Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Location: Piikani Reservation, Alberta

The plight of the self of the artist… is at least in part a historical phenomenon and not an essential property of being an artist … There may have been other times and other places, whether one wishes to call them an age of faith or an age of myth, in which men perceived a saving relationship to God, the Cosmos, the world, and each other. In such times the self did not feel displace, or if it did, it understood its displacement. The artist-writer did not… feel the same compulsion to assert his individual genius-self as would the artist today. It did not occur to the Chartres sculptor to sign his name on the toe of an apostle he had finished on the West Portal. (Or to the Lascaux Cave painter.)
- Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos

I’ve been reading excerpts from the book entitled, Coming to Our Senses, by Morris Berman, and have begun thinking about what it is that drives me as an artist. In Chapter Ten, Berman explores the role creativity plays for the artist, suggesting art is a process of tranquilizing inner conflict.

What are my personal conflicts?

I’m deeply dissatisfied with my society, our hunger for empty material wealth, and our incessant patterns of destruction. I guess that’s the big picture of why I’m out here… I’m unhappy with my reality and I want to work to change it, instead of just joining the good times while they last.

But, there are other reasons for why I’m out here. Before heading out on the road, I had a great community, a great family, a great job, a great house, a great truck, and a great garden. I had achieved greatness, but still somehow I was sad, lost, alone, and hungry.

I think a big part of what pushed me out of my previous world was a deep feeling of being trapped. Trapped by mainstream ideals that I didn’t necessarily agree with deep down in my own heart. Trapped by the very things that provided contentment. I think that’s the trick of this whole big fancy world we’ve built, to trap us in our patterns of desire and our sense of being unfulfilled. We struggle to achieve, we struggle to gain wealth, we struggle and struggle and struggle, and for what? What’s the point in struggling, if the cost is our happiness? I clearly can’t speak for everyone, since some people may honestly be content, but it wasn’t for me. I think regardless of the road we choose to travel in life the key is to recognize that our completeness invariably comes from within.

The other part of leaving has to do with family. I come from a family where, I think for the most part, I always did the right thing. I was the good son. I have a brother, one of my greatest teachers, who has always personified chaos. Therefore at the age of ten, I became order, the harmony-maker, something that I still carry with me to this day. I strive to create harmony; it’s built deep into me. Harmony, responsibility, and a need to be needed that so many of us carry. Although I love my family for who they have helped me become, a big part of this journey had to do with me leaving family and the roles and identities I grew up with behind.

A few years ago, my brother and I, who have always been close, spiritually collided into each other down in the desert of northern Nevada. Order & Chaos, Yin & Yang, Light & Dark. Through that process of collision, we almost left this world, parts of us did. Afterwards, we each walked away with pieces of the other. It’s now obvious to me that it’s only natural for order to be found within chaos, and for light and dark to be part of the same big picture. It’s all about becoming whole again and realizing that the universe is a paradoxical place.

I think I left to regain my balance.

These days, more and more I’m feeling at peace, less conflicted. I was telling Morris the other day that a big part of me is ready to go home. I’m not feeling the need to make this film to change things, to be right, or to solve some inner conflict anymore. I think that’s a good place to be as a filmmaker, to not create out of desire or righteousness. It allows the project to become larger than me as an individual, it brings the project into the realm of craftsmanship, and it enables me to get out of the way so the universe can work it’s magic.

… the creative insight is seen as a breakthrough, or erupt from, the unconscious. It is this eruption that generates the psychic split that demands to be healed, and that alters the personality structure so that the work of integration becomes self-expression. Traditional creativity would have to be different, since traditional societies tend, in varying degrees, to be swimming in the unconscious already. Hence there is nothing, or at least much less, to erupt.
- Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses

Oh, and I'm not going home, not yet. This pilgrim has more road to travel.

peace,
d