Happy Accidents

We walked down to see a demonstration of Japanese calligraphy yesterday afternoon at the A/NT Gallery in the Seattle Center. We arrived early and had some time at our disposal to wander around and enjoy the artwork. My first feeling was one of total illiteracy.

I get greedy. I want to take in all the beauty, everything it has to offer. But here I was stymied. I was confronting a language I didn’t know and a discipline of which I knew very little, but felt profoundly fascinated by it. There was a time in my life when I developed a mania for writing haiku. I got pretty good at it, but felt strongly that if I wanted to continue in this artform I would need to learn Japanese. Haiku never looks completely right in the English alphabet. Our alphabet doesn’t have the same lively aspect as Japanese characters. It looks stark, pragmatic as a car battery. Japanese kanji resemble leaves and birds and the gaiety of cherry blossom. It does service in the realm of linguistic expression as well as in the realm of beauty.

It’s deeply frustrating to look at a piece of Japanese calligraphy and not be able to read what it says. Which is stupid. Because I’m missing a wonderful opportunity. Since I have no knowledge of Japanese, I have the opportunity to appreciate the discipline strictly as a visual art, not as an exhibition of signs that refer to something else. You’d think nothing could be easier. But it’s not. I find it strangely difficult to focus on these signs simply as gracefully rendered forms, lines and squiggles and splatters and dots, invigorated entities of black ink on white paper. I know they’re signs. I know they mean something. I know that hidden in their magic is a mountain, a frog, a water lily, or a dragon whose ancient eyes can see into you. The frustration is like staring at a safe that you know is filled with priceless jewels, but you don’t know the combination. It’s hard to stand there and admire the craftsmanship and quality of the safe. I want what’s inside. Or should I say on the other side, where the snow falls, the dragons fly, & stars twinkle in the void.

Fortunately, R brought her smartphone, which allowed her to access a QR code, which provided a translation. Here, for example, is a poem from one of the pieces:

Spent the night at a temple in the haze.
The moon illuminated the ship at night, the monk came back.
Clouds rising at dawn, it was like a dragon had appeared.

There was a shadow of the trees in the middle of the river.
I heard the sound of the temple bell.

 

The demonstration began with a quiz. A spritely, charismatic woman dressed all in black and speaking only Japanese began drawing rudimentary kanji on white sheets of paper. She held the first one up and asked – with the help of a translator - if anyone in the crowd might want to guess what it was. R thought it might be an island. The woman seemed amused. But it wasn't an island. It was an eye. Another simple drawing consisted of a line with a small indeterminate shape above suspended in space. I thought it might be a horizon line with an asteroid floating above. Asteroid seemed a bit farfetched so I remained mute. The correct answer was 'above.' It wasn't a depiction of things, asteroid or flying saucer. It was a depiction of spatial relation, a preposition. The woman turned the paper upside down. We all said "now it's below."

During this activity, a 12- or 13-year-old girl sitting to the woman’s immediate right steadily ground an ink-stick on a small slab or ink stone which also contained a shallow pool of water. The woman thanked the young girl, and emphasized the importance of using alertness and vigor to rub the ink stick on the ink stone as the ink liquefies. A vigorous immersion in the process will enhance the quality of the ink while the action of grinding helps settle the mind and prepare a suitable degree of focus for the creative moment. She then demonstrated a wrong way to do it, which she expressed by lowering her head and leaning slackly on the table while slowly and indifferently moving the ink stick in languorous circles. It was quite comical.

The quiz segued into the main demonstration. A man in his sixties, completely bald and wearing a dark robe and smiling jubilantly entered the space and began making some elementary shapes. He invited a young man standing nearby to try some of the shapes – tiny circles around a small oval – which the young man obliged, somewhat timidly, to do. The old man gleefully smiled, dipped his brush, and began another composition, making vigorous, graceful movements with the brush, modulating its pressure and angle while ink trailed behind in differing shades of black, some thick and assertive and others diaphanous and wispy, like veils of calligraphic inflection.

The old man reached to his side and pulled out a book full of kanji. He remarked on the blocklike form of the characters. They were rigid, and lacked expression. None of the characters showed anger, or hunger, or delight, or volatility. Calligraphy offered a way to awaken their expressive nature.

With the help of some assistants, the old man spread a large sheet of white paper on the floor and asked everyone to step in closer. I moved in closer and got down on my knees so I wouldn't be blocking anyone's view. It felt good to get a little rest from standing. The man got out his set of brushes and with a few brisk, spontaneous strokes and dabs created a branch constellated with blossom. The branch looked like a real branch. It had the same squiggly irregularities and quirky certainty of a branch reaching into space for dollops of sunshine. It was more than a work of representation, it was the spirit of creativity itself. This was a discipline that seemed to call for spontaneity and a shrewd appreciation of imperfection, a welcoming spirit toward happy accidents. He accompanied his drawing with a poem that celebrated the beauty of the mountains surrounding the city, the pleasures of travel tinctured with a yearning for home, which he did his best to describe, given the awkwardness of two languages, and using a tongue instead of a brush.