THE CHANGING MIND

by Paul

Henrickso,Ph.D. tm. © 2009

When one’s concept of the structure of the world

gets challenged it opens up a Pandora’s box of
potential….and, maybe, beneficial….change.
The choice, of course, is up to us and all we have initially to be is
flexible.

Every once in awhile, as the saying goes, one must take stock, and
usually, “taking stock” means listing inventory. This is something
one must do for one’s self largely, I imagine, because we are the
only ones who can assess the value of anything…anything, that is,
in our lives.

While I have serious reservations about those who have touted the
values, inevitability, and the necessity for “a new world order” and
they generally have in mind a world, if I read them correctly, which they
see as having more sameness, in “the others” at least if not in themselves.
than difference, and this is where I believe them to be demonstrably
wrong, and regrettably this sort of “repression of the spirit” leads
to violence, or, in some very interesting cases in new forms of
creative expression as in the African-American population which
had, during the days of slavery, been forbidden to talk among
themselves while they worked, so they sang and made-up songs
instead .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXlCB31i_5U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXyDrf9HO0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YWrxz5XhQM

While the human spirit is willing to play role games from time to
time, they do find it necessary to return to a home base which acts,
understandably enough as a reference point in both space and time.
 In respect to “the world out there” I do see myself in

this bear cub. It is sometimes helpful to speak

from the subjective personal experiences one has and it is in that
connection that this drawing of one Joe Poirier which I did when he
was a student of mine at Tantasqua Regional School in Sturbridge,
Massachusetts was, as it turned out, one of the more successful
devices (although when it was happening I had not thought of it as
a device at all) to secure Joe’s confidence in a teacher as a type and
an adult outside of his family circle.

The reason Joe became important had to do with what he had

taught me about the limitations on mental operations placed on the
consciousness of people AND the resilient determination of the
individual to realize himself (as he feels himself to be at any point in time)
despite socially contrived consensual agreements as to who and
what he is.

Joseph was 15 years old and in the ninth grade and had already
been held back at least one year but, as I recall, it had been two
years (perhaps the discrepancy depended on when his birthday was.) His
official I.Q. was listed at 90. As one can see from the drawing he
was somewhat taller than the usual 15 year-old, very shy, very
attentive and highly responsive which indicated he was also a good
listener and one who would have been anomalous for one with an
I.Q. of 90. His grade average was a “D” with a couple of “C”s and
“F”s thrown in.

I was troubled by the discrepancy between Joe’s official record at

the school and his performances in my class so I asked the
psychological counselor to test him again. He did test Joseph and
his I.Q. now came out at 110, at a time when I.Q. changes were not
supposed to change (1954). By the next grading period his grades
had been raised by his teachers by another one and a half grade
points.
It should be noted that Joseph Poirier was a French Canadian living
in dominantly English environment in rural Massachusetts and that
his father was the school’s janitor…almost the lowest social level
you can achieve. I maintain that this combination of environmental
factors not merely contributed to, but determined, Joseph’s self-
perception and that as a result of person’s need to be accepted into
his community Joseph had at least provisionally, accepted the
group’s mindless, but socially acceptable, assessment as to who he
was. But, I suspect, he never quite let go of the suspicion that he
was really something more than the group’s consensus of who he
was. Definitions can be deadly.

When Joseph recognized that there were other points of view and
points of view that were more in agreement with his own
subliminally repressed assessments he blossomed.

There is a part of me that resists coming to the conclusion that the

repression of an individual is justified by the individual’s finally
having overcome and to have realized himself in some creative
fashion. Such a conclusion is too similar to the conventional idea
that a true artist must suffer. Although, I will admit that there are
strong evidences which support that contention. If, indeed, it
happens to be true, it does not follow that societal repression is
justified. This presents us with a moral conundrum and a kind of
built in system of guilt and a penance…the price of being human….
moral development at a price.
Is the human being , no matter who, or where, so dissatisfied with
who he is, fearful that without enhancement of some sort his
appearance will be so insufficient that he will not be able to “make
it in this world”? Is that why some people use the visual image of
their bodies as an image of who they are and others, more
discretely, perhaps, add a bunch letters after their name such as
John Doe, BA, MBA, Lld, Ph.D. ,F.I.I.A.L?...are these, in some fashion,
not like a birth certificate, a needless verification that the person
standing before us is a breathing being and had been born? My
point is this, why do we need a symbol as evidence of reality when
the reality stands before us?

All of the above questions are related to my major concern which is

the development of those senses which tell us, or should be able to
tell us, who a person is at the moment of meeting and one , by
extension, should not have to depend upon a third person’s
recommendation that the subject is trustworthy and legitimate, or
that a document placed in the archives of the Smithsonian’s
Department of Oral History proves an individual to be as worthy as
it claims him to be.

I am concerned with the development of an individual’s ability to

make and to refine judgments based on data he can observe and
verify. I fully realize that this may put [politicians and other spin
experts out of business, but I do consider it a requirement for the
development of a just and sane society.

I confess that I am, otherwise, at a loss as to how to explain the

motivation for tattooing one’s body at all, anywhere, to say nothing
of the entire surface of one’s body. But then man is, if nothing else,
inventive. It is that inventiveness we associate with the expression
“being creative”.
The third photo from the left shows us a chief from the small island
of Ulithi. There were two whom I met in the early 60’s and they were
most willing to pose for their photographs having, presumably, no
apprehension, as do Turks, of a photograph taking anything from
them. It is my understanding that the tattoos which cover a great
deal of his body refer to who he is and to his genetic ancestry. Such
pride seems common to all societies it would seem and is, therefore,
not unusual. What is, of course, unusual, at least from a westerner’s
point of view, is his relative nakedness. This, understandably
enough, is also quite reasonable since the climate in Ulithi is
tropical and being naked does not present a problem. Except for the
case of Lord (Tarzan) it is extremely unusual for a westerner to go
naked even in the tropics.

It is quite other with the naked granny in the photo to the left. I
have not come across an explanation for her extraordinary behavior
and it does seem extraordinary from quite nearly any point of view.
I do not know the subject matter of the images her body carries
which makes her more of a mystery that the character in the film
“The Illustrated man”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn4zl0UnmGQ

The fourth photograph depicts a celebration of a circumcision. I am,

personally, not a little perplexed as to why this socio-medical
operation should be so important. There seems to be no clue as to
the reasons behind the timing of it, that is from the eighth day after
birth as with the Jews to thirteen or fourteen years as with other
groups. My view of the operation is very practical and I have
difficulty in attributing other meanings to it.

As children it seems not at all unusual to role-play various

occupations, a fireman, a magician, a clown, a superman or
Halloween ghost and, as children, we rarely take our personal
participation in these roles as seriously as we do after we become
adult and professionalize them. Then, a fireman outs out real fires,
and surgeons cut into real bodies, and priest, of whatever kind, hold
the keys to salvation, or. In sum. Since Sigmund Freud made his
appearance some of us have also felt the need to have assistance
in finding out who we “really” are, why we do what we do and what
we must do to be “normal”.
While Freud assigned causes of behavior to early childhood
experiences, Carl Jung never seemed to drop the idea of a supreme
being. When, at 84 years of age he was asked whether he
“believed” in God his answer was “No. I know”. He was, I believe,
using senses for which we may yet not have a name
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLJsiQ4h3fY

Costumes, or specific types of body covering, or sometimes the lack

of it, designate social roles and while those who wear these items
may not in their own private behaviors live up to the various ideals
these costumes are designed to suggest, they do serve as “official
reminders of authority”…spiritual authority. That is actually quite
an awesome responsibility. Many individuals are unable to live up to
it and eventually succumb to reading the script without acting the
part. In so doing, somehow admitting that the personal
responsibility to seek divine guidance is so tenuous an endeavor,
one so filled with uncertainties that those fearful of the unknown
need, or think they need, a rather magical figure to follow ---and
upon whom they, in error, think they can lay the blame. I prefer to
place the authority back upon the individual most concerned.

I tend to consider there to be a parallel in the description here of

devout religious behaviors and those artists, of which there are so
many, who anticipatingly and hopefully believe their status as
creative genius will be achieved at least in the mind of an
insensitive , ignorant, and lazy public if, in some way, they flatter
convention. It is convention which is the blinder for the perception
others might otherwise have.

I do believe that any human being who makes a mark on a piece of

paper is giving true expression of who he is at that moment. If
person “A” works like person “C” then therein lies the value of
person “A”. He is, therefore, a copier, in one or several ways, of
Person ”C”. If, as observers we recognize this then the matter of
person “A”s level of creative genius is established. If person “B”
comes up with work that mystifies us and makes it difficult for us to
understand as observers, we are responsible, like other “seekers
after truth” to work at understanding, to test, and test again, our
perceptions and to try to place those perceptions into an
appropriate vocabulary so that they may be communicated.

In this process what we, as critics, should be looking for are

evidences (in the case of artists) of behavior with the material in
hand which are non-standard, irregular and unconventional. Then,
having identified them we attempt to determine why they are the
way they are and how these behaviors function to solve whatever
the original problem may have been.

This process eliminates much of the considerations some make as to

whether a work of art should be beautiful or not. Beauty, if it exists
in this scenario, does so only in the clarity of the solution.

My personal preference would be a more private, introspective and

reflective search for the self which is what is sometimes
represented by the classic hermetic monk’s cell.
 …something somewhat removed
from the noise of social and familial conviviality. Or, at times, whole
communities felt it necessary to separate themselves for a variety
of reasons from other groups. They solved these perceived
problems in various ways…ways, which were often very unusual.

When viewed from this perspective it might be easier to accept the

notion that all religions develop a brand of theatrical inducement to
bedazzle, befuddle and bemuddle and encourage belief in the extra-
ordinary, all of which services the purpose of control. Now, at this
point, I should again emphasize that my view is that it is the
individual’s responsibility to search for himself where he needs to
look. All other entertainments are distractions. Additionally, one of
the ways an individual graphic artist performs this search is in
discovering what his relationship is with the medium he uses and
the symbols he develops. By way of example, let us ask this
question what was the search Albert Pinkham Ryder was involved in
that allowed him to work on a single painting for several years and
to pile pigment upon pigment so that, even after 100 years, the

paint is not yet thoroughly dry?

And, to ask another difficult question, what was it that Cezanne

really meant when he remarked that he wished to do Poussin over

again according to nature? Cezanne

Poussin.

It is my contention that, while, at some point, Cezanne had truly

conceptualized the solution to whatever problem he thought he had
was to do exactly that and as one, probably logical, step in that
direction he created his “Bathers” to the left after Poussin’s Panic
celebration. However, as some of us already know, the creative
process does not function in an orderly step-by-step recipe, or
linear, fashion. It takes divergent paths and while Cezanne may have
started out in one direction, with a rather vague concept only
beginning to stir in his consciousness he responded, whim-like, to
unexpected, unplanned ideas, or even accidents so that he ended
up having discovered something very different, very different

indeed, from the look of Poussin. Cezanne’s “Mont

St. Victoire”. It is this work, I believe, which comes close to realizing
another of Cezanne’s observations, that of reality being made up of
spheres, cones and cubes. It will take a little looking to see this
work in that way, however.

Someone has observed the following: Of the springing line, the guilt-free
sensuosity and the ecstatic lyricism of earlier Poussin, there is never a trace in Cezanne.
I would agree that that description of a springing line , guilt-free sensuosity(sic?) and ecstatic

lyricism cannot firmly be attached to anything Cezanne had done, nor can it be attached to Poussin,

early work or late. Poussin’s figures while anatomically and conventional as the character’s roles

were conventionally scripted do not exist within their painted environments even as, ironically

enough they do in the work of Rubens.

If there is anything outstandingly similar in the work of these two artists it is the way they treated the

human body. I would grant that Poussin was probably better trained to observe the human body than

was Cezanne and technically better equipped to represent it anatomically, but neither of them, it

seems to me, were ever successful in achieving “a springing line, guilt-free sensuosity(sic?) and

ecstatic lyricism”. Cezanne did make a few very clumsy efforts to represent passion and he had,

actually, gone a few steps further in that direction that did Poussin with, the exception of the

celebration with Pan, illustrated above. This painting might tell us that had Poussin not been

governed by pre-conceptions of an aesthetic ideal so rooted in literary prototypes and more open to

the material nature of the pigment, the compositional potential of graphic vocabulary and his own

neural responses he might truly have been a creative genius. As it is, he sacrificed all that to

contemporary concepts of good manners and offered his time very little indeed and us only an

attitude of what should be avoided.

The theory that these remarks touch upon changes the role of what,
even in the recent past, has been identified as technical control
over one’s medium. Well, this statement is obviously insufficient to
carry the weight required of it. There is more to the matter of
technical expertness than the exhibition of the ability to follow in a
sequentially prescribed way to achieve a prescribe end result. The
whole idea of creative effort, in the arts or in any other activity is
the idea of new arrangements. This too, needs elaboration for it is
not newness for the sake of newness such as is most often found
among those still struggling for self-identification. Creativeness is, I
would suggest, most readily identified as such when all the
elements in a person’s efforts come together into a new
(zeitgeistian) conceptual package.

It is almost a given that this cannot take place within a short of

period of time or within a limited experience. On the other hand we
have the outstanding examples of Masaccio who died at 27,
Caravaggio (37), and Van Gogh (37),
Only five major research projects in the area of psychedelic drugs and creative
performance have been reported and most of these have been described by the
experimenters as "pilot studies" rather than full-scale experiments with conclusive
results. L.M. Berlin et al., (1955) investigated the effects of mescaline and LSD upon
four graphic artists of national prominence. There was an impairment of finger-
tapping efficiency and muscular steadiness among the four artists, but all were able
to complete paintings. A panel of art critics judged the paintings as having "greater
aesthetic value" than the artists' usual work, noting that the lines were bolder and
that the use of color was more vivid. However, the technical execution was
somewhat impaired. Actually, this report may have some substantial
value to it in that it seems to point out that in what for an artist may
be a normal state of mind when thinking creatively he has tapped
some chemical, similar to that in psychedelic drugs, that allows him
the freedom to let loose the traditional restrictions associated with
“technical control”. It is the sort of study that might be used as
parallel to the understanding of social behavior, in which connection
the following anecdote and observation may be helpful. Although, I
might add, that I do have serious reservations about the use of the
term “genius”, not in its application to Schubert, but anybody….I
find it more destructive than helpful.

Brief Life Span of a Genius

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was born when Mozart
had been dead six years, and Beethoven was approaching
the first crisis of his career. Popular legend used to
interpret the "bohemian" behavior of the Schubert circle
as the irresponsible gaiety of the artist's life. In
fact, it grew from a deepening despair (sic?). Schubert and
his friends were acutely conscious of the political oppression
in Austria. Corruption had gone too far. One
might almost say that Schubert is a composer of Friendship.
All his greatest music he wrote for himself and
his friends; yet by writing this music he was no longer
able to keep himself alive. As a freelance musician had
to produce entertainment music for a degenerate aristocracy
and a sentimental bourgeoisie whose taste he
could no longer share. While he enjoyed writing his
innumerable waltzes, he would have preferred to spend
some of the time composing symphonies and sonatas.
His own quintessential music seems to be created simultaneously
out of conflict with the world and out of
utopian yearning. Hence his music's combination of
strength and melancholy. He seeks his music to resolve
his frustration in love, to create a world in which ideals
are not corrupted. Communing with solitude, he discovers
a world of imagination which can sooth and
satisfy as real life cannot.
Harman A, Milner A, Mellers W:
Man and His Music-The Story of
Musical Experience in the West.
New York, Oxford University Press, 1962
CHEST, VOL. 62, NO. 1, JULY, 1972
Copyright 1972,

For yet another life-enhancing experience I refer you to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPET4RAe6yQ

These are the sorts of observations that lead me to suspect that the
purpose and the practice of creative artistry is to bring about a
more satisfactory and balanced gestalt…at least for the creator if
not for a greater society., but for the greater society as well if it is
true that artists lead and foretell or is it that they only react and,

like Goya, express terror?.