Without Thinking

Finally his daughter decided to ask about something he had written of weeks ago. In a previous piece he had written about ideas and how they form in the mind. He wrote how one must start by emptying the mind of all thoughts, in a manner of speaking, to create a void so that ideas will come. Put another way, to think without thinking?

In that article he had written all these in the context of writing. His daughter said she understood what he meant to say but still she wondered if it worked with her. He had written about creating the void inside one’s mind. She asked: How do you create the void?

The quetion brought him back to the book on drawing written by Dr. Elizabeth Edwards entitled “Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain”

There is sidebar anecdote in that book which tells of a Japanese artist-poet preparing to make a piece on black birds in a bamboo grove.

To make the piece the poet goes first for many days into the bamboo grove to watch the birds. He enjoys their beauty never once thinking about making the  art piece itself. He waits as long as it takes until something inside him says he is ready.

At which time he retires to his study, puts his papers and his brushes and his inks on a table. Here, a small parenthetical note, in Japanese, a poem or a drawing was made the same way using the same implements. And so it is not important to wonder if he is making a poem or a painting, either of the two will do.

But before this Japanese puts anything on paper, he must do two things, if I remember this anecdote correctly. He will contemplate first the complete beauty of his empty paper. He acknowledges its sacred pristine state. And then he goes to prepare himself some tea.

He sits himself at table sipping his tea never once hurrying. He enjoys his morning waiting as if for a guest to walk into the door. The art he is after is that guest. When it does come he must act as quickly as he can. For the guest never tarries longer than it takes to finish the tea.

Notice that in this anecdote there is no talk at all about how to do the work and how not to make mistakes. Those thoughts only distract and if one has prepared well they would have become absolutely unimportant. One does. Without thinking.

The daughter plays piano. He decided that the best explanation to give to her would be to demonstrate all these in the context of playing music. One of his daughter’s favorite piano pieces now is “River flows in you” by Yiruma.

He explains to her that the piece is best played if she plays it as music rather than as notes on the piano piece. The only way she can do this is if she internalizes the notes well enough so she does not have to think of them. To do this she must have to practice the piece over and over again. Until she can get herself to play it starting first with her mind empty of everything. Then she might wait for the notes to come one at a time. Perhaps she might even think of the music as a river flowing inside her. She tries this out with her father.

Does the method work? Does she play better?

There is a paradoxical irony  in the doing and presenting of all art. We know when the artist does extraordinarilly well when he or she makes it all look so easy and effortless. We forget how much effort and time came before the doing of this seemingly simple thing we are hearing or reading or viewing.

But lest we forget: Everything proceeds not from ordinary thinking as every good artist very well knows. All the necesary thinking has been done before hand. The thoughts themselves seem to fall from nowhere into a sacred emptiness one has prepared inside one’s self using the utmost effort and care.