Palimpsest.

 

I've seen the word around, but never really knew what it meant. Here are some definitions:

 

A manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing.

Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

 

This part struck me as important too - from  ψάω (psao, “I scrape”) literally meaning“scraped clean and used again”.

 

I felt like I was entombed in an experiment to re-write an inner "script". A lot of people think that writing affirmations will help you change your inner dialogue. For me, Hamilton's piece was the physical experience of the enormous energy and focus it takes to re-write one's ancient history inside the closed airless cell of thought.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I carve stone a physical transfer of mental energy takes place with each chink of the chisel on the stone's surface. Suddenly, no not suddenly at all, my feelings and thoughts are tangible on another surface. They no longer belong to me; they are part of the stone now. They are transformed. And…what is inside me is different for having let them go.

 

A while ago I wrote, "The how and the why of stone carving are symbiotically related.  I enjoy the slow process of chiseling traces across the surface of the stone, the chisel following certain routes repeatedly until valleys deepen and curves emerge, creating a topographical map of an idea.  The hands' work informs the brain of its own subconscious, which then allows me to consciously define my concept and clarify the form.

 

Each stone I work with  imparts different insights because of its unique  mineral structure, hardness, color, relative translucence and fracturing tendencies.  I approach the stone with a general direction in mind rather than a specific outcome.  A collaboration ensues, and the result is an agreement between my vision and the stone's realities."

 

Making art alters your inner structure;  it does not erase the past, but rather, it is an alchemical process achieved by one physical act after another. The thing then has a new life of its own.

 

And you must release your art. It's important to the rest of us.

 

At the end of my spirit-charging Sunday, I came across this in the wonderful Brainpickings website, by Annie Dillard in her The Writing Life:

 

 

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes."

 

 

 

It's a new week. Find your history. Get your art on. Release. Make more. We are all richer for it.