Painting is a funny sort of pastime. You learn things that you might not normally think about in terms of color. At it’s most basic, you’ve got red, yellow, blue, black and white. All colors can technically be formed from the combination of these colors. Where it gets really tricky is the amounts of each to throw into the mix in order to reach the desired hue. Where it gets even trickier is any time you add black and white. White is a lightening agent. Add white to red, and the red becomes a lighter shade of red. Add black, and it becomes darker. But what happens when you add too much black—which is not an uncommon occurrence because black is a surprisingly strong absence of color? You add white. But then, taking a step back, is it really grey which is responsible for hues? Granted, you might be able to reach the hue you’re looking for by just adding white, but this is extraordinarily rare, and one is generally left to deal with the color that results.
This is, however, why grayscale work is so important to the artist. It teaches them to deal with tone values, and if this were extrapolated on every so slightly, this is precisely what makes art what it is: the perfect tone. Joyce struggled with this. What’s the right tone for this episode? Your good chef is concerned with the not only the color tones on the plate, but the tongue tones as well. Jean-Paul Belmondo struggled with just the right tone of voice. Every artist is concerned with tone, and the best way to learn about it is an intense investigation into the grayscale.
However, there is an unfortunate point that some artists reach where their only interest is in grayscale, and they forget that the whole point of learning grayscale is so that one can make the leap into full color where the entire world of possibility opens up before their eyes. Grayscale teaches tonal understanding and makes tones possible, but it is, after all, a tool for moving comfortably into the world of infinite possibility. In a way, it could be said that grayscale is learning time.
Currently, I am reading four books—an old habit picked up from years of being in literature classes: Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness,” Beop Jeong’s “May All Beings Be Happy,” D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers,” and Voltaire’s “Candide” (and related texts), and I have noticed something that I never noticed when I was actually in school and studying books simultaneously. They are all individually crammed with information, but they are all coming together at some point in my head so that overarching "truths" can be reached.
Sartre is teaching me ontological awareness (and I want to point out that my mantra “actions reveal sub-conscious desires” has been somewhat amended by the understanding that our physical actions are a manifestation of ontological choices of what and how to be, where choice is a metaphysical action based on why we think we ought to do these things), the fact that to “non-” something is not the opposite of what it is we’re “non”-ing (where being and non-being are not opposites, action and non-action are not opposites, and knowing and non-knowing are not opposites because to non-be something means simply that you are not in that state, but it is possible, and for opposites this is never possible), and that a question is composed of three non-beings: the non-being of knowledge in man (otherwise why would you ask), the non-being of a possibly negative response (even in a question like, “Where is Paul?” the answer could be, “I don’t know”), and the third non-being of the limitation of truth. These three are non-beings because they are not currently in the state of being: there is no current state of knowledge, there is no current state of positivity or negativity—which opens up both possibilities, and there is no current state of limited truth.
From Beop Jeong I’m learning to live ever so fully from moment to moment, that the past is a thing to picked at when needed, the future is a thing to be understood as possible but untouchable, that possessions can own us as much as we own them, that words are the home of being, that life was intended for existence, and I am learning to ask “Who am I?” again and again and again.
D.H. Lawrence is teaching me just how far into the human psyche we can delve and what it is possible to learn about ourselves as we look back into ourselves from a position of understanding. I’m learning that love and hate can exist for the same character in the same paragraph, in the same breath, in the same sentence, and that it is sometimes uncomfortable to be that close, but that it is, in its way the same reality we all experience very day.
Voltaire is teaching me how to teach and learn through story telling. Candide’s travels and woes in this, the best of all possible worlds, reminds me that to cling to the things which we once thought beyond question can be only the mark of Emerson’s hobgoblin.
But, in the same breath, a moment to moment psychological existence where learning is key and “there is nothing to prevent consciousness from making a wholly new choice of its way of being” kind of makes sense.
In this moment, “Sons and Lovers,” “Candide,” “May All Beings Be Happy,” and “Being and Nothingness” are the gray which is tempering the hue of my understanding of my existence and my reality, which I am, in turn, attempting to live in hypercolor.
(For the record, I only just realized that Candide means pure or “white”—the existence of all colors simultaneously, beings being happy might be most happy in a nothingness where a bildungsroman can illustrate he psychological nature of a being who arose from nothingness. Two bildungromans, two books with being in the title, and all chosen randomly. Life’s funny like that…)
So maybe the best of all possible worlds is one lived with an understanding of grayscale, but focused on color. And maybe, when color gets to be too much, and you start to lose the plot, retreat back to the basics, but never forget that at the end of the day it’s always about mixing.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Mountain Songsanri
Today I went hiking. This is something I do frequently; however, today I went hiking with two older Korean gentlemen--one is 56, the other retired from his work at Nestle two years ago. I wrote some things like how I love being "struck by the leaves of fall," and "Nothing bad happened today... nothing"--although I did fall, twist my ankle, bang my knee and nearly lose my glasses in thousands of leaves--"I find that the best places to BE are usually the hardest to get to," "I am sitting in a tiny car with three older Koreans. I have taken to describing Teacher Bone as 'ancient': old AND respected. To put it at its most simple: I am humbled in his/their presence. It makes me proud. We are on our way to a mountain called (and here I asked teacher bone to write down the name of the mountain and he wrote a few things for me): 'Mt. Sokri (we later found out it was Songsanri). On top of that mountain is called Mun Jang Dae which is so popular in beauty scenery.' There is a buddhist monastery on top of the Mt. Sokri (I later realized it was at the base), and a long time ago, Bone Teacher's father was there--whether for a visit or for a long time is not known, and I could ask, but I think we're just going to let it linger in delicious obscurity for the time being. For now, we are doing. We're doing the damn thing, as it were, and we're being as respectful as possible of the beauty of nature. 'Go be whatever you want to do,'" and "Just me and two ancient Korean men. I fell... Teacher Bone had gone on ahead. Emo's husband found my glasses (Emo is the cook at our school, and her husband--who was only referred to as "Senior" all day because of his elder status--had been up Mt. Songsanri a number of times and wanted to guide us). What if. It just goes to show you, no matter how slow and careful you are, you still might find you tumbling down a million rocks. Going up is more secure, somehow you have gravity on your side." I saw millions of rocks today. LIterally, millions, and they were all roughly big enough for one person to carry with a certain amount of strain. But, there's really no way to explain what happened today, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I actually wrote twenty thousand words already today. But for now, I guess I'll put the burden on the reader here and ask for a then thousand word essay on:
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Story of My Life
“In an effort to bring Korean and Western cultures together, today at the Korea Herald English Academy we are celebrating Halloween.”
Let’s just say that I’m not a super huge on Halloween.
I find myself green almost yearly, because I am a large man—think of things like The Jolly Green Giant, Shrek, the Incredible Hulk, and Frankenstein—and that is admittedly an overstatement in that for the last couple of years I have found myself green for various reasons to celebrate Halloween.
Well, my director is a special lady, and for the last two weeks she’s been asking me what I was going to be for the Halloween party and what color I want to be painted—even though I told her many times, “I don’t know” and “I really don’t want to be painted anything.” Her response was generally something like, “Whole teachers need painted.”
I eventually landed on the deliciously ambiguous Rock Star because I knew I would be carrying around my guitar all day anyway, and it just seemed to fit (Halloween is not all about blood and gore and ghouls, it’s about being whatever you want to do). The night before the party I found myself in need of some accessories. Okay, in total fairness, I hadn’t done any planning and preparation for this costume because that is not how I operate. There are people out there in the world that can spend the entire month of October planning their costumes, and to them I tip my hat. Some people I’ve talked to are talking about what they want to be next year the day after Halloween, and it’s a thing and it happens; however, I am not one of these people. I get very wrapped up in what I’m doing, and planning a costume moves to the background.
The deep background.
I am, after all, very wrapped up in doing whatever it is I’m doing.
But circumstances sometimes make decisions for us, and the fact of the matter was that I needed a costume before tomorrow.
Home Plus is like Wal-Mart… full stop. Surely there will be something in Home Plus in the men’s department or something I can use.
(My idea was to get a vest and some suspenders and call it good.)
In Korea, space (like in New York City) is at a premium, so places that would normally take up a square mile (like a Wal-Mart Supercenter) in Kansas City or some such place, builds up as opposed to out. Fair enough. I had never been to the third floor of Home Plus. I live on the ground floor where the food is. The second floor is electronics and toys and children’s things and there’s really no call for me to be there either.
So, I traveled up the inclined moving walkway (NOT an escalator, an inclined moving walkway) to the third floor and wandered around looking for the men’s department or the accessories or something. It took me about fourteen seconds to realize that something was odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
(As a bit of an aside, I don’t DO clothes shopping. It makes me nervous. I get all jittery and my hands start shaking and I get flush and my temperature rises and I absolutely must have someone there with me, reassuring me that everything is going to be okay.)
There was definitely something odd. No signs for Men’s and Women’s departments. That’s what it was.
Everything, and I’m sure the fashion minded of you out there can appreciate this, was sorted by designer (or maybe more appropriately, brand name).
Litmus is the only brand that I can remember off hand, but walking around Home Plus’s enigmatic third floor was a lesson in fashion. It made perfect sense, rationally and whatnot, but it gets a little bit more complicated.
Korea is a very metrosexual country. The reason Home Plus’s third floor is delineated in this particular manner is because everybody cares so much. To be perfectly honest, most of the children (male or female) in my Hagwon (Private English Academy in Korea) are very involved with fashion and the way they look and the presentation they are making to the public. All of which is fair enough. But in order to be truly fashion forward, there can be no color discrimination. One of the most popular colors of the Nintendo DS in Korea is pink. Boys, girls, whatever, pink is just a color. I think it’s kind of cool. I didn’t grow up in a world like that, but every boy has their pink shirts and their purples shirts, and they’re all just colors, and color adds color to life.
But when things are sorted by their designers and there is really no color out of bounds for either gender, what happens?
I couldn’t tell which racks were men’s clothes and which racks where women’s clothes, and obviously you can just go thumbing through them and figure it out, but given my already tremulous state in regards to the entire experience of shopping, I did what any self-respecting man would do. I ran away.
Yes sirree, I bolted out of there as quickly as my tired legs could get me out and hurriedly got back to my apartment to make myself a drink and calm down.
This did still leave a small problem in that I had no costume. I can be kind of resourceful sometimes, and I decided to go shirtless and draw tattoos on myself. They were brilliant, if I do say so myself.
When I got to school, the director said, “Ah, let me paint you.”
And that’s the story of how I wound up being a green Zombie Rock Star for Halloween at the Korea Herald English Academy in Ochang, South Korea and playing ABBA songs on the guitar for dozens of children and learning that You Are My Sunshine is kind of a scary song—look at the lyrics.
Let’s just say that I’m not a super huge on Halloween.
I find myself green almost yearly, because I am a large man—think of things like The Jolly Green Giant, Shrek, the Incredible Hulk, and Frankenstein—and that is admittedly an overstatement in that for the last couple of years I have found myself green for various reasons to celebrate Halloween.
Well, my director is a special lady, and for the last two weeks she’s been asking me what I was going to be for the Halloween party and what color I want to be painted—even though I told her many times, “I don’t know” and “I really don’t want to be painted anything.” Her response was generally something like, “Whole teachers need painted.”
I eventually landed on the deliciously ambiguous Rock Star because I knew I would be carrying around my guitar all day anyway, and it just seemed to fit (Halloween is not all about blood and gore and ghouls, it’s about being whatever you want to do). The night before the party I found myself in need of some accessories. Okay, in total fairness, I hadn’t done any planning and preparation for this costume because that is not how I operate. There are people out there in the world that can spend the entire month of October planning their costumes, and to them I tip my hat. Some people I’ve talked to are talking about what they want to be next year the day after Halloween, and it’s a thing and it happens; however, I am not one of these people. I get very wrapped up in what I’m doing, and planning a costume moves to the background.
The deep background.
I am, after all, very wrapped up in doing whatever it is I’m doing.
But circumstances sometimes make decisions for us, and the fact of the matter was that I needed a costume before tomorrow.
Home Plus is like Wal-Mart… full stop. Surely there will be something in Home Plus in the men’s department or something I can use.
(My idea was to get a vest and some suspenders and call it good.)
In Korea, space (like in New York City) is at a premium, so places that would normally take up a square mile (like a Wal-Mart Supercenter) in Kansas City or some such place, builds up as opposed to out. Fair enough. I had never been to the third floor of Home Plus. I live on the ground floor where the food is. The second floor is electronics and toys and children’s things and there’s really no call for me to be there either.
So, I traveled up the inclined moving walkway (NOT an escalator, an inclined moving walkway) to the third floor and wandered around looking for the men’s department or the accessories or something. It took me about fourteen seconds to realize that something was odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it.
(As a bit of an aside, I don’t DO clothes shopping. It makes me nervous. I get all jittery and my hands start shaking and I get flush and my temperature rises and I absolutely must have someone there with me, reassuring me that everything is going to be okay.)
There was definitely something odd. No signs for Men’s and Women’s departments. That’s what it was.
Everything, and I’m sure the fashion minded of you out there can appreciate this, was sorted by designer (or maybe more appropriately, brand name).
Litmus is the only brand that I can remember off hand, but walking around Home Plus’s enigmatic third floor was a lesson in fashion. It made perfect sense, rationally and whatnot, but it gets a little bit more complicated.
Korea is a very metrosexual country. The reason Home Plus’s third floor is delineated in this particular manner is because everybody cares so much. To be perfectly honest, most of the children (male or female) in my Hagwon (Private English Academy in Korea) are very involved with fashion and the way they look and the presentation they are making to the public. All of which is fair enough. But in order to be truly fashion forward, there can be no color discrimination. One of the most popular colors of the Nintendo DS in Korea is pink. Boys, girls, whatever, pink is just a color. I think it’s kind of cool. I didn’t grow up in a world like that, but every boy has their pink shirts and their purples shirts, and they’re all just colors, and color adds color to life.
But when things are sorted by their designers and there is really no color out of bounds for either gender, what happens?
I couldn’t tell which racks were men’s clothes and which racks where women’s clothes, and obviously you can just go thumbing through them and figure it out, but given my already tremulous state in regards to the entire experience of shopping, I did what any self-respecting man would do. I ran away.
Yes sirree, I bolted out of there as quickly as my tired legs could get me out and hurriedly got back to my apartment to make myself a drink and calm down.
This did still leave a small problem in that I had no costume. I can be kind of resourceful sometimes, and I decided to go shirtless and draw tattoos on myself. They were brilliant, if I do say so myself.
When I got to school, the director said, “Ah, let me paint you.”
And that’s the story of how I wound up being a green Zombie Rock Star for Halloween at the Korea Herald English Academy in Ochang, South Korea and playing ABBA songs on the guitar for dozens of children and learning that You Are My Sunshine is kind of a scary song—look at the lyrics.
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