This week, my friend Pedro and I went to BAMFA (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), with the intention of practicing our attention and writing together. We sat before a Joan Mitchell painting, titled “High Water.” For ten minutes, as a timer counted down, we just looked. Outside of this exercise, that amount of time felt palm-sized. I could close my hand and the minutes would be gone. But in the process of looking, the minutes expanded. At times, the looking was uncomfortable for how long it went on.
As Pedro pointed out to me after we had left the museum, Abstract Expressionism resists form, even denies it. And yet, the more we looked, the more we both ascribed a form and narrative to the painting. In the upper corner, we both saw a pond made out of the heavy blue brushstrokes. There was a coi pond, with a forest of dissonant yellow, orange, and black paint surrounding it. Over time, the painting grew horrific to me. I began to see wolves out of and beneath swathes of color. There, in the middle of the blue lake, was a maroon wolf’s face, crying out in the ripples. In the bottom corner of the painting, a smoke shadow of a grey wolf was melting away. It reappeared across the painting—its body roaring out of royal blue then quieting in muted pink.
When the timer signaling ten minutes had passed went off, we began to write. We gave ourselves 30 minutes to do so. Language poured out of me. Most of it felt incomprehensible, but it was a practice in simply writing without critiquing what came out. Over and over I scribbled, I have been tasked with looking. About halfway through our writing time, a museum attendant came over to us and informed us we were not allowed to use pens in the space. In tasking myself with looking, I had forgotten that we were being watched.
Looking Exercise from 2/3/2022:
In front of the Joan Mitchell “High Water,” I can see how a weasel could make its body from a lake—of the lake. Emptiness, delicateness and absence feed off of activity. Shadow it. Sound has its own body. The voice of the light gives a low steady hum. Sometimes the looking becomes too much. The eyes must close for a moment. In the corner, a dusty wolf is walking. Why do they walk alone? Look here, the painting commanded, and my eyes followed, delighted to be given a task. Tasked with looking, I could be here all day, finding new wolves in swathes of blue. There, on the lake’s edge, I have composed a scene. The rain is falling, paint drips down the page. There are coi fish and another wolf, drowning—its maroon face plunges out of the blue lake. I was treating looking as a form of devotion. I saw wolves everywhere I looked. I felt the absence wanted to speak to me, to tell me something directly. No pens are allowed, said the museum attendant, but the finest small pencils are available at the front desk. I had forgotten the museum was a surveilled space and we were being watched, just as we were watching. Details escape me. Now the wolves have grown back into paint and I am attuned to the security guard clearing their throat and the footsteps of other lookers. I am reminded of Tony Soprano picking apart the painting in his psychiatrist’s office. I so want the painting to speak to me. The more I look, the more gruesome it becomes. I see animas in every corner. In the container of absence, I am seeing shape, story. Color builds on top of itself. This was human made, human hung. When taken out of a task, I do not re-enter it the same as before. My feet are behind the music a few beats. Here, a weasel leaps out of a lake. It grows a body, of the lake. I have been tasked with looking. The lights have a voice too. They call in a low hum. Absence is a presence, holding images. The details remake themselves. I have been tasked with looking, and I keep seeing wolves.
After leaving the museum, Pedro and I sat on a log across the street from the museum after, and discussed our experiences. We had both been inspired by the language poet, Lyn Hejinian. Fitting, as Pedro has introduced me to her work and she had taught at UC Berkeley, where we had met each other. Walking together through the campus, we were both exhilarated by the looking and writing.
Now, I am thinking about other practices of attention and the act of looking. Mary Oliver wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion,” and Simon Sarris tweeted, “if the world is full of enchantment, and we want to see that enchantment, where can our senses grow sharper?” Both of these quotes remind me that to willingly focus our attention is a way of devotion and generosity. And it is a practice.
Tomorrow is my partner, Armando’s, birthday. Sometimes it is hard to find the words to describe being in love like this. But I read Simon Weil’s “Attention and Will,” where she wrote, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer” and I feel closer to having language. I recognize, in Weil’s words, how loving Mando is a way of practicing attention. What Weil calls “absolutely unmixed attention” does feel like prayer. To give this form of attention, and to be granted it, feels like the largest gift that can be given. It is a way of devotion, no, the beginning of it, as Mary Oliver urged.
I listen to Adrienne Lenker’s songs and a feeling of tenderness, friendship, and gratitude expands in my chest. I think about how bell hooks described love as an action, not a word in All About Love, and the roots of my understanding grow deeper.
In All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks wrote that love is an action, not a feeling, and “an act of will–namely, both an intention and an action.” The intention to love is the intention to give attention. To look at each other and in the same direction. To keep looking even when it is painful or brings up what is hard to be seen. To return to the intention of attention, and to root this intention in daily action and practices.
When I first read bell hooks’ All About Love five years ago, it broke apart and reshaped how I look at love. Now, I am so grateful to experience and practice love and attention with Mando.
Happy birthday Mando, I love you <3
Sitting before something for ten minutes then writing whatever comes to mind for 30 minutes (Change lengths of time to fit your schedule or desires. This exercise seems like it’d still be fun if you looked for 1 minute and wrote for 2 minutes)
bell hooks’ All About Love, and really, any books of hers
Lyn Hejinian’s language poetry in My Life
Nervous system check ins and body scans
Carrying a notebook and taking notes without thinking about whether or not they are “good enough” to write down
Your writing has really been resonating with me lately, but especially this one.
"to willingly focus our attention is a way of devotion and generosity. And it is a practice."
This is something that has been on my mind a lot lately and I love the way you articulate it. Thank you, as always, for sharing!