A Still Life Assignment
This weekend for me feels like a time of reset. It’s daylight saving time in Canada. I woke up this morning at 4am with my usual insomnia. But now that’s 5am which doesn’t sound horrific. I drew my drawings, practiced my asemic writing. Communed a little with the entire universe, the cosmic breath, planned my upcoming hermit-life.
I’ve been thinking about still life lately, again. I haven’t done a proper set-up in a long time, so with this post I’ve included some older photos from my series that I worked on especially while I wrote my book, Apples on a Windowsill. (Which is on sale now at my publisher, Palimpsest Press).
I was thinking this morning about how that project really steadied me in a tumultuous time, and how times are now beyond tumultuous. Well, in my book Calm Things (which I wrote 10000 years ago) and in Apples, I am deeply influenced by this passage from Joseph Campbell:
“Take, for example, a pencil, ashtray, anything, and holding it before you in both hands, regard it for a while. Forgetting its use and name, yet continuing to regard it, ask yourself seriously, “What is it?”….cut off from use, relieved of nomenclature, its dimension of wonder opens; for the mystery of the being of that thing is identical with the mystery of the being of the universe — of yourself.”
Campbell quotes James Joyce, “Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods.”
The assignment then, is to regard an object. You might also like to draw it, paint it, photograph it. But really, behold it. Behold! Regard, regard. Still yourself. Calm yourself. Lose yourself for a time. Wonder. Breathe. Enter the gate of access to the incorruptible.
