Miss Ashley Pants

Mindy Kaling’s so cute.

Yesterday, I saw her interview with Rainn Wilson for metaphysical milkshake (fun, paradoxical series in that it’s happening in the back of a child molester van, yet the aim is usually something inspiring about spirituality). Anyway, there was this one part that stuck with me. Mindy indicates she doesn’t “get” abstract art. She totally doesn’t mean it in a snobby or disinterested way. Actually, she wishes she understood what to look for, how to identify styles, whatever.

She doesn’t get it, but she wants to.

And I so know what she means. Except, as an artist myself, it’s more embarrassing. I want to get it, but I figured it was a “you get it or you don’t” thing. Also, I’ve never done abstract art myself. And I haven’t made any real art in a while. So, I guess I’ve felt I couldn’t identify with the abstract creative realm or those who did it. Were we even the same, these sorta artists and me? Or totally different animals? Why bother even looking at it – much less closely at it?

Today, I found out.

I’d wasted about 45 minutes of my life in this waiting room and they still hadn’t called me back when the old anxiety began to set into my shoulders and hands. “I wonder if this is how Dexter feels when he needs to kill again?” I reflected inwardly, before remembering Dexter’s not a real person. And that I need to get out more.

In order to navigate the choppy waters of my nervousness sans slaying or sedatives, I began to scan the room with my eyes. There were a couple of people who looked sick and sad, a lonely looking plant, and some abstract art on the wall – obscured by the glare of its own glass.

Then a man waltzed in, and began talking about his artwork to the staff.

I was delighted when he sprinted to the back of the clinic, and danced across the wall with his arms, gesticulating to indicate how large his latest piece was. It was almost as if he were reliving the painting process, right there amongst the chairs and miserable onlookers filling them. I got excited too. In fact, I couldn’t contain myself, and jumped in, asking about what medium it was? What style? Can I see?

“Would I have seen your artwork?” I asked.

“Do you go to art galleries?” He replied

“No, but I spend a lot of time online – would I see your stuff there?”

I was enjoying this query-volley, when the receptionist broke in, “All the art in this office is his.” Before much more of our conversation continued, he was called back momentarily for vitals. As he was ushered into the back room, I stood up to check out one of his pieces.

At first glance, I had my usual reaction of “I don’t get it.”

This is a familiar feeling. It kinda reminded me of when I look at people who I think aren’t like me or process freeway hotlanes with too many signs or information. Then I tried to look past the product – the display of twisted vines and colors – and see the person who painted it. I mean, I’d already seen the person, now. So I tried to see him painting it. “What kinda headspace would I have to be in to subconsciously choose those shapes and colors?”

I felt uneasy looking at it. I liked that. It’s better than the nothingness I usually feel.

Then, something clicked.

There were these organic shapes and colors – flowing, round bramble and bohemian earthy greens and warm reddish browns – not unlike the vague memory of something you’d see after a day in the woods. Natural.

But, then, they were abruptly interrupted by seemingly intentionally bright whites and branches terminating in these sharp hooks that seemed to almost eviscerate the painting at its center. Manmade.

This network of branches, constructed in intricate detail, held together the colored partitions that resembled membranous panes of stained glass. And the flowy, natural parts were bound to the rigid, rectangular window pane shapes as if connected by slender bridges reminiscent of tree limbs. I decided I’d go out on a limb of my own and talk to the guy about it.

Remembering some of the performance artists I liked – or how Pollock was when he’d start getting into a project (I mean totally involved, not inebriated), I wondered if this guy was the same. Did he enter that same enraptured state, where nothing can penetrate? I never get to talk to artists in the flesh, and I’m nervous when it comes to engaging someone, so I just went for it before I could get too afraid.

“This might be weird to ask, but… are you focusing logically when you paint? Or are you totally present – into the act of it? Can you look at it later and be like ‘yeah – I remember doing that bit there!’… ? Or like…D’ya… D’ya know what I mean?”

I was relieved when he didn’t look at me like I was batshit crazy. He immediately described that same headspace of transcendent inspiration. But, he went on to add that when you’ve delved into your subconscious to spur your work, it’s chaotic. Sometimes the symmetry isn’t where you want it to be in the end.

“It’s like if you’re walking through the woods,” he said.

“You can walk and walk in nature, but eventually you get to a stream and you need to cross it, so you build a bridge to get to the other side.” He showed me a print of his latest work – how things weren’t symmetrical, but they ended up balanced by adding details later.

I felt a strange wave of something come over me as he said this.

That idea of bridging between inner guidance and its manifestation as something pleasing to the senses is overwhelming to me. I hear it in music. I laugh at it in comedy. I revel in it with art. It’s overwhelming because… well…

’cause I haven’t learned how to do it myself yet. #geniusenvy

Still, I felt like I was getting closer – if nada else than by osmosis. For the first time, it was like I was able to understand something unspoken from another person through what they’d manifested sans language. And without leading questions, he’d validated my gut-reaction analysis.

Did I finally “get” abstract art?

After he left, I noticed another painting he’d done on the far right wall.

From where I sat, it looked like the debris of a shattered spaceship heading straight into the sun. As I walked closer, it wasn’t as it seemed. The pieces weren’t all just the same brownish-bone shade. They, too, were connected by dark lines and their respective colors had oscillating gradients to them. When I looked even closer, though, they all had the same texture as eachother and the background – like the façade of stone building.

Far away – same. Closer – separate. Even closer- all made of the same stuff.

It’s funny. Just yesterday I said, “Yeah, I wish I understood abstract art.”

Today, it half-happened. But, ya know, the thing is I had to meet the circumstance halfway. My default is usually to say, “Jesus, it’s been 45 minutes! When’s it my turn?!” (and then Jesus obviously doesn’t answer and the staff would give me a death glare and I’d pass the death glare along to everyone else.)

It came really close to that. But whatever I tell myself usually ends up building – good or bad. And without drugs, I have to delude myself into believing the former – that every sitch in this matrix we live in, has beauty embedded in the code. Just gotta sniff it out.

If we look around the four walls enclosing a seemingly shitty situation, and try to find the redeeming element in it, sometimes it’s like figuring out the abstract art itself that’s lining those walls. Seems a little silly at first to engage a stranger in a waiting room, doesn’t it? To look at his art? Much less ask him about it? Until you, I dunno, say “fuck it.”

You do it anyway.

And then the connections between you and some stranger artist, between you and his art, or him and his own art – kinda consume you. Your differences melt away. Instantaneously, our fragmented realities filled with everything from frappucinos to fellatio, all cosmically align like some “eureka moment”.

Or like fractured abstract spaceship bits bound for a white light as a singular entity.