The Art of Michael Bristow
fig. 1
A closed box is a confrontation with mystery.
There is a tradition that when asked concerning the purpose of creation, G-d said, I was a hidden treasure & I wanted to be known. Thus creation is the child of desire, the desire to know & be known.
Since it is the function of humanity to know, one of our deepest longings is to know, to reveal the hidden, to bring to light, & this can only be done by putting the known behind us & plunging into darkness. As Rumi says, "This is Love: to tear through a hundred veils in every moment, at the first step to renounce one's feet."
This essential first (& last) step of the journey is mirrored in the crucifixion of Christ, when at the moment of death the curtain of the temple was torn asunder. Our conflicted hearts mirror the crucifixion as we stand at moments of decision before two roads, or caught between two worlds, pulled between memory & the now, between our limited existence & our ideals.
Behind every curtain is the face of G-d.
fig. 2
An inrushing of silence as the secret is revealed. The soul pours out of the eyes & recoalesces as the white space forms into the shape of an organ, coming forward like an open hand, offering & accepting. Listening.
I know this shape from within, from the ears of lovers & friends, listening in the darkness. The external ear is a doorway into another world more basic than sight. A bodily connection to the moment of all beginning, the command to Be! still echoing down its passageways. Its spiraling into darkness & mystery an emblem of the ritual whirling of dervishes.
The organic whorl cast in ceramic suggests a shell, the shape of flesh wrought of the matrix of bone. According to the XVIIIth century French naturalist J. B. Robinet, all organic form originally passed through a shell phase. Shells are the formal prototypes for the whole evolutionary project culminating in humanity.
"Shells, like fossils, are so many attempts on the part of nature to prepare forms of the different parts of the human body; they are bits of man and bits of woman." - Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
fig. 3
This concretization of the poetry of ear and shell stands like a XIXth century display case for a single specimen from a collection of oddities, a sample of one sense, or an aspect of the One Sense.
"Only to the senseless is this sense confided: the tongue hath no customer save the ear." - Rumi, Masnavi
The intensity of its listening sucks all sound out of the atmosphere, drawing all into the silence at the depth of sound.
fig. 4
A contemporary scene viewed through an ancient lens. A thangka of the world egg & its attendant angels. In a reflection of our internal state the mammalian confronts the divine. In a world of saltwater & rock & ice there can be only awe & bewilderment as the void turns itself inside out & produces the vulnerable seed of life, its surface mirroring the expanse of the heavens. It holds in potential the world that enfolds it, as the human heart contains the fullness of G-d. There is bewilderment at the beauty of the sign that could only come from the reality it points to, the impossible desire of the glacial sea lion for the grassland Spring.
"The end of thought is (when union takes place) bewilderment, -dazzling of the mental eye, owing to its proximity to The Truth." - Lahiji, Commentary on Gulshan-i-Raz
fig. 5
Here a drawer opens, revealing in its material frame a diagram of our temporal state. While the static dial points to our attempt to tame the procession of reality, the hula dancer's arms describe a different sort of lived time, measured in the good vibrations of undulating flesh. Underneath the Pavement: the Beach! She points to a past we may never have seen in this life, an icon of nostalgia for a richer, less divided time.
Rings radiate from the center like sound waves, the visible beat, a stone dropped in a sea of blood. The sine waves wash flotsam into our frame of reference. The doubling die marks an acceleration, an exponential progression. Time goes faster with age. Brian Wilson completed his teenage symphony to G-d at age 62, hearing the same harmonies, dreaming the same dreams.
In its ability to concentrate and contextualize our experience, this piece functions as it is labeled, as both bull's eye & pocket watch, or as the combination of these: a compass. Polynesian navigators wove star maps from grasses: here the Line of Three, here the Double Man. Theodor Adorno once wrote that one can judge one's level of contentment by the sound of the wind. Where are we & how do we orient in this sea of blood & time, nostalgic for another land dimly remembered?
Nostalgia is a relationship of desire between different states. It operates through memory, direct perception outside of space & time, feeling the limitation of one's present state, knowing the distinction. Nostalgia rises to Union or lowers to despair. As Rumi says in The Song of the Reed, "Ever since I was parted from the reed-bed, my lament hath caused man and woman to moan."
This is our song, & it is our path to hear, sing & be it.
"I want union with Him & He wants separation; Thus I leave what I want so that His wish can come true." - Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali
fig. 6
The frame is made of old action pulp novels, fragmentary, yellowed & cracking. Yesterday's capers speak haltingly like radio transmissions staticked in the open spaces between the stars. On screen the volcano throws out a lava-tinted triggerfish, destroying half the island, or so it appears from our satellite's eye view.
It may be the primal creature, the first wild experiment of many, the first manifestation of the dynamic emergence of life from somewhere unseen, somewhere behind the map. Maybe somewhere inside the box?
fig. 7
Inside all is cool & settled. The crystalline forms that outline life are set in tablets of stone. The salvaged texts that float on the pulp novel backing reflect a different sort of narrative, one of harmony & presence.
"One has only to look at pictures of ammonites to realize that, as early as the Mesozoic Age, mollusks constructed their shells according to the teachings of a transcendental geometry." - Gaston Bachelard
This is a Tantrik diagram in the medium of memorabilia. Why do we pick up shells on the beach & keep them in boxes? They function as totems, reminders of a powerful experience, retaining some of the numinous quality of their point of origin. The beach is a liminal landscape, as far as we can go without plunging back into the sea, our ancient mother.
According to Mevlevi cosmology, behind this world, the alam-i-ajsam, lies the alam-i-arvah, the world of spirits. This is not the world of angels, which lies even deeper, but that of the djinn, the Place of No-Place, the world of immaterial forms that mediates between the physical world & the world of Pure Idea. The path to this land leads inward. This box & its contents express this relationship, enclosing reminders of the symbolic forms from which life on earth springs.
vPoetry, philosophy, music, art: all are ways of orienting oneself vis a vis the supersensory world, mapping the process of continual dynamic manifestation, creating a geography of meaning. Like the love poetry of Ibn Arabi, these pieces begin to function both as snapshots & as universal maps, simultaneously expressing eternal verity & the ephemeral particular. The interior gives a sense of peace & refuge, of geologic time & comforting Presence -"and we sailed in perfect calmness o'er a very troubled sea" - while here on the surface life continuously spews forth.
fig. 8
fig. 9
Here the poignancy of our situation is laid bare. Transfixed between the worlds of Matter & Spirit, we stand at attention, ready to fulfill our function in the Great Machine, ready to play our song & die. Between the crystalline perfection of nature & the cold empyrean we blossom from a clot of blood & as quickly fade. All we can offer is our idealism & our desire.
Our being mirrors the process of manifestation. We find within ourselves the natural hierarchy of reality from the most unaware level of materiality to the resolution of existence & non-existence in the Absolute. Fulfilling our function, doing the will of G-d, requires that these levels work in harmony & that one not usurp the prerogatives of another. Letting the belly dominate the mind, or the mind dominate the will, produces an inability to act freely (to "do" in Gurdjieff's sense). When we become identified with one level or another, our inner geography begins to limit our viewpoint. Stuck in one valley, we doubt the reality of the next one just over the hill. Our deepest self, the prototype of our being, spans all possibilities of existence.
"The Universal Prototype stands in the same relation to G-d as the pupil which is the instrument of vision to the eye. Through the Universal Prototype, G-d becomes conscious of Self in all the Divine aspects. The Universal Prototype is the eye of the world, whereby the Absolute sees Its own works." - Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, Shajarat-al-kawn
The pupil, like the holes of a flute, is useful not in itself but for what flows through it. As in Rumi's song of the reed-flute: the more access we have to the full range of human possibility, the deeper & richer is our song. When we orient to listening, to appreciating the beauty of the unfoldment, we are moving toward becoming the eyes & ears of G-d. We begin to recognize the feeling of embodying the Logos. Developing a clear sense of natural hierarchy, like hearing the overtone series in music, allows us to hear what is fundamental. Hearing clearly the developing harmonies of life allows us, as instruments, to be played clearly. Orienting to beauty allows us to be played beautifully. The ideal, the Beloved who plays us is the fundamental tone of our existence. By listening & following the reality of what we are, we realize the unity of music, player & instrument.
fig. 10
A portrait of the ideal, framed by snatches of the essential metanarrative of our civilization ("Romeo y Julieta", "WESTERN SUPERNOVEL"). She stands in nature, bedecked with flowers, snakelike ornaments in her wild floating hair. Lovingly modeled in engraved lines, her beauty & humanity call to us from a lost paradise, a flowery realm we somehow always manage to reach twenty years too late.
Gurdjieff once said that for most men a woman is no more than a handkerchief. This is true not just on a gross physical level, but also on the psychic level, though here we should perhaps stretch the handkerchief out & call it a projection screen. As in the Western world's often tragic romance with Tropical Paradise, the Real & the Ideal seem locked in a spiral of mutual betrayal, reflecting the struggle in our hearts. They can't all be California girls. But wouldn't it be nice, after all, to live together in the kind of world where we belong?
It's difficult not to be blinded by the brightness of the ideal. An ideal orients us & gives direction to our desire. At the same time, it marks the limit we must continually go beyond in order to expand our capacity for knowledge. The satisfaction of our hunger is death. We walk between satisfaction & despair, stalking the Mystery.
In order to avoid self-satisfaction, those of the Malamiyyah or Path of Blame would avoid any judgment of others & draw all blame to themselves. This would clear their field of vision of all that was blameworthy & leave only the image of the Beloved.
J. G. Bennett has suggested that Judas was the most devoted disciple, taking on the burden of demonic possession, madness & eternal vilification. There are traditions that laud the Pharaoh of Exodus & Satan as paragons of service & devotion, taking on the necessary jobs that others shunned. Concern with the praise or blame of others forms no part of the path of love, which is strewn with broken idols.
fig. 11
In a space of peace & contentment, the root manifestation of duality is revealed, as unassailable as stone. The conflict is resolved by being accepted. What cannot be solved in terms of itself dissolves without disappearing at a deeper level of presence.
When we openly submit to the arising reality of the moment, we realize our complete dependence. We rest in emptiness, like the Milky Way flowing effortlessly in deep space.
It has been said that love is the relationship between the lover & the absence of the beloved. The presence or absence of the beloved is the naked expression of the will of G-d. As we walk in this world, we travel simultaneously in another world, a pre-existing world of images where "space is a function of desire, because it is only the external aspect of an internal state."
Having submitted to this journey, we navigate by compass & star, by sign & image. The instrument maker & the traveler are intimately connected in their quest. The maker & the viewer, who by acting as a witness testifies to & embodies the inner meaning of the act of creation, together fulfill man's duty to G-d.