 A recent small untitled image…©2013 Rev. David Seacord 8" x 10" Acrylic on canvas
Everyman's WEEKLY Journal #15
© 2013 Rev. David Seacord
March 10, 2013
Falling rain awakens me this Friday morning… Normally that's a rare sound to my ears (as one living out in a 3" of rainfall a year desert) but this morning I am arising from a mat on a friends floor much nearer to the coast, as I'm on my way to deliver a large giclee (reproduction) of one of my painting to an LA client.
However, once that economic reason was created as the backbone of the trip, my adventure thirst added in a few items of it's own to my to do list. Yesterday's item was to attend the La Quinta Art Festival (held in an extremely upscale community near Palm Springs, CA,… which now bills itself as the number one art fair in the nation. I suppose if looked at 'legally' there are some ways of viewing a claim like that that pass muster. Of course, in making the claim, it is never revealed on what basis it rests. Clearly that's not supposed to be important however… what's important is that the egoic message that 'We're an important national artshow'… that illusion… that it gets delivered.
I used to do a lot of these kind of shows myself (before this period of parent support settled me down a bit) so one of the reasons for visiting the show was to evaluate it for the future, should I wish to go that route again. After experiencing my visit, I'm left uncertain about whether that is my future because, of course, I'd prefer museums would be showing my work, and I'm confident that will in time be so.
But where I see this writing is really heading is towards discussing the very human conundrum that is nearly universal in this world… the underlying question of 'how to make a living' AND at the same time, not sell out on one's principles. My experience is that most of us…myself included…. compromise on this. It's certainly clear to me that in the art market that is so. After all, in the commercial world the motive is to sell the thing, so you have to create what people will want. Well, you ask… what to most people want? Unfortunately (in my view) the common truthful answer is: to stay in a comfort zone, to always look good, to always be right, and above all, to not be responsible for one's life, ie, 'it's not my fault'. Therefore, most products are sold because they promise to do these things for us, right? For example, insurance is sold so that 'it's not your fault', education is gained so we can 'be right about it', everything new is 'so we look good', and all of our 'social skills' are basically designed to allow others to stay comfortable and not be confronted…
Of course many of us can see there is no power of self-awareness in fulfilling any of these wants---although there is nothing wrong with fulfilling them either, if there is no attachment and one knows they are superficial illusions, and without core value. But where there is expectation and hope and attachment, there is also usually an endless emptiness in that someone that is trying to be filled. The problem is that to fill our lives with false valueless illusions can only leave us feeling very empty in the end. And then there's another big problem… that because whenever we (usually accidentally) do look at ourselves we actually do know whether we are happy or not…, and since most of the time 'B.G.E.' (Before God Enters) we are not, we end up hiding our unhappiness while trying to look good to the world by lying about it. How do I know this? Obviously because I have done it all myself.
If you have been reading me for any length of time, you know there is no saint here… at best there is only a man who loves God working to be honest in his reporting about what he is learning from the lessons life is giving him. I can still feel the wanting to look good, and I am not at all immune to many temptations, although I seem to have a handle on a few. But as I grow more honest, as I examine my motives and feelings and thinking, I do see there is less and less that I desire from this world. My biggest desire is just to be in Healthy Nature… as she (Mother Nature) is my best friend. She is the form of God that I can most count upon to soothe my soul when troubled… and her beauty is my greatest delight.
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This, by the way, is no longer Friday morning…. it's now the last hours of Saturday night, and the world has been several times 'fired point blank in my face'.
I picked up a box of custom made canvases and paid cash to the assistant at the shop. An hour later the boss called-- to determine if I had shorted him or if his assistant had pocketed some of the money. We discovered I had been sloppy in the count… the $20 bill that was the difference was still in my pocket. I apologized, and like Abe Lincoln, will retrace my steps to clean it up. I visited the Getty Museum of Art. I felt a huge excitement as I rode up the tram, and then climbed the stairs. I soon realized I had cheated myself in that I had only given myself about 2 hours, instead of two weeks. So again, I will need to retrace my steps back to there, when the time is right. I'm staying in LA with a Sufi female friend, and we went to her yoga class. The instructor was extraordinary in his simplicity of the fundamentals. I find myself praying that I will remember a tenth of his wisdom. I met up with another woman friend and got miswired by unclarities and created a social disaster area. I wrote her an apology this morning… never expecting to get a response (the foot in mouth disaster had been that bad), but just being freed by that I wasn't afraid to say my heart's sadness at my missed opportunities. Miraculously the karma reversed, and we just had a sweet warmhearted difference-resolving dinner together… I delivered my clients order to them, and was confronted with a number of 'never done this before' challenges, which included needing to stretch a very large printed canvasperfectly. I knew what it was supposed to end up like…but I had never done it before myself (I'd only before stretched blank canvases--mounting a huge print-- that was always done by the printing company). So it was again, a matter of being willing to be very carefully methodical, and at the same time, learn from the experience in a very steep climbing rate. As my assistant in the stretching/framing process was my client (we converted his dining table to a blanket covered workbench), I had to completely give up looking good, and let him know I was as inexperienced at this as he, practically. We worked creatively together for seven hours on what should have be a 90 minute job… but in the end, we triumphed. The painting giclee is now stretched beautifully, and lives in an esteemed location on their walls. And working together was so much fun that my client is requesting that we repeat the process when he buys another from me in the near future.
And last but not least, while singing a song in her house…my Sufi woman friend here in LA suddenly recognized my voice from her distant memory files… and asked me, "Did you ever record a cassette album with _________ in about 1980?" When I answered 'Yes', she exploded with excitement--- "I can't believe it! That was YOU?!!! OMG, I LOVED that album!!!!" So, as a result of that recognition, I had the opportunity to get that something I had done for the love of God 30 years ago was still bearing fruit. I felt very humbled to realize I had had a relationship with this new friend for decades before I ever met her… through my music. Of course, since she also sings (we had originally connected singing together around the campfire at the Tecopa Dance Camp in January), we have been having fun reworking the material, and I am inspired to envision the re-release of a CD of those old songs---that the world may have them again. Because as we were working on this today, I realized that those old songs of mine were much better than I had ever realized. That's a good feeling….to see that in the midst of living this turbulent life, I have many times been used as an instrument of love.
What's the point of this report you ask? To me, just to share my experience that the Godness uses everything in our lives to call us home, to call us awake. She/He/It is truly everywhere, surrounding us, guiding and leading us, visibly or invisibly… as determined by our surrender. And to acknowledge that even that surrender is itself... a blessing of Grace.
May we always be aware we are so blessed.
Namaste,
David
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Rev. David Seacord
Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag
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