(1.3.08 working
draft)
Made for Contemplation – Yoga Nidra/iRest Studio Workshop
Evergreen College,
Fall-Winter 2007-08 with ILC option Spring 2008
Thursdays,
9:30-12:30, CRC 116-117
Sarah Williams, Sem2
C2106, ext. 6561, williasa@evergreen.edu
Office Hours: Wednesday 9-10 and 12-1
In writing the pieces for this book, I hoped to
emulate his [Joseph Cornell’s] way of working and come to understand him that
way. It is worth pointing out that
Cornell worked in the absence of any aesthetic theory and previous notion of
beauty. He shuffled a few
inconsequential found objects inside his boxes until together they composed an
image that pleased him with no clue as to what that image will turn out be in
the end. (Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell).
That Charles Simic wanted to do with words what Joseph
Cornell did with dime-store bric-a-brac, inspires me, because of the gift of
their work, to do the same:
This studio/workshop
is itself a shadow box, a collage, a montage, a surreal scenario for exploring
the perceiving, creative and contemplative aspects of mind. Like during the fall quarter, the following
collage of voices, taken from our program texts (real and imagined), was
inspired by my experiences and memories.
And, like during the fall quarter, it is offered as an invitation by way
of a syllabus for you to experience, remember and express your own inspiration. Although that which inspired Dutch immigrant
and collage maker Joseph Cornell in New York City in the 1940s still shapes
this syllabus, its winter quarter invitation is local. The following collage invites you to see
through the eyes of the “mystic artists” working in the Pacific Northwest in
the 1940s.
That Deloris Tarzan
Ament wanted to with words( and that Mary Randlett wanted to do with
photography) what the Northwest mystics did with the iridescent light and
natural bric-a-brac of our regional landscape, inspires me, because of the gift
of their distinctive style, to do the same:
This distinctive style had
two sources: first, the land itself, and
the way it appeared in diffused light; and the second, the Northwest’s cultural
mix. It was a unique combination of
inner and outer light.
Many Northwest sculptors and
painters created iconic images of animals, especially birds, that had resonance
in Native American themes. Northwest
artists’ studios are apt to be thick with found objects such as owl nests,
seashells, unusual stones, dried weeds, bird skulls, insect specimens,
driftwood, Native American carvings, African masks, and Asian ceramics, in
addition to tacked-up images by other, admired artists.
The mystic label came from
their way of imbuing subjects with a sense of heightened meaning. They hinted at another reality behind the
visible order of things. The effect was
achieved without the slightest hint of sentimentality, often through the use of
symbols such as birds, the moon, or a distant shore.
Carl Jung once wrote, ‘The
symbol can make the divine visible.’
Morris Graves said simply, ‘Works of art can strive to clarify the
spirit.’
For him, [Graves].
consciousness often assumed the form of a bird, or of a chalice,--a form of the
Holy Grail, a time–honored symbol of the search for truth and redemption.
It has been said that many
of Grave’s paintings sprang from visions received in meditation. It might be more accurate to say that for
Graves, painting was itself a meditative practice.
He meditated, painted, and
listened intensely to night sounds, trying to imagine and to draw the creatures
that made them. At various times he
tried to paint birdsong, and the sound of surf, in consonance with the Vedic
concept that sound and form are synonymous.
[I}n all significant
painting from Catal Huyuk to Hieronymus Bosch the Bird has stood for that drive
or force which bears the migrant soul of man into another state.’ Gerald Heard
‘We must so live that we can
sensitively search the phenomena of nature from the lichen to the day-moon,
from the mist to the mountain, even from the molecule to the cosmos—and we must
dream deeply down into the kelp beds and not let on fleck of significance of
beauty pass unappraised and unquestioned and unanswered.’ Morris Graves
‘To me art is a holy land,’
he [James Washington Jr.] has said, ‘where initiates seek to reveal the
spirituality of matter.’
‘I don’t think we really
create a damn thing. We fool around and
something comes of it. We are not
creators—we are created. I hold the brush,
but what holds me?’ William Cumming
‘The cosmos has become my
Koan.’ Philip McCracken
‘There have been many times
with animals when I’ve sensed that my subjects were busy studying me; a strange
moment of common ground in mutual understanding. I’m quite convinced that part
of the Raven, Otter, and Hawk spirit has occasionally been in me with the
purpose of conveying their story to others of my kind.’ Tony Angell
_____________
The experience of a
more cosmic, altered, or other than human state of consciousness is at the
heart of the yoga tradition. In this
studio workshop yoga asana and yoga nidra will be practiced with particular
attention to their facility for shifting one’s state of consciousness. Our focus is regional, but wonderfully
complementary relative to the fall quarter focus on Joseph Cornell’s
legacy. Compare and contrast, for
example, Philip McCracken’s sculpture, Poems
(Ament p. viii), which uses the natural bric-a-brac of our forests and
seashores, with the dime-store bric-a-brac of Cornell’s art, also done in the
1940s. Just as the word shaman is
derived from the indigenous Tungus, the reindeer people of northern Siberia,
the yoga derives from a shamanic tradition indigenous to India. Both are shamanic practices that like the art
of Cornell and the NW mystics bare witness to the relationship between
consciousness and environment. Guess who
first saw that reindeer could fly?
McCracken, working in the PNW carved a book out of wood and composed a
poem on its pages of natural bric-a-brac:
shells, bear claws, leaves. Simic,
a contemporary poet laureate, created poetry to do with words what Cornell did
with objects.
In writing the pieces for this book, I hoped to
emulate his [Joseph Cornell’s] way of working and come to understand him that
way. It is worth pointing out that
Cornell worked in the absence of any aesthetic theory and previous notion of
beauty. He shuffled a few
inconsequential found objects inside his boxes until together they composed an
image that pleased him with no clue as to what that image will turn out be in
the end. (Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell).
That Charles Simic wanted to do with words what Joseph
Cornell did with dime-store bric-a-brac, inspires me, because of the gift of
their work, to do the same:
This studio/workshop
is itself a shadow box, a collage, a montage, a surreal scenario for exploring
the perceiving, creative and contemplative aspects of mind. The following collage of voices, taken from
our program texts (real and imagined), was inspired by experiences and by
memories. Discerning the difference will
be part of our work: Are memories of
experiences other than experiences of memory?
Joe brought to one of
our team planning meetings Lindsay Blair's book, Joseph Cornell's Vision of Spiritual Order. I was reminded by it of a book I’d seen in
the art studio basement of the Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael while on a
meditation retreat years ago with Richard Miller.
That book--Jonathan Foer’s A Convergence of Birds:
Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell--with its lift-up colored plates of Cornell’s bird boxes
had intrigued me. I assumed a connection
with the Sufi classic, Farid ud-din Attar’s, The Conference of the Birds.
And, my desire increased for an experience of yoga (fr. Sanskrit meaning
union, that which unites heaven and earth) that explicitly acknowledged and
appreciated the gift of its shamanic traditions. So many asanas
(poses) are named after birds. Even
more, Ham and Sa (hamsasana – swan
pose) name in Sanskrit the vibration of in-breath and the out-breath. In pranayama
(breath work) our shoulders remember being as wings. Cornell made films about birds. They were considered by many to be films
about perception or consciousness itself.
Indeed, Cornell’s works, not to mention his beliefs, his art, life
style, and desires, were “a force illegible.”
Yet, the
gift of this force, the experience, for example, of sensing the city (of your
body), knowing the limits of rationality, and feeling the intellect as a light
bulb, these compel the mind to make sense of Cornell as a celebrated American
dead white male artist. However, the
shadow box of Cornell is full of our own moment’s angels and demons: religious
fundamentalism, global capitalism, unprecedented immigration and migrancy,
patriarchal masculinity (its wounding, its wounder, and its wounded),
urbanization, racism, sexism, able-ism, class-ism and surrealism in all its
modern and postmodern forms.
Consider
this. Sitting on the plane next to me on
an early morning flight to a yoga nidra training in Calgary was Robin.
“’Mahat is the tail.’ Scholars
fight about this interpretation, but isn’t it a beautiful teaching?”
What are the odds of getting to this place in program planning and
then finding yourself, while flying, in conversation about scholars’
interpretations of bird metaphors for the explanation of human existence in the
Taittiriya Upanishad with a yogi
named Robin?
JC’s boxes call.
Gifts. They inspire gifts of
gifts of gifts. Forces illegible. This
studio workshop is a response to that kind of gift. Like Foer, I found that I must do something
with my love for the gift of their inspiration…
* * *
I must do something with my love—for
Cornell, for my love of Cornell, for gifts, inscriptions and the beginning of
love.
I began to write… (Jonathan Safran Foer, “Introduction: Response and Call,” A Convergence of Birds: Original
Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell)
* * *
A Force
Illegible
Did Cornell know what he was doing? Yes, but mostly no. Does anyone fully? He knew what he liked to see and touch. What he liked, no one was interested in. Surrealism provided him with a way of being
more than just an eccentric collector of sundry oddities. The ideas of art came later, if they ever did
come clearly. And how could they? His is a practice of divination. Dada and surrealism gave him a precedent and
a freedom. I have in mind especially
their astonishing discovery that lyric poetry can come out of chance
operations. Cornell believed in the same
magic, and he was right! All art is a
magic operation, or, if you prefer, a prayer for a new image.
“In
murky corners of old cities where everything—horror, too—is magical,”
Baudelaire writes. The city is a huge
image machine. A slot machine for the
solitaries. Coins of reverie, of poetry,
secret passion, religious madness, it converts them all. A force illegible. (Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell)
* * *
Adho
Mukha Svanasana
Downward-Facing
Dog
Within my body
there’s a city—
nameless streets
dead-end alleys
of pains and promises,
a mapless Atlantis
cordoned off
by years and bones.
The muscles pull
the tendons throb
my joints crack out
their resistance—
places I’ve ached
undetected
for a quarter of a century
send out their muted frequencies
from an unfamiliar
pose.
Descending too quickly,
I implode.
Down here, or even up there
breath is the most
difficult of absences
and so, two finger-widths
into the hara
I find my bearings
mind-body-belly
oxygen tank both empty and full.
Listen to the
place
you feel it the
most
says the teacher,
head dangling from
adho mukha
svanasana
a single bulb
on a simply cord.
So once again
I go deeper
to where
the muscles pull
the tendons throb
the pain travels
its clandestine escape
and then retreats
in the halfway reach
where each breath
razes another
skyscraper I’ve aspired to,
brings the earth up
a little lighter between my toes. (Leza Lowitz, Yoga Poems: Lines to Unfold By)
* * *
This physical body is made up of the
food that we consume. What we see as
this body is the corporeal self (anna-maya kosha). Within this corporeal self
there is a subtler self called the vital self (prANa-maya kosha). It (the vital self) fills the corporeal self like
heat filling a metal piece put in the fire. So the vital self (or sheath,
kosha) permeates the corporeal self totally. The upanishad uses the word
'purushha' for each of these 'selves'.
So the vital purushha fills up the corporeal purushha. Within the vital
'purushha' there is the manomaya purushha (the mental self). Within the latter
one there is the vijnAna-maya purushha (the intellectual self). And within the
vijnAnana-maya there is the Ananda-maya purushha (the blissful self). The word 'within' here in each case is an
understatement, a failure of words. In each case the succeeding sheath fills up
the preceding one. Each 'purushha' follows the preceding one, is more subtle
than the preceding one, and fills up the preceding one. This subtle sequencing is referred to by the
terminology 'anvayaM purushha-vidhaH' repeatedly by the Upanishad. In each case
the particular purushha is imagined to be a bird with wings, head, tail, etc.
We do not need these details here.
(Professor V. Krishnamurthy, The
Song of the Vedas (Shruti Gita), http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/shruti_gita_profvk.htm)
* * *
By the night of the full moon … each of
us had to choose some kind of bird—a sparrow, a thrush, a crow, a warbler—and
on that night, wherever he was, Emory was going to pray each of us into those
birds. We were going to become those
birds. And they were going to fly
away. (Barry Lopez, “Emory Bear Hands’
Birds,” in Jonathan Safran Foer’s A
Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of
Joseph Cornell
* * *
I must do something with my love—for
Cornell, for my love of Cornell, for gifts, inscriptions and the beginning of
love.
I began to write letters . . .
Dear Mr. Foer:
Your letter, which covers a whole
page, contains only one line about what you want: “…a story or poem that uses Joseph Cornell’s
bird boxes as the source of imaginative inspiration…(but) which need not make
any explicit reference to Cornell of the art itself…” Since I don’t know what this means, since you
mention no fee (is there one or not?), since the whole issue seems to be a
question of getting contributions, for nothing, from various well-known people
to suit your own ends (vague as they are), and since for some reason you seem
to think I’d be “as excited about this project as [you] are,” how can I say
yes, even with the very best of wills?
…
The boxes called the writers in from great distances; they demanded the
attention of those who had no attention to spare…
The boxes moved
questions of logistics to the backdrop.
No one—save for that early respondent—asked about fees or agents or
publishers. They didn’t ask about these
things because they weren’t responding to me.
Their responses predated my call.
I was just lucky enough to intercept them.
Many of
Cornell’s most brilliant boxes were not intended for the museums in which they
now reside. They were gifts, tokens of
affection—I love this. You will love this. He had them delivered to his favorite movie
stars and authors. He handed them,
personally, to his most loved ballerinas.
And they were uniformly sent back.
He was rejected, laughed at, and, in one unfortunate case, tackled.
But
the boxes themselves—not his hopelessly romantic supplication—survived. More than survived, they came to be
considered among the most seminal works of twentieth-century art. Their call beckoned, and continues to beckon,
curators, museum-goers, and so many artists and writers. Their
call, not Cornell’s. They became gifts of gifts of gifts of gifts—a cascade of
gifts without fixed givers or receivers.
So
what is it about Cornell’s boxes that made him a world-famous artist, and
allowed my inept proposal to take flight?
The answer, of course, is inexhaustible—it changes with each
viewing… (Jonathan Safran Foer,
“Introduction: Response and Call,” A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the
Work of Joseph Cornell)
* * *
Street-Corner
Theology
It ought to be clear that Cornell is a
religious artist. Vision is his
subject. He makes holy icons. He proves that one needs to believe in angels
and demons even in a modern world in order to make sense of it.
The
disorder to the city is sacred. All
things are interrelated. As above, so
below. We are fragments of an
unutterable whole. Meaning is always in
search of itself. Unsuspected
revelations await us around the next corner.
The
blind preacher and his old dog are crossing the street against the oncoming
traffic of honking cabs and trucks. He
carries his guitar in a beat-up case taped with white tape so it looks like
it’s bandaged.
Making
art in America is about saving one’s soul.
(Charles Simic, Dime-Store
Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell)
* * *
This letter—my
arrangement of letters to create a syllabus of sorts, is full of words I love,
words, perhaps, that you will love, and covers a whole page (and more) yet
needs contain only one line about what I want.
Create and gift a box that uses Joseph Cornell’s bird boxes
or the art of a “Northwest mystic” as the source of imaginative inspiration to
express your consciousness of your experience of this four-week yoga
nidra/iRest studio workshop.
Required Components of the Yoga Nidra/iRest
Studio Workshop:
* * *
NOTE: Much of the following material was
included as part of our all-program work during the fall quarter of MFC as well
as being a required focus of this studio workshop.
* * *
Readings:
* Miller, Richard. Yoga Nidra: The Meditative Heart of Yoga
* Simic, Charles. Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell
(*Available in the TESC Bookstore and on-line)
**
Frawley, David. “The Secrets of Prana,” Yoga International, October/November,
pp. 25-29 1997.
**
Kraftsow, Gary. “Pancamaya,” diagram and
chart, American Viniyoga Institute, 2006.
**
Kraftsow, Gary. “The Multidimensional
Self,” Yoga for Transformation, pp.
3-16.
** Klein,
Jean. “A Conversation on Art,” Who Am I?, pp. 177-198.
** Foer,
Jonathan Safran, Flights of Fancy//Guardian Unlimited Arts.
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1778945,00.html#article_continue
** Lopez,
Barry. “Emory Bear Hands’ Birds,” A
Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction
and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornel, edited by Jonathan Safran
Foer.
(** These
readings are short articles or chapters and are available for photocopying from
MFC library reserve or online as noted.)
Viewings: Cornell
boxes online at: http://americanart.si.edu/collections/interact/slideshow/cornell.cfm; http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cornell/
and “bird” films (e.g., The Aviary, A Legend for Fountains, Angel, Nymphlight,
Centuries of June) found on the DVD The
Magical Worlds of Joseph Cornell (on reserve in the library and screened in
class fall quarter).
Lecture: Robin Rothenberg, Tuesday 9 October, The
Multidimensional Self in the Taittiriya Upanishad
Practicum: Sarah Williams, Tuesday 2 October, Intro to
Yoga Nidra/iRest
Workshop: Thursday four-week or eight-week yoga
nidra/iRest practice sequence
Home
Practice: yoga
nidra/iRest CDs. Masters of these three
CDs are on closed reserve in the library.
Bring blanks (3) to make your own copies in SAIL.
Bird Box
or NW Mystic Art: Create and gift a Cornell-inspired bird
box—or a piece of your own NW Mystic Art--to express your consciousness of your
experience yoga nidra/iRest. Please
note: An artist’s statement must
accompany your work detailing to whom you gifted it, why, and their
response. If your work isn’t returned to
you (as many of Cornell’s boxes were) you must ask for your art back for
classroom presentation. This statement
also must made explicit the ways in which your art piece expresses a state of
consciousness experienced during yoga nidra.
Log and
Assessment: A
one-page accounting of hours spent doing what:
e.g., 28 Sept: 1 hour- yoga nidra
home practice with CD #1. And,
participation in and completion of the assessment materials administered by the
members of the yoga nidra/iRest research group. See the “latest news” column at
http://www.nondual.com/ for more
information and join in at our first meeting, TBA in class.
Journal: Dated
entries documenting your engagement with this studio workshop, including notes,
insights, research, images, etc. Four excerpts, totaling two typed pages, which
demonstrate your learning must be included in your portfolio for review.
Due Date:
All work must be completed for inclusion in the all-program presentation
weeks, which are weeks 5 and 10 of each quarter. No late work will be accepted.
Recommended Components:
While the
new required all-program texts for winter quarter (Ament, Zajonc, and
Blanchard) as well as our seminar work and field trips will provide the context
for regional focus, including profiles of individual artists, cultural and
geographical influences, and entwined history of inner and outer vision,
individual research regarding Joseph Cornell and Charles Simic as well as yoga
nidra/iRest could continue to be inspiring.
You might want to consider:
a) Joseph
Cornell in the context of American immigrant culture and dime-store alchemy
(capitalism and urbanization, 20th century American art history,
Christian Science and religious fundamentalism, fetishism, romanticism,
identity and gender politics).
b)
Charles Simic’s poems in the context of contemporary American poetry as well as
in terms of the tapestry of its symbols (e.g., Gerard de Nerval’s lobster on a
leash, Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd,” the myths of Theseus and Spider-Man).
c) the
traditions of 1) yoga nidra/iRest (e.g., Miller, Klein, Desikachar, The Taittiriya Upanishad, Siva Sutras, Tripura Rahasya, Yoga Sutra
of Patanjali), 2) shamanic traditions and birds (e.g., Vitebsky,
Winkelman), and 3) neurophysiology of yoga and contemplative practices (e.g.,
Begley, Wallace, Krippner).
Schedule:
9:35*-11:30 Yoga
nidra/iRest practice session: Design Problem #3, Cultivating the Contemplative
Mind
*Please
note the start time of 9:35: the studio
is closed with no late admittance after 9:35.
Wear comfortable clothing for ease in movement. Dress in layers,
including warm layers for comfort with prolonged stillness in a cool room. Yoga mats are available from the CRC for
checkout with your student ID, or you may bring your own yoga mat.
11:30-12:30 Discussion,
assessment, consultation, and/or art work focused on current design problem