retroactive attachment

At a meditation last week, there was a reading on regret. The author, Sakyong Mipham, in his book, Ruling Your World, describes regret at "retroactive attachment". He says, "Regretting our relationship with someone implies a lack of love and appreciation."   It's interesting to think so often that the relationship that I regret most is the one I have with myself and my creativity. Apparently I lack love and appreciation for who I am as a person and an artist. I think this is true. It's a struggle I believe that even the most famous, most seemingly self-confident artist has. Or at least some little piece of me hopes this is true, so I'm not missing something so elemental that I'm the only one actively getting in my own way.

I've been thinking about this idea of attachment. Buddhists say that attachment is the root of all suffering. 12 steppers talk actively about the necessity for letting go in order to find serenity. Attachment is a tough thing for artists too. Letting go of fear in order to create can be difficult. Letting the ideas just flow and not over thinking things can bog down creativity. And then there is the fact that something is made -  the artist loves it - and that something must be let go out into the world. Or it may stay at home, trapped in its pillowcase in the closet rather than being seen. In his book, The Mission of Art, Alex Grey talks about the need for the completion of the spiritual cycle for any work of art. That cycle is connecting to higher power/inspiration, making, coming to the final product, and then letting the work be seen in whatever way the artist can do so. I never thought about a work being incomplete if it isn't seen. So many folks talk about making work for the sake of making work - I'm guilty of participating in that line of speech myself. And there has to be a part of that that's true or why would we do it, right? But I never considered that I was stopping my own creative life short, hindering the creative flow that had been given to me, by not sharing.  The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says that in order to keep what we have been given, we must, in turn, give it way. So it is true with art as well now that I think about it.

The idea that regret is retroactive attachment is facinating. I get the attachment part, but I failed to consider that like some atomic bomb, this kind of attachment has a half life. But then again, maybe it isn't like a bomb at all. Maybe it really is about operating out of past occurances. This implies action - that one is actively thinking about or making decisions with respect to the past. Hard to be present when one is spending time with the past. Unless it is about acknowlging loss and how it makes one feel in that present moment. I think this idea of retroactive attachment speaks volumes about the half life that grief has - especially when the loss is significant. I believe it is ever changing because people are always changing (or so we hope), and  grief and grieving ebbs and flows in that change. We have all lost things, people, places, moments. Grief and working through grief are a part of being alive. And I don't think that's a bad thing. It just is.

Elizabeth Bishop writes about loss in her poem, One Art. It's a poem that I have carried with me since I was in graduate school the first time in my mid 20s. This poem was written on the wall of my studio while I was at the U of A. It's one of those poems that makes me smile, makes me tear up, and makes me nod in agreement to her spirit. This poem has resurfaced in my life over and over and means new things to me all the time. A wise woman who taught me both in undergrad and grad school says that things people write are meant to be re-read. You read it the first time to see what is happening. You read it a second time to start to zero in on details. You read it a third time because you are finally in a place to be able to dig into a work's many meanings.  And over time you re-read because you are different than when you read it before. I have had that sort of relationship with this poem. 

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seemed filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

The practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, names, and where it was you meant
to travel.  None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my las, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not to hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

                                             - taken from Elisabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems 1927-1979



 I'm also learning that I'm having this sort of relationship - of returning and revisualising - with the grief of losing my dad and of the work that I made and am making in response to that loss.

When I was in Georgia the week after he passed, I took mountains of photos. It started with his truck because I just needed to document and to do something. Then it became about being able to take things back to Az with me. There was an intense need for these images to be printed in a way that nothing I've ever photographed has before.  The images that follow are from that series.

It took me almost a year to feel like myself again.

And almost a year-and-a-half into his absence, I revisit.  I operate in my studio with respect to past occurances. I make things to honor and to think through loss and passing.  What has happened for me is that I have started making drawings of these photographs. These are explorations of the photographic elements. They are also explorations about what pull me emotionally about the images now that it's been over a year since I took them. Perhaps it's insight into why I composed things the way I did in the moment or what drew me to those scenes in the first place. Sometimes I feel that photography is too complicated. It shows too much. Other times I feel it doesn't show enough. The drawings wander back and forth in those ideas as well. They explore the colors that I feel most attached to, or the shapes, or the objects or a little of all of these. Mostly I think that these are drawings of both the joy of art making and the half life of grieving.

From Breathing Lessons: http://raestrozzo.com/section/367454_breathing_lessons.html