Heartsong Studio

Have you ever talked so much about a work of art you were just starting that you lost most of your enthusiasm before it was even finished? You can stop berating yourself for letting your enthusiasm run away with your juice. It’s all a matter of timing.

Salaam is the Arabic word usually translated into English as peace. Yet Salaam has many nuances of meaning besides peace – safety; security; immunity; health; obedience; freedom from fault, defect, imperfection, blemish, or vice.

Describing a visual image in words is a lot like trying to funnel a broad concept like Salaam into one word of another language. So much is missed in translation from the heart to the head.

In spite of the old clique, a picture isn’t always worth any words.

Not necessarily so. Sometimes even a few words can block the pictures they’re meant to enhance. Try to describe in words a misty morning or a newborn fawn you have just seen and not yet fully absorbed, and you muddy the natural order of things. Later, when you try to paint them, the memory is smudged.

Transmission is a term for how the non-verbal, spiritual essence of something, like a work of art, is communicated. Transmission through the eyes to the heart can be hindered or enhanced by many things that aren’t a part of the natural flow.

Here’s scientific proof of words impairing an image by 60%:

After two groups of people were shown the same colour paint swatch, they were then asked to identify the same colour from six swatches. The first group had been asked to describe the colour in words. The second group were shown the same colour but did not describe it.

Only 73 percent of the non-describers chose correctly. In other words, less than three quarters of these folks could tell if this experience of yellow was the same as the one they’d had a few minutes earlier.

BUT, only 33 percent of the describers were able to accurately remember the original colour. Words not only won’t do, they actually act to impair rather than improve visual identification and memory.

When your enthusiasm can enhance a picture by 300%:

Janine, a young artist was urged by her advertising executive father Rob to try this experiment. She listed the same painting on two charity auction websites. Site A had 400 bids, and site B had 500 bids.

On site A ,her work was titled “The Departed”, and was described in 250 words as being about the loss of her best friend. On site B, it was titled “Study in Blue”, and had a 95 word description about a study in tonality.

The highest bid on Site A was $650. The highest on Site B was only $200. Given a choice between two similar products, both of which we like and both sharing the same price, but one we know a lot about and one we know nothing about, we will likely choose the one we know something about.

After the work is completed, then a verbal description can be very helpful. It can lead viewers into the deeper meanings so they can appreciate them for themselves. Viewers are helped to receive the transmission, and to decide to buy it or not, by understanding enough of a work’s meaning and relevance to them.

Have you ever enhanced or impaired your perceptions with words ?
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“Once I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out,” confessed a friend. “I waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over and breathed on it to warm it.

“I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them.

“Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

“That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.”

How many aborted creations are you responsible for ? I know I have squashed countless unborn works of art in my impatience.

So what’s the rush, anyway ?

If you’re anything like me, you’re busy. Once you’re on the trail of a new idea, you just blast ahead and make it happen. Or else, if an idea doesn’t start showing promise from the start, maybe you say it’s not your thing, and give it up. Maybe you tell yourself that you’re bored with anything new that takes this much work to learn.

When things don’t turn out asap, maybe you feel a bit of panic, or at least a nervous discomfort. You feel obligated to make things happen the way you think they should. So you try to avoid this feeling altogether by giving yourself reasons.

The mind’s stories are just blowing smoke to cover over the feelings underneath. The reasons we give for our impatience don’t matter; but getting closer to what’s under the feeling does.

These feelings of discomfort are your salvation.

They are a sign marking the doorway to freedom. In order to obey the eternal rhythms of your own nature, you need to go inside the feeling of impatience or discomfort and own it, not find reasons for it.

Be willing to open more into this feeling. Really experience the unresolved emotions hidden there. This doesn’t take as long as you might think. On the other side of this surrender, you will find the cover you were holding onto for safety, was actually keeping you from being free.

Once you are willing to hold in your heart the full experience of impatience, discomfort, incompetence, or not knowing, you will sense that under all that, you are on firm ground, held safely, and part of the natural rhythm of the flow.

It takes time to learn the rhythm of this creative life process. It’s like learning to love. It’s an inside job and it can’t be rushed.

Next time a work isn’t springing into being as you think it should, remember the butterfly and be the sun. Patiently take part to help the unfolding of beauty given into your care.