Under the Compass– Now at Principle Gallery
“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian
I have a new painting on the easel waiting for me this morning. I thought it was complete when I finished up yesterday but just as I was leaving, I saw that it needed a small but critical adjustment. I didn’t have the time then to complete it, so it’s been nagging at me all night. Therefore, I will be short this morning even though the subject deserves much more time and effort than I can give it at the moment.
Today is a triad of word, image, and song centering around the seeker. By that I mean the seeker of inner discovery, of the self. I am including a passage from a Hermann Hesse book, Demian, that was very influential in my life. It came to me at a time when I was struggling mightily and it helped me rethink what my life was and could be. It allowed me to recognize that I was exhausted from the lies I told not only to others but mainly to myself.
Without coming across this book, I doubt I would be painting or writing at this moment. God only knows what, if anything, I might be doing.
I am accompanying the passage with a painting that is very much about seeking, Under the Compass. For me, I see it as being about the inner search though it might also apply to the seeker who still looks for outer validation of their existence. I a also sharing a performance from The Who of their song The Seeker. It first came out in 1970 and this is how Pete Townshend described it in a Rolling Stone interview at the time:
Quite loosely, “The Seeker” was just a thing about what I call Divine Desperation, or just Desperation. And what it does to people. It just kind of covers a whole area where the guy’s being fantastically tough and ruthlessly nasty and he’s being incredibly selfish and he’s hurting people, wrecking people’s homes, abusing his heroes, he’s accusing everyone of doing nothing for him and yet at the same time he’s making a fairly valid statement, he’s getting nowhere, he’s doing nothing and the only thing he really can’t be sure of is his death, and that at least dead, he’s going to get what he wants. He thinks!.
Divine desperation. Maybe that is the unifying bond here, the driving force behind the Seeker.
Redtree Times 