Sunday, May 2, 2010

I SPEAK HEART


Hallelujah invites you to speak the language that expresses your longings, your dreams, your most cherished thoughts and hottest concerns. What would that language look like? Would you speak in images of angels, musical notes, ocean waves, or erupting volcanoes? Would your HEART burst forth in subtle sounds like chirping birds nesting at night or exuberant ones similar to singing in the New Year with Auld Lang Syne?

 

SPEAKING YOUR HEART might start emerging as a toe tap or clapping of hands. Twirling yourself around and around  could become a spoken heart dance. You may start mixing up batter for a chocolate cake or smoothing out the clean scented laundry from the dryer.

 

Perhaps SPEAKING HEART is more a matter of communicating the energy of your HEART in everything you do. Do you SEE yourself expressing ALL of you in each action and thought?

 

Speaking Heart for Hallelujah is listening to the rhythms of her pulse, experiencing the neuron sparks popping and crackling in her brain, inhaling the scent of spring rain on the city’s pavement, listening for something inside the crow’s distress call, and searching for what remains after the new feline runs away.

 

For me right now, IMAGES are emerging as I repeat the statements I heard the indigenous artists in Northwest Australia saying as they painted in ochres, reds, blacks, and yellows:  “My Mother’s Country.”  “My Father’s Country.” I whisper these statements to myself wondering how the territories of self emerge in the images I put down on paper. I ask you my fellow sojourning artists--What comes to our art (and heart) through our upbringing and the psychological chemistries and presence of our parents? MY MOTHER’S COUNTRY…MY FATHER’S COUNTRY….

 

I think of the vastness of the Australian continent and how the Aboriginals’ spirituality and sense of who they are come from their land.  A painting of their parents’ land HOLDS the idea of mountain, water hole, kangaroo track while also profoundly expressing their past, present, and future.

 

When do parental countries become the COUNTRY of the child? I am drawing to envision to CREATE my country. I wonder if it is possible to become more than the territory of your upbringing. I SPEAK HEART when I AM SPEAKING MY COUNTRY.

 

Hallelujah wants to know the language of your heart. What does it sound like? What does it look like? I invite you to sip your coffee with Hallelujah and tell her what you see FELLOW PILGRIM. Blessings to YOU ALL.

2 comments:

  1. Guillaume le coqMay 5, 2010 at 6:16 PM

    Much of the energy of art relies upon the juxtaposition of the beauty and wonder of life and the darker sides of nature. Much of the energy possible in rendering the human figure relies up our success in describing not what the object (the figure) is so much as what the object (figure) is doing.
    I SPEAK HEART seems to represent a community of fascinating iconic characters who are bound together (fenced in? held captive?) by swirling ethers (thoughts? obligations? passions? desires?). It's true that most of what we consider to be "our life" resides in our hearts. As do the symptoms of trauma.

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  2. Dear Guillaume le coq, Hallelujah welcomes you to the territory of her heart! Thank you for SPEAKING YOUR HEART and MIND.

    Hallelujah is entertaining the idea of ENERGY as expressed in ACTION. I just taught a creative writing class and succeeded in guiding the students to imagine CHARACTERs in wonderfully construed SKETCHES (describing the object/figure?). How difficult and challenging it was to move those CHARACTERS into STORY (object/figure doing). Some writers moved into action, some did not.

    As an artist, to move from description into action is equally challenging because of the skill(?) required. Certainly, stimulating questions to entertain would be--what now? where? how?

    Yes, Guillaume le coq, Yes! Those are the questions you have given Hallelujah! Blessings!

    Our lives resides in our hearts. What do we know about our lives and the symptoms of trauma. What does that look like visually!

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