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Bil Brown's avatar

When I was getting my MFA in poetics Allen Ginsberg, who was my teacher and founder of my program, had these maxims he would use to get us to think about the poetic mind or capture. One of them was, "Notice what you notice." That stuck with me. I was doing a street phtoography workshop that had only one student in DTLA and when I couldn;t get this kid to take a good photo for the life of me, it hit me to say to him, "notice what you notice." Something came back. The cross-disciplanary art practice is that ALL art, wheither it references a reality or creates one, starts with what we NOTICE. It's not just a way of seeing, its knowing how you see. Then learning the best way to execute that very vision. In TM (Trancendental Meditation) as related by David Lynch, he talkes about the "Universal Field Theory" the basis of modern physics is that we have this idea that the first thing we knew about what everything is based on was carbon, then atomic theory, then that broke down to subatomic, then finally this universal feild that permiates and is the glue that connects everything. As creatives we dive into it now and again, and we have like bad eyes or ears or senses sometiems so we arent always going to see or hear or taste the same thing that the person next to us sees or hears or tastes right. THere is this universiality, but its what we filter it through that is the main thing. It is what we "notice" and the intelligence behind that is that we can slow down and "notice what we notice." Thanks for this Cina!

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Michael Cina's avatar

Thanks Bil. Great, that is the soundbite for sure and will now stick with me. Oddly enough, I thought about Lynch a few times on this one but didn't know why. I think the universal field is deep noticing and I am trying to keep that door open as much as I can. I think stress (etc) is on the other side of that door and closes it. So managing how you see is also interesting. PS. Wild you had Ginsberg as a teacher. What a wild opportunity!

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Corey Holms's avatar

Interesting, you’re the second person recently to tell me about gut instinct in relation to art. Yours being “if you have to ask if something is wrong, it is” and theirs was “if I do a double take, I do a triple take.” But I know what you mean, and I’ll need to think about it more. I guess it’s an about trust and how much of it you have in yourself. I find myself doing Automatic Writing style design a lot lately — where I will start off with no plans in the slightest and see where the moment takes me.

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Michael Cina's avatar

Thanks Corey. Yeah, automatic writing is a lot of fun and also noticing. Wish I had more time for it.

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Davin Trail-Risk's avatar

I find my head often gets in the way of my heart but rarely the other way around. Intuition of course comes from the head but from those deeper older parts that know before knowing in any concrete sense. In my work there’s this first hurdle of wanting to trust my gut but to also in a way ignore my conscious self entirely for a while until there might be a kind of “waking” moment where clarity, understanding, or direction become more evident to me.

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Michael Cina's avatar

Appreciate your thoughtful comments and will think on this a bit. I hear you on the waking aspect and agree.

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Gregg Ward's avatar

Love this! I resonate with it all it. Well done!

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Michael Cina's avatar

Thanks Gregg!

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