pretend it’s maths.
That their track record points to their success. Except when that track record
disappears. Then it is church, or art class, or English. Anything with wiggle
room. Ambiguity provides space for BS. It also provides space for beauty. In
the eye of the beholder, and in the control of the beholden.
One of the techniques used in teaching people to draw is to
forget the object. Draw the negative spaces. Don’t draw the chair. Draw the
shapes – between, around, above, below. The chair emerges. One of the techniques
used in embodied meditation is to dance with the spaces. Let the spaces be your
partner. Mental Health is partly about creating space. How do we create space
for exercise, healthy eating, breathing, relaxation and positive thinking when
we are so busy? Perhaps we are trying too hard to meet expectations? Perhaps we
are too focused on success? Part of creating space is just seeing the spaces
that are already there. A different perspective. But that is too easy. You are
still drawing a chair. You are still dancing. You still want to have purpose.
There is still work to do. Do the work. But see the space. Feel the space. Draw from it. Dance with it.
Ken Robinson points
out that if you ask a classroom of five year olds who can draw, they will all
put their hands up. It is only 10 years later that just one or two will,
because the rest have been taught that they can’t. Rather than something to
suck the juice out of, we turn life into a filter. A competition, both in our
head and in the world, to sort things into good and bad. Sort is French for
Fate. Our shared fate is specialisation that loses the special in favour of the
competent. Enter meditation and breath work. This can be seen as a competition
too. In reality it is like drawing. We all can do it. We just have to come back
to it. Whatever you are doing, whenever, can be meditation if you simply pause
and come back to the question “How am I breathing?”. Doesn’t even have to have
an action attached. It can simply be developing an awareness of how you
breathe. Breath is the source of our energy. It is the source of our calm. Taking
a deep breath stills the madness and brings focus. Draw Breath.
On the most basic and general level, cultural appropriation happens when one culture adopts or borrows aspects of another. Since there has been a more or less continuous exchange of cultural artefacts and ideas throughout human history, it’s hard to imagine why this has become a contentious issue in recent times. No one has a problem with the fact that our alphabet has been ‘borrowed’ in successive stages from the ancient Phoenicians, via Greece and then Rome. There are countless examples from tea to tracksuits that don’t upset anyone. The problem arises where the cultural artefact is appropriated by a dominant culture from an oppressed culture, with the result that the benefits of the appropriation accrue only to the dominant culture, or offensive stereotypes about the oppressed culture are perpetuated. Disney’s Pocahontas is a classic example.
The question is; can cultural appropriation be done right? From a South African perspective, the answer is a resounding yes, and the best example would be Johnny Clegg. The way that Clegg has adopted and incorporated aspects of Zulu culture into his art actually gives a near perfect example of how cultural appropriation should be done. Firstly, Clegg has always been enthusiastic and sincere about his embrace of Zulu culture. As a teenager, Clegg crossed the colour bar and became a member of a Zulu dance troupe, while also learning the Zulu folk guitar style known as Maskandi. For his troubles, Clegg was arrested at the age of 15 for violating the Apartheid laws that sought to keep the races separate. At the age of 17 he met Sipho Mchunu, with whom he formed the bilingual and cross-cultural pop group Juluka. Not content to be fluent in Zulu language, dance and music, Clegg dove deeper by studying Anthropology at university. The mere existence of the bi-racial Juluka was enough to irk the Apartheid authorities in the late seventies and early eighties, but Clegg and Mchunu’s music also encoded political messages about human rights, and when they played to audiences at home and abroad, they raised awareness about the injustice of Apartheid.
Sure, Johnny Clegg is a white guy who got famous for singing in Zulu and for doing a Zulu dance routine as part of his stage act. However, in the final analysis, Clegg’s devotion to Zulu culture has been deep and respectful, and the net effect of his work has been to promote respect not only for Zulu culture but also for multiculturalism and human rights for all South Africans. I suspect that the current objection to cultural appropriation often has to do with the mistaken view that it’s a zero-sum game. When I adopt something from your culture, it doesn’t have to mean that there is less available for you. The example of Johnny Clegg shows that if I’m respectful and sincere about borrowing from your culture, we can both benefit.
The Spanish-American war of 1898 ended a long period of Global Spanish dominance. Generación del 98 was a group of novelists, poets and philosophers who tried to deal with the blow to the national psyche. The puff of the chest that comes from being the greatest. Mongolia, now very humble, was once the greatest. The Mongol Empire covered 16% of the world's land area, second only to the British Empire at almost 24%. Mongolia is the most sparsely populated fully sovereign country in the world. The horse culture which helped Genghis Khan build the empire is still a fundamental part of society. Genghis's grandson Kublai founded the Yuan Dynasty in China. When it fell, they retreated to Mongolia and a factional and nomadic life returned. Empires come and go. Their legacies are what our art, relationships and collective memory choose them to be.
I was a serious teenager. My Art teacher pushed me hard to let go. To be less academic about my creativity. On one occasion, he 'accidentally' bumped some shoe polish onto one of my paintings to get me to relax. Telling someone to relax is normally only productive when they are already relaxing. I was a tightly wound spring. I found the feedback insanely frustrating, but slowly pushed myself to partition my thinking world and my art world. Art became a release for me. A place where I could put any angst thoughts aside and just paint. From inside.
Self-Portrait at age 15 (1995) and then at age 20 (2000)
Later at university I went to a hypnotist show. I was very disappointed that I couldn't participate. I had to watch my friend act as superman and rescue a girl in the crowd I had had my eye on. I wanted to be that superman. I wanted to rescue that girl. But when I went up with the volunteers to get hypnotised, and went through the process of relaxation, we were told, 'you are now completely relaxed, you can't lift your hand'. So I tried to lift my hand. I could. So disappointed, I stood up and walked off stage. And sat having jealous thoughts about the man of steel.
I learnt enough about myself over the years that I was preset to try lift my hand. Not just to accept that I couldn't. Not just to follow things. Even if I really wanted to. I am a complete show off. I also hate faking. You can see the conflict. Acting is faking. In method acting, the actors have to lean into the role completely. Become the character. Even though it is not really true.
After reading more about hypnotism, relaxation and tricks of the mind... my Art and then Yoga became areas where I let go. I stopped trying to plan everything, know where I was going, or believe in advance that I know what my restrictions are.
I will always be the doubter. I will always look for consistency in beliefs. I will always believe in Karl Popper's scientific definition that something is only 'scientifically interesting' if it can be stated in a way that can be disproved. I will always try lift the hand.
But... not all the time. Sometimes there is value in leaning into the story. Beauty has no requirement that it should be disproved. We can suspend disbelief. Put aside ideas of consistency, logic, rationality, progress, proof and fact. Not because they aren't true.
But because life tastes better if we sometimes pretend.
I have mentioned my cousin Charles before, in discussing the 'Normalising of Suffering'. He is a Psychologist (and an awesome guy) who focuses on helping people cope with Chronic Pain. We had a chat...
Charles on the left. His daughter's picture of me on the right.
Trev:
One thing Psychologists are trained to do which lay people aren't good at is to listen without judgement. It doesn't come naturally. I recently saw a David Bowie clip where he was giving MTV grief for being racist. The interviewer explained their point of view (basically saying they were giving people what they wanted) and Bowie responded, 'I understand what you are saying'. The interviewer pushed with, 'Do you see our logic?'. Bowie reiterated, 'I understand what you are saying'. Both the listener and the speaker tend to search body language for agreement, and it is a rare skill to be able to listen in a way that allows someone to carry on explaining their view without endorsing what they are saying. Without offering advice. Without trying to fix things yourself. It seems when it comes to Mental Health, the fixing has to be personal. Advice isn't that helpful.
Charles:
All true at one level. Before we find another thing wrong with us however, I suspect judging, like comparing and predicting, is a strong feature of a self-aware human mind with evolutionary benefits. The skill here might be how we learn to respond - with the difficult task of listening - to someone when judgement (and often discomfort) is turning up. I'm giving myself a lifetime to master this skill. I do think our mental health/lives are a personal journey of discovery. I suspect advice might prove unhelpful, because often our thoughts about our suffering are a reflection of an unchangeable past, which we are ruminating on and predicting will be our future. The real question to me however, is whether we need to be "fixed". Many smarter people than myself, would suggest that when we start a journey of trying to "fix" ourselves/others, life might start to narrow, our suffering increase, and simply more problems will emerge that will need to be "fixed".
Trev:
I completely misunderstood evolution until reading Daniel Dennett's 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'. I had heard it compared to the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who runs faster in order to stay in the same place, but the penny hadn't dropped. I understood evolution to be the upward trajectory of the past to the future. A prediction of progress. A prediction that things will be fixed. It is interesting that that is not at all how evolution works. The 'survival of the fittest' suggests we know in advance who is the fittest. It is more random that that. Evolution works by doing largely the same thing again and again. The minor, small copying mistakes rather than predicting strength add robustness. If surprises happen, small differences help survival. Perhaps that is similar to advice and fixing? Mental Health comes more from understanding what is. Some acceptance. Some appreciation. Perhaps that is why meditation is seen as one of the partners to psychology and psychiatry in helping.
Charles:
I think there is enormous power for a therapist/ a person normalising (as opposed to fixing) another's suffering. It validates the inevitable fluctuations of our inner world and our life. It also validates something that has already taken place and perhaps opens some space for moving in a chosen direction. One point here becomes whether an individual gives energy to their "problem/symptom" or to their "life". I don't think there is a right and wrong answer here (although we seem to bias energy to problems). Ideally, where energy goes should emerge from an individual's actual experience (e.g. there should be a reward for your actions). I do like the concept of variations. I think it is very useful to notice our patterned behaviour and try make, even arbitrary, changes at times. This likely encourages more mindful living, as well as likely opening new pathways of living.
Trev:
Normalising suffering is incredibly powerful. Knowing other people are also going through similar issues, and you aren't being punished in any way allows us to escape the idea that we are doomed. That random problems are actually a pattern that is going to carry on. Otherwise we can descend into self pity. Problems do seem to get a disproportionate amount of our energy, ironically because we want to get rid of them. A little like terrorists attract more attention than they deserve, and potato salad is more dangerous than sharks (more people die of food poisoning). A little perspective does seem to help. Even an arbitrary shake up. I know that when I have been in a rut, sometimes moving cities has done wonders. But even there it seems like I am offering a fix. I like the idea of art as a channel to normalising our internal struggles. Art as a form of listening.
Agreed Trev, I think art provides a channel to all internal experiences. It's a pity this is often missed completely at a political level. I am truly grateful (particularly to my mother) for being (at times begrudgingly) exposed as a youngster to various art forms. It seems to have vicariously impacted on me. Considering art in this way, also makes me reflect on nature's capacity to also offer self-insight. Taking this on a slight tangent, I previously talked about learning from experience. When considering a "channel", I think one of the joys of being the current generation/s is to learn from those who have come before us. We can view art, read books, etc., and learn, or appreciate something in a few hours, which may have taken someone a lifetime of studying/experience to understand. Each generation can building upon this expanding 'collective wisdom'.
Trev:
Absolutely. I find it interesting that we complain about people being selective in their Social Media profiles and crafting very positive views of their life. Photos of travels and smiles. At the same time, when people share the difficult stuff, it is hard to process. We feel they shouldn't be telling all and sundry. Art (including books) seems to provide an alternative. A way to share without fear of narcissism. It would be great if people could trust Artists enough to confide in them in the same way we do to psychologists/ lawyers/ doctors/ religious leaders. If the Artists are able to then strip out the personal identity which leaves people feeling vulnerable, we would go a long way to normalising suffering. The difficulties surrounding child birth, parenting, divorces, illness, moving home, renovations, family conflicts etc. that are the definition of normal life. In that way people would feel less isolated. Perhaps the books are there already? I am not sure how many of our real struggles are that different from generations past.
Charles:
I would agree that our day-to-day struggles do seem the same as they were for our recent ancestors. Collective Wisdom (which requires sharing struggles) would be useful in this space. I do think however modern humans are exposed to suffering at a level never seen before. Within a 10 minute time frame I can face my own suffering and then surf a wave of suffering from Iraq, to Sierra Leone, to the upcoming Iowa primaries. When we can't face our own suffering, how can we manage the world's suffering? I imagine avoidance in various forms is our go to strategy. With this in mind, we cannot rely on psychologists, psychiatrists, religious leaders, etc. to help us. The reality is most will never access this support. It seems the wider audience (yes through art, education systems, communities) these ideas and coping strategies (not necessarily 'fixes') spread, the great chance of wiser collective choices about the world we want.
Trev:
That is why I think lay people can learn a lot from the listening skills of these professions. We need to be able to draw on the support of friends and family when professional listeners are scarce. There are also wonderful books which can provide solace. Matt Haig is writing some incredible pieces in championing Mental Health. 'The Humans' is a funny, warm, and very readable look at the messy but beautiful lives we lead. 'Reasons to Stay Alive' is the story of his own personal struggle with depression. The Book of Life lists a number of artists, writers and philosophers who have made contributions which can help us normalise the challenges of life, and celebrate the good bits. As you say, accepting rather than fixing pain so you can direct your energy to things that matter. Not letting the pain define us.
Charles:
And so we circle back to the beginning. My practical tip to listening better would be to slow down and attempt to listen 1% better. When you ask how we can do anything 1% better, I think we often have an answer and can immediately alter behaviour, without the overwhelming feeling of trying to make wholesale changes. Try the same with accepting something or giving energy to life rather than to a symptom. Trev, I will follow-up your suggested reading. From my 2015 reading, I would suggest Anthony Biglan's "The Nurture Effect" and George Vaillant's "Triumphs of Experience" as excellent insights into living a good life (including coping with suffering). Finally, in light of my "collective wisdom" response, perhaps Trev you could provide me and your followers and updated suggested resources list, based on your own learnings.
One definition of Economics is the study of limited resources. In a world without enough, what is the best way to go about producing, consuming and transferring wealth? Price becomes a signal for how much people want something by quantifying how much they are willing to exchange for it. If there is only a little bit, that thing will go to the person who is willing to exchange the most for it. Its price will go up. It should be obvious that the actual thing continues to be the same whatever the price is. Unless the thing isn't the thing. Sometimes the price of a thing IS part of the thing. What you are signalling is that you have got something other people want. And they haven't.
The soaring prices of the world's most expensivepaintings have stopped being about the paintings bit, and are largely about the most expensive bit. The buyers want the price to be higher. This becomes circular, feeding on itself, and exploding to the point where the most expensive painting sold is Gauguin's 'When will you Marry?' to the State of Qatar for an unknown amount estimated at close to $300m. A Rothko painting sold for a known $186m.
'When will you marry?' Gauguin
Where it gets really interesting is the world beyond enough. The world beyond exchange. The School Of Life has a section on Epicurus who dedicated his life to the study of happiness. One observation resonates very strongly with me.
'He noted how rewarding most friendships are: here we are polite, we look for agreement, we don't scold or berate and we aren't possessive. But the problem is we don't see our friends enough. We let work and family take precedence. We can't find the time. They live too far away.'
You can't apply the analogy of Economics to friendships. Time spent isn't 'producing, consuming and transferring'. There aren't limited resources. And yet to me the connections established with friends are the real stuff of life. Stuff that can't be measured. Stuff that breaks away from ideas of productivity, progress, aspiration, goals and success. Stuff that breaks away from measures of the good life.
But we like to measure, which is why the actual study of Economics becomes full of models and numbers. Time and energy spent on people who matter to us seems like one measure that I would buy.
Two of the focuses of Plato's thinking were love and beauty. Love connecting to aspiration through relationships, and Beauty connecting to aspiration through art. More broadly than art, the objects and things we choose to surround ourselves with. The connection between the two ideas resonates deeply with my experience. He believed we fall in love with people who have a quality we admire, but lack. Calm, self-discipline, eloquence, balance, grace. He also believed objects, paintings, buildings and other forms of art are able to highlight these same values, and trigger similar emotions.
Plato's Agathon, a handsome poet, invites his friends around to eat, drink, and talk about love
A beautiful idea. It explains in part our essentialist attachment to things. In the same way as we fall in love with a person beyond rationality, we are able to fall in love with forms of art. Love and art lift us higher. They make us better versions of ourselves. In Plato's eyes, love is a form of education. A good relationship challenges you. Equally, beautiful objects invite us to evolve in their direction.
I find this obvious when spending time with those closest to me. They are mirrors of who I am, but with their own paths. A similar story, but from a different angle. Often that change of angle sheds an obstruction. It allows me to let go of any defensiveness I may have when reflecting on myself. But still be reflecting on myself, through them.
We grow through, and with, what and who we include in our space, and time.
16 year old Trev was a staunch Feminist. Before terms like ally or HeForShe so I can't get in trouble for claiming a word I shouldn't. One of my first serious paintings was my impression of Jane Alexander's 'Oh Yes! Girl'. Her image of a murdered Cape Flats prostitute is very disturbing. I tried to take it and empower it. The image is supposed to be uplifting. Beautiful even. While keeping the trauma that can not be forgotten. Many of the barriers to happiness involve wounds that can not be healed. We have a dark history. All of us. The question is how to move forward.
My 1996 impression of 'Oh Yes Girl' by Jane Alexander
While in Amsterdam recently I went to the Van Gogh museum. The first time I went was 16 years ago. It was at the tail end of a 17 country camping tour around Europe over a 45 day period (It was intents) with a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis. Tours of Europe sometimes become ABC (Another Bloody Church) and tours of Africa ABS (Another Bloody Sunset). By the time we got to Amsterdam, the Anzacs were ABMed - not keen for another museum. They were however prepared to make an exception for Heineken. After joining them there, I headed to the Rijksmuseum alone and sat in front of De Nachtwacht for an hour. At the start I thought it was average. By the end, it had become one of my favourite paintings. I then headed to pay homage to Vincent.
De Nachtwacht
On this trip to the Van Gogh museum, I was able to pass by the Heineken Museum with no more than a nod. What I wasn't able to do was pass by the crowds. Poor Vincent may not have been able to afford the entry price. I normally try find free stuff to do when visiting cities (walking, parks etc.), other than my rent - a few cups of coffee and some food at my 'office for the day'. I was about to leave when I thought I was being silly. Suck it up. Join the queue. It's Van Gogh.
An hour later I was inside with the crowds. The museum is wonderfully designed, but a little like being in traffic leaving London on a Friday, or returning on a Sunday. I would rather they scattered one original in each coffee shop (the dark liquid, not the green leaf) in Amsterdam and let you do walking tours.
What struck me is that the story I have of Van Gogh is a little wrong. He may have just sold one painting, but he swapped a hell of a lot more than that. I would also swap paintings with Gauguin! In a world of Smarter Barter, perhaps Artificial Intelligence will be able to replace money with a co-ordination tool that allows us to exchange things we can do, or have, with others efficiently. Theo and Vincent Van Gogh built up an incredible collection over the course of a decade. This body of work became the backbone for Theo's wife and son to spread the legend of Vincent.
It seems he was a prolific networker. Not in a cynical way. He was constantly looking for amazing people to learn from. He decided to become an artist at age 27. So much for your 10,000 hours having to be when you are a lighty. He spent the next decade both searching out other artists to challenge his world view, and finding moments to retreat and create.
The biggest lesson for me from Van Gogh's life is not that of a struggling artist. His life was rich with relationships, and his upper-middle class family and brother provided him the buffer to explore. The biggest lesson for me is that it is never too late to invest in things you love doing, and the people you love being with.
I like myself least when I am in a corner. When I feel like I am forced to make a decision where I don't like any of the alternatives. Many of the social graces you can have when there is space to breathe fall away. A lack of time or energy to take into consideration feelings forces someone, whoever it is, to impose themselves on others. Most of history seems to be the story of who gets to impose themselves. Whether it's hereditary monarchy, democracy (the majority imposing themselves) or meritocracy (those with skills), at some point someone takes a decision and gets things done through force. If there is one thing that really messes with most people's mojo - it is being forced to do something.
A lack of time can force Zero One Thinking. The idea that that things exist in opposites. It stops the ability to understand, protect and empower the subtleties of all the interests involved. Time solves lots of problems. Marginal tweaks can have a huge impact when you throw 100,000 years at the problem. But we think in much shorter periods and in much bigger jumps. We don't live very long and we want to experience the change for ourselves. Big jumps have both consequences and unintended consequences. Understanding consequences is time consuming, and perhaps impossible.
In 'Ex Machina', there is a scene where the two characters are discussing a Jackson Pollock painting. Pollock is my all time favourite. My art teacher at school effectively (lovingly) bullied me into putting my rational thinking aside and tapping into something else when I was painting. My first few paintings were full of emotional, naive, teenaged angst. I would construct the painting in my head first. I would plan what the painting meant and what it would be trying to say. The composition and the colours would be carefully selected. Pollock did something different. He pushed into 'automatic thinking'. In a scene in the movie 'Pollock' (starring Ed Harris), they show him sitting for hours just staring at a blank canvas. Not planning. Waiting. For a feeling. Then he got stuck in and connected with the paint, the canvas and the elements. He painted. If he had tried to plan the painting, he wouldn't have made a single mark.
Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist
The Ex Machina discussion is on the balance between rational thought, the type computers are good at, and emotional thought. Rational thought is about algorithms, rules, logic, problems and solutions. Emotional thought starts somewhere else. It starts with connections. It starts with the way we see, smell, hear, and feel the world. It isn't hardware or software. It is wetware. It makes mistakes, but not in a right or wrong way. Since every single moment matters, a mistake is in fact the reason for many of our best subsequent moments. If we hadn't had that trauma... If we hadn't failed at that task... If we hadn't stumbled... Then we wouldn't have met/started/found/seen the thing that led to where we are now.
Decisions matter. But corners are creations of the mind.There is always time. There is always a solution that takes people into account. There is never a need to impose ourselves. We don't need to work for people. We don't need people to work for us. We can work with each other as Partners.
The goal of my four years at Wimbledon Art Studios was to tap into something other than rationality. I wanted an emotional reaction. Like a flavour, tune or aroma, I wanted the response to be something each viewer couldn't explain. They love the painting or not. I would layer new colours and textures. I wanted the paintings to be something you had to experience in person. Without description. Like relationships with friends, family and lovers, I wanted each time the viewer saw the painting to be something new. A new detail deepening the connection. A reason to come back.
I have enjoyed watching Obama get a little more bolshy given that he is no longer running for anything. 'That's nonsense, and you should know better' Obama responded to a crafted trap. I am not partisan when it comes to American politics. I don't like the idea that any of us are partisan when it comes to politics. We get upset with politicians not leading us, but rather reflecting views of opinion polls. The truth is this is the only way that they get to do what they need to do. Politicians have to play the game of thrones. We only get a glimmer of truer feelings when they get towards the end of their careers. When they gain independence. I got to listen to Gerhard Schröder once after his independence came. He was much more interesting than a traditional politician. Because he could be.
Business people also have to play the game. Particularly in a connected world, you are representing your company's 'brand' 24/7. Especially as you get more senior. You can't have separate public and personal personas in a social media world. I first started blogging through the influence of a friend and Seth Godin. I tried to start an internal corporate blog at the company I was working at. Godin argues that corporate blogs only work if the author is prepared to be candid, transparent and interesting. This worked internally at the company, but it it is tough to meet those criteria externally. It requires bravery. The corporate world reflects the political world in that way. There is a nervousness about expressing controversial views and cutting yourself off from potential clients.
I spoke to an artist friend recently who is flirting with getting involved in social media. He wasn't sure about whether he should express his views. I think you have a choice. If you are reliant on a salary or source of income, you have a certain 'democratic' responsibility to reflect the views of that group. Your voice comes second. Voters want their voice expressed. Customers want their needs met. A company has a culture. You are a part of it. You can nudge your company, customers or voters but people don't change their worldview easily. If you are able to forge some sort of independence, where their support isn't required, then your voice can come to the fore.
If you are an artist, there may be some sort of responsibility to release that voice. I like the idea of art for art's sake. Art that communicates a feeling rather than an actionable idea. Alain De Botton makes the point though that Art has traditionally been didactic. It has had a voice. That voice comes through being prepared to dive into the the murky controversial areas. It requires bravery. It rises above democracy. One way of defining art may be 'something that has a voice.'
Godin believes Businesses can have a voice. They can be remarkable.
At some point once a leader has our trust, that trust confers an independence. It allows them to express views that make us uncomfortable. It gives them a voice. Voices are candid, transparent and interesting. Voices make mistakes in public. Voices aren't brands. They don't represent a single idea. They challenge ideas.
'Flow' is a form of meditation. It lets you focus, and in focusing you lose awareness of all the other things we normally chew over in our heads. Positive Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi came up with the term to describe the state we get into when we are doing something challenging enough to absorb all our attention, but not so challenging that we get anxious. Many people who are lucky enough to do something they love as a job may consider themselves to have 'never worked a day in their life'. But doing something you love and flow may not be interchangeable. Sometimes the thing you love may be hard, and feel very much like work. Ernest Hemingway may have said it best, 'There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed'.
For me, painting has been a form of flow. I had a studio at the Wimbledon Art Studios (WAS) for 4 years. I would come in and just paint. I wasn't trying to say anything. I did want to learn about texture and colour, but I figured a lot of that learning would come through just being able to release. I was also lucky that it wasn't my job. Whenever I have to think of starting to apply my business mind to my art, something inside of me screams. Don't get me wrong, I would love to make money out of my art but I know there are easier ways. Making money often boils down to hustle and networking. Basic 'doing business' where the business being done doesn't matter. Sometimes it is useful to separate out your passion and how you keep it going. 'Sometimes I do what you want to do, the rest of the time, I do what I have to do.'
Alex Rennie is an artist on the floor below where I was at WAS. He does wonderful large scale oil paintings with a skillful control of light and dark. Inspired by Goya and Rembrandt, his earlier works were dominated by portraits and figures, inspired by stories, myths and the old masters. His more recent work looks at construction timbers and building hoardings, with the same powerful light contrasts, but examining growth and transitions in cities. I am a big fan.
Untitled work in progress by Alex Rennie
I asked him whether he found flow in his work and interestingly, like me with painting, he recognised that feeling outside of his normal work. He has a band with some friends, and through music is able to relax. Art can be more angsty. My weekend endeavours were kind of a cop out. Alain de Botton argues that we could learn a lot from how Religion uses art. It isn't just art for art's sake. It is an exploration of something which we pushes us further into the stuff of life that is beyond survival.
The problem is this stuff can feel pretentious. It can feel like you are claiming expertise that you don't have. The artist's job is to push through this. The artist's job is to bleed. When an idea comes, it is only half formed and requires bravery to carrying on going. Each piece is venturing into a place that is not an area of expertise. Alex talks of drawing inspiration from 'The Art of War' to push him forward through times when he is struggling to carry on. Sun Tzu talks of keeping the high ground. Alex interprets this as a form of agency. Trying to act in times of doubt so that you are determining your own path rather than the path being determined for you.
The relationship with your art may be a love and hate one. It may require challenging yourself in ways that feel very uncomfortable. Perhaps if 'you have never worked a day in your life', then you weren't doing something you loved?
