Entrances and Exits

I recently read a book, “Many Lives, Many Masters” by the psychiatrist, Brian Weiss. He described his use of hypnotism to treat a young woman emotionally crippled by fear and anxiety. He guided her back through childhood memories to search for a traumatic event, a root cause for her condition. She surprised him by recounting a memory from a time period before she had been born. Weiss eventually discovered that the woman suffered from scarring events that had occurred during previous lives. As he and she explored her extended past and confronted previously hidden traumas (death by drowning, suffering from leprosy, etc.), the woman’s outlook brightened until she developed a charismatic personality. She radiated hope and happiness.

After finishing this book, I began to watch videos of people recalling their near-death experiences. Most experienced peaceful realms where they encountered guiding spirits. Their guardian angels told them that they would have to go back to this world, that they still had things to learn and do in their current lives, and that they had lived many times before.

Some near-death survivors spoke of karmic debts that had to be repaid, of having obligatory missions to fulfill. Failure to make amends or to successfully complete their duties meant rebirth into conditions making similar demands. One could not progress to a more advanced stage until all requirements had been met. I got the impression from them that life is a serious business.

Others had a lighter point of view. They focused on the blissful state of affairs they encountered on the other side of the divide. They said that the afterlife felt like home, that the Great Beyond seemed more real to them than their previous embodied existences. They tended to see life on earth as an adventure, a trip to a carnival, a thrill ride. The threat of death, disease, suffering and danger somehow made their role-playing more enjoyable, more productive. They spoke like actors relishing juicy parts in dramatic, action-packed plays.

I think that I’ve been going through this material in search of comfort. People have lately been making more exits from my life than entrances. And friends have also suffered a spate of losses in recent months. I’m getting the strong impression that life’s going to get us all killed. And I’m afraid that before it does, my story will resemble the saddest verse in a Hank Williams song.

I’d much rather live with some joy and hope. And if nothing else, I want to believe that there’s some point to being here.

Who Was I?

Have you ever wondered who you might have been in previous lives? Many reincarnation enthusiasts believe that their progression through time is shot through with fame. Few like to imagine themselves as anonymous Medieval peasants, 19th century factory workers, or 20th century office drudges. The ego calls for glamor, excitement, power. J’etais Napoleon...

I occasionally tell students that their work reminds me of the drawings of a famous artist. Some accept the compliment. Some take offense. The latter group believe that everything they produce comes from a spring of creativity to which they have exclusive rights, that they have no predecessors or close relatives in the art world. I, on the other hand, look for kinship. Making art is a lonely exercise. I like to daydream that I’ve got a few friends who have traveled similar roads.

I sometimes look for artists whose work I could have drawn or painted. I imagine that I might have been one of them. I usually discover, however, that my favorites died after I was born. The chained sequences of our lives remain unlinked. In more pessimistic moods, I suspect that in a former life I sat at a Parisian bistro with another painter, an anonymous Jacques or Jean, but not with anyone whose work I now admire. Jean and I would have stared down at our cups of absinthe, bemoaned injustices perpetuated by dealers and critics, while secretly despising each other’s work. Quelle domage.

I’ve recently discovered a group of French artists who were active after WWII. The Tachists worked more intuitively, spontaneously than the rationalist, reductionist painters preceding them. They wanted to find out where the paint would take them instead of chaining themselves to a programmatic methodology.

Tachisme has often been described as the European response to the American Abstract Expressionists, but the movement arose independently. I find their work more palatable than Pollock’s and De Kooning’s. The Tachists still believed in composition, while the American painters often let their paintings drift until they became collections of inarticulate wriggles.

Oil painting by De Kooning

Serges Poliakoff and Andre Lanskoy seem the most attractive out of the Tachisme group. They both died, inconveniently for me, a decade or so after my birth. I was neither of them. C’est triste.

Oil painting by Serge Poliakoff

Oil painting by Andre Lanskoy