1/4. David Whyte: Jerry Wennstrom's artistic journey

one of the really striking things that every artist is confronted with is the is the prospect of their own imminent demise as they place the pen on the paper as they place the paintbrush on the canvas we use the we use the phrase writer's block or being artistically blocked but really the language is not commensurate to what's actually going on because you actually underneath feel as if you're going to die because what you're giving yourself over to is a much larger pattern in the world then your personality can actually hold together and your personality you into it will not survive yet the next stroke of the paintbrush on the canvas or the next line that you might write so the feeling actually the experience is that you will you or not you will not survive and that you're going to die and unfortunately in some ways the the intuition is entirely correct because you won't you actually won't recognize the person who emerges on the other side of this horizon I think that's one of the powerful the powerful experiences you feel from Jerry's life and work is that there's a tremendous underlying faith to it and a faith in the emergence of things and a lack of willfulness and I think one of the great things about the horizon of death is that you Intuit that on the other side you will have to exist without your willful attempt to hold everything together and you will actually have to give yourself over to a much greater substrate a much greater flow where things hold together out of the nature of their own belonging and so what you're actually doing is is joining the great belonging but in order to do that you have to have faith in your own ticket a way of joining the great cosmos the great world that you're attempting to describe through your heart so I suppose that Jerry's step was the ultimate artistic step first in in actually stepping away from his old life and his old life as an artist into something where there was very little there to begin with very little at all and it seems to me that this is a real indication of courage because quite often we will ask ourselves when we want to take a step in life how much courage do it does it actually need and usually when we ask that question we're really saying how little courage can I get away with our little courage do do I have to come up with in order to achieve for myself but almost always when you ask about courage what is asked for it I have a couple of lines which is an image from a poem of mine I wrote in the Himalayas actually when I was up there in the high mountains trekking and it's called Tillet or lake and the first lines throw something like this in this high place it is as simple as this leave everything you know behind in this high place it is as simple as this leave everything you know behind step toward the cold surface say the old prayer of rough love and open both hands and open both arms those who come with empty hands will stare into the lake astonished there in the cold light reflect reflecting pure snow there in the cold light reflecting pure snow the true shape the true shape of your own face there in the cold light reflecting pure snow the true shape the true shape of your own face now almost always when we see the reflection of our true face emerge from our life from our art from Annette whatever we're forming it would actually frighten you to death because it is a face actually that is the reffed of many of the lineaments and aspects that make it recognizable to you and it is a face also that is willing to face the difficulty and bitterness and loss and difficulty of existence and when you think about it if there's anything that are leads us by the hand towards in friendship then it would be loss and difficulty and the fact that even though we're a part of life and part of this incredible story where you're asked at one time or another to leave almost everything you have behind and that everyone you know will in some way disappear from you whether they're your children or your partner or your people or your community they will all change and go during your lifetime they will not exist in the same way we are really creatures who are married to the great unknown and we're creatures who are married to loss and yet if you look the way that we actually try to tell the story in our mainstream society through the news and through the media that loss is almost always totally turned away from an egg inaud so the great role of the artist is always to lead people gently and in friendship towards the horizon of dying not in the sense of ultimate loss but of enjoy of joining something where it's just as if you're losing your old house but you're stepping out of your door and you're stepping out into a much larger territory than you've inhabited before but because you don't recognize the territory what you actually see outside your door is absolutely pure darkness you cannot see every anything outside your door at all it's always seemed to me that life is this constant cyclical experience of making a home for yourself in existence a house of belonging and that just as you have everything in place there's a knock on your door and you're out and the first feeling is that there's something wrong with the world and there's something wrong with myself that somehow the world is merciless and it will never leave you alone to actually live in comfort but as you get used to this cyclical experience of living and dying you come to realize as you look back over your life that life is not merciless it's actually infinitely merciful and it is constantly coming to our door to invite us out into much larger homes than we could imagine we belong to in the first place but almost always the first experiences

Channel: Jerry Wennstrom

Views: 20,290

Rating: 4.9658117 out of 5

Keywords: Into, the, Wild, poetry, artist, death, Buddhism, metamorphosis, alchemy, inspiration, David, Whyte, Jungian, Marion, Woodman, insight, writers, block, courage, Irish, Poet, John, O'Donohue, nonduality, Phil, Lucas, Whidbey Island Artist, TEDx

Id: A8C_UEwVmIw

Length: 8min 53sec (533 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 09 2008