Recently my own personal experience brings home the need for a title.
My portrayal of three faces naturally brought up the question of what this painting was about.
"You were practicing painting a face."
"Empathy"
"Meditation"
Meditation was by far the most popular nomination.
Then I said, " Have eyes, but Won't see"
I must admit, my painting was inspired by the verses in The Sound of Silence,
"people talking without speaking
people hearing without listening
people writing songs that voices never share
and no one dare, disturb the sound of silence"
The face on the right, Arhat, was supposed to have attained the perfect life, free from pain and suffering. Arhat is believed to have attained nirvana; analogous to a saint in the western religion, and yet he was represented in reverse values. Everything about him was just the contrary. Black became white and white became black. Despite all that we perceived him as nothing wrong in this painting; despite the unspoken uneasiness due to the reversed values.
He did have his eyes closed, or did he? Oh but wait, he had no eyeballs. Was he not seeing or just not feeling. Did I forget to paint in the eyeballs?
So I went from a somber, heavy rendition of a real face on the left, to a negative, fictitious face on the right, and inserted a benevolent Buddha face in the middle for good measure, all with their eyes closed, or half closed. Everybody knows Buddha is benevolent and caring and a lot of people in this world look to Buddha for comfort and guidance and blessings.
"The Have Eyes But Won't See is too strong and spiteful a statement", commented one person.
"You need to tone it down" was the suggestion.
Like the song said, we can talk without speaking, hear without listening and I included looking without actually seeing. I am referring to things in general, our living environment, the way we do things, our society, our world.
Could this be denial? Denial is a perfect coping mechanism and we all do that to some extent to protect ourselves.
So were these faces pretending that they don't or can't see because their eyes were conveniently closed or missing? I used the negative Arhat face to say there's more to that. This Arhat was not what he was cracked up to be.
This painting is not about meditation or empathy.
Donald Rumsfeld ( US Secretary of Defense ) had said that there are "known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns". That seemed like a conundrum but if one analyzes that closely, it makes perfect sense. (I hope I'm not misquoting here)
There are times ( and people who) when we lack the knowledge that we actually are ignorant. There is a medical condition called anosognosia when a person is truly unaware of one's own defect.
I am going to bastardize this term to include everyday circumstances when the persons involved are truly ignorant of the facts, and doing so without malice.
I was involved in some discussion of whether the Xuan I paint on is archival or not. To the western practitioner who paints on paper, perhaps that is of utmost importance, being archival grade and acid free and what not. For someone who paints on Xuan this question never arose. Paintings done on Xuan and silk and mounted on paper or silk from centuries ago survived just fine. We have always taken that for granted. Yet both sides argue and insist.
The west insists that paper be archival and the east insists that mounting not only be done, but done in the traditional fashion. My way of mounting on canvas, cement board or plastic catches nothing but ire. Perhaps these new substrates are unknown territories, their compatibility and longevity have not been proven. One thing both sides agreed on was dry mounting is bad. Has the traditional wet mounting of Xuan fallen victim to modern day technology? Or is the old way of doing things too time consuming and is out of sync with the I Want It Now mentality? Or could this be that nobody wants to invest the time into learning how to wet mount anymore?
People used to think the earth was flat and we were the center of the universe. We insist and fight based on preconceptions, prejudices, customs, cultures and religion. Assumptions that are not well vetted, or simply beyond our comprehension.
So are these insistence anosognosic or are they just ignorant demands. Are we so afraid to step out of the box and give things a try? Food for thought.
Sorry about the segue but I really needed to get that off my chest.
In the end I am going to title my piece "Oblivious". Arhat, Buddha, all the Salvation in the world is not going to deliver us from human slaughtering each other, from natural disasters. People engaging in wars pray to their gods for a successful mission. Both sides do that, I am sure. If the deity was merciful and all knowing, why would any favoritism be bestowed. Are our lives worth more than the enemies? After all we are all His children. After a disaster people have a moment of silence and pray for the victims. So where is the Creator now? Why would such calamity be allowed to happen to his flock in the first place. I have no doubt for that brief moment, in the prayer, most of us feel connected to the Spirit and that we empathized and we gave off sincere, kind thoughts. Humanity, we're supposed to be human beings. Homo sapiens, we are supposed to have feelings and a conscience.
If we can assume there is life after death and reincarnation and all that, then is the purported utopia a known unknown, and if we have no expectations or beliefs, then is that an unknown unknown? If we are emphatic about our death is the final curtain then that must be a known known. What makes a person think and wish that our existence should be forever? That goes far beyond the survival instinct bred into our DNA. Do we exercise good deeds just for the sake of karma? If there was no law, no watch dogs, no god, would we have behaved the same?
In either case, we all have eyes and most of us have sight but how many of us really see with them. We might as well be blind or have no eyeballs. We are blinded by pride. We are blinded by ideology. We are blinded by ignorance. We are blinded by convenience.
I am guilty as charged.
Oblivious. That's the only answer I could offer. These are faces of silence.
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