Mastery (49 page)

She covered the walls with bands of thousands of highly reflective acrylic strips, saturated in swirls of color from shades of blue to white. The overall effect from standing in the atrium is that of being immersed in an enormous pool of blue water that shimmers from the sunlight above. As people ascend the stairs, they can see in the acrylic strips their own reflections, which are oddly distorted, similar to the effect of seeing things through water. Viewing the strips from up close, it is clear that it is all an illusion created by the most minimal amount of material, and yet the feel of water, the sense of being immersed, remains palpable and strange. The spectators thus become actual parts of the artwork itself, with their own reflections helping to create the illusion. The experience of moving through this dreamlike space makes us conscious once more of the tensions between art and nature, illusion and reality, coldness and warmth, wet and dry, and provokes a powerful intellectual and emotional response.

Our culture depends in many ways on the creation of standards and conventions that we all must adhere to. These conventions are often expressed in terms of opposites—good and evil, beautiful and ugly, painful and pleasurable, rational and irrational, intellectual and sensual. Believing in these opposites gives our world a sense of cohesion and comfort. To imagine that something can be intellectual
and
sensual, pleasurable
and
painful, real
and
unreal, good
and
bad, masculine
and
feminine is too chaotic and disturbing for us. Life, however, is more fluid and complex; our desires and experiences do not fit neatly into these tidy categories.

As the work of Teresita Fernández demonstrates, the real and the unreal are concepts that exist for us as ideas and constructions, and thus can be played with, altered, commanded, and transformed at will. Those who think in dualities—believing that there is such a thing as “real” and such a thing as “unreal,” and that they are distinct entities that can never become blended into a third, alchemical element—are creatively limited, and their work can quickly become dead and predictable. To maintain a dualistic approach to life requires that we repress many observable truths, but in our unconscious and in our dreams we often let go of the need to create categories for everything, and are able to mix seemingly disparate and contradictory ideas and feelings together with ease.

Your task as a creative thinker is to actively explore the unconscious and contradictory parts of your personality, and to examine similar contradictions and tensions in the world at large. Expressing these tensions within your work in any medium will create a powerful effect on others, making them sense unconscious truths or feelings that have been obscured or repressed. You look at society at large and the various contradictions that are rampant—for instance, the way in which a culture that espouses the ideal of free expression is charged with an oppressive code of political correctness that tamps free expression down. In science, you look for ideas that go against the existing paradigm, or that seem inexplicable because they are so contradictory. All of these contradictions contain a rich mine of information about a reality that is deeper and more complex than the one immediately perceived. By delving into the chaotic and fluid zone below the level of consciousness where opposites meet, you will be surprised at the exciting and fertile ideas that will come bubbling up to the surface.

REVERSAL

In Western culture, a particular myth has evolved that drugs or madness can somehow lead to creative bursts of the highest order. How else to explain the work that John Coltrane did while hooked on heroin, or the great works of the playwright August Strindberg, who seemed clinically insane? Their work is so spontaneous and free, so far beyond the powers of the rational, conscious mind.

This is a cliché, however, that is easily debunked. Coltrane himself admitted that he did his worst work during the few years he was addicted to heroin. It was destroying him and his creative powers. He kicked the habit in 1957 and never looked back. Biographers who later examined the letters and journals of Strindberg discovered a man who was quite histrionic in
public, but who in private life was extremely disciplined. The effect of madness created in his plays is very consciously crafted.

Understand: to create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability. It requires mastering the forms of your field. Drugs and madness only destroy such powers. Do not fall for the romantic myths and clichés that abound in culture about creativity—offering us the excuse or panacea that such powers can come cheaply. When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured. Creative energy is the fruit of such efforts and nothing else.

Our vanity, our passions, our spirit of imitation, our abstract intelligence, our habits have long been at work, and it is the task of art to undo this work of theirs, making us travel back in the direction from which we have come to the depths where what has really existed lies unknown within us.

—M
ARCEL
P
ROUST

VI

FUSE THE INTUITIVE
WITH THE RATIONAL:
MASTERY

All of us have access to a higher form of intelligence, one that can allow us to see more of the world, to anticipate trends, to respond with speed and accuracy to any circumstance. This intelligence is cultivated by deeply immersing ourselves in a field of study and staying true to our inclinations, no matter how unconventional our approach might seem to others. Through such intense immersion over many years we come to internalize and gain an intuitive feel for the complicated components of our field. When we fuse this intuitive feel with rational processes, we expand our minds to the outer limits of our potential and are able to see into the secret core of life itself. We then come to have powers that approximate the instinctive force and speed of animals, but with the added reach that our human consciousness brings us. This power is what our brains were designed to attain, and we will be naturally led to this type of intelligence if we follow our inclinations to their ultimate ends.

THE THIRD TRANSFORMATION

For the writer Marcel Proust (1871–1922), his fate seemed set at birth. He was born incredibly small and frail; for two weeks he hovered near death, but finally pulled through. As a child, he had frequent bouts of illness that kept him at home for months at a time. When he was nine years old, he suffered his first asthma attack and nearly died. His mother, Jeanne, continuously worried about his health, doted on Marcel and accompanied him on his regular trips to the countryside to convalesce.

And it was on such trips that the pattern of his life became set. Often alone, he developed a passion for reading books. He loved to read about history, and he devoured all forms of literature. His main physical outlet was taking long walks in the country, and here certain sights seemed to captivate him. He would stop and stare for hours at apple blossoms or hawthorn flowers, or at any kind of slightly exotic plant; he found the spectacle of marching ants or spiders working on their webs particularly compelling. He would soon add books on botany and entomology to his reading list. His closest companion in these early years was his mother, and his attachment to her soon went beyond all bounds. They looked alike and shared similar interests in the arts. He could not stand to be away from her for more than a day, and in the few hours in which they were separated he would write her endless letters.

In 1886 he read a book that would forever change the course of his life. It was an historical account of the Norman conquest of England written by Augustin Thierry. The narration of events was so vivid that Marcel felt himself transported back in time. The writer alluded to certain timeless laws of human nature that were revealed in this story, and the possibility of
uncovering such laws made Marcel’s head spin with excitement. Entomologists could discover the hidden principles that governed the behavior of insects. Could a writer do the same with humans and their complicated nature? Captivated by Thierry’s ability to make history come to life, it came to Marcel in a flash that this would be his Life’s Task—to become a writer and illuminate the laws of human nature. Haunted by the sense that he would not live long, he would have to hurry this process and do all that he could to develop his writing powers.

At school in Paris, where he lived, Marcel impressed his classmates with his strangeness. He had read so much that his head was teeming with ideas; he would talk about history, ancient Roman literature, and the social life of bees all in the same conversation. He would mix the past and the present, talking about a Roman writer as if he were alive, or describing a friend of theirs as if he were a character from history. His large eyes, which a friend later compared to that of a fly, would seem to bore right into the person he was talking to. In his letters to friends, he could dissect their emotions and problems with such exactitude that it was unnerving, but then he would direct his attention to himself as well, mercilessly exposing his own weaknesses. Despite his propensity for being alone, he was incredibly sociable and a real charmer. He knew how to flatter and ingratiate himself. No one could quite figure him out or gain any sense of what the future might hold for such an oddball.

In 1888 Marcel met a thirty-seven-year-old courtesan named Laure Hayman, who was the mistress of his uncle, among many others, and for him it was instant infatuation. She was like a character out of a novel. Her clothes, her coquettish manner, her power over men fascinated him. Charming her with his witty conversation and polite manners, they quickly became close friends. In France there had long been the tradition of salons—gatherings where people of like mind discussed literary and philosophical ideas. In most cases women ran these various salons, and depending on the social status of the hostess, they could attract important artists, thinkers, and political figures. Laure had her own infamous salon, frequented by artists, bohemians, actors, and actresses. Soon Marcel became a regular.

He found the social life in these upper echelons of French society endlessly fascinating. It was a world full of subtle signs—an invitation to a ball, or the particular seating position at a dinner table would indicate the status of an individual, whether they were on the rise or the decline. Clothes and gestures and certain phrases of conversation would lead to endless critiques and judgments about people. He wanted to explore this realm and learn all of its intricacies. The attention he used to direct toward history and literature he now directed toward the world of high society. He inveigled his way into other salons, and was soon mingling with upper aristocracy.

Although he was determined to become a writer, Marcel had never been able to figure out what he wanted to write about, and this had troubled him to no end. Now, however, he had his answer: this social world would be the ant colony that he would analyze as ruthlessly as an entomologist. For this purpose he began to collect characters for novels. One such character was the Count Robert de Montesquiou, a poet, aesthete, and notorious decadent who had a pronounced weakness for handsome young men. Another was Charles Haas, the epitome of high-society chicness and an expert art collector who couldn’t help falling in love with lower-class women. He studied these characters, listened intently to their way of talking, followed their mannerisms, and in his notebooks he would try to bring them to life in small literary sketches. In his writing, Marcel was a master mimic.

Everything he wrote about had to be something real, something he had witnessed or experienced firsthand; otherwise, his writing came out lifeless. His own fear of intimate personal relationships, however, presented him with a problem. Attracted to both men and women, he tended to keep his distance when it came to any type of close physical and emotional relationship. This made it hard for him to write about romance and love from the inside. So he initiated a practice that served him well. If he were attracted to a particular woman, he would befriend her fiancé or boyfriend and, gaining his trust, would probe him for the most intimate details about their relationship. Since he was such an acute psychologist he could give excellent advice. Later, in his own mind, he would completely reconstruct the affair, feeling as deeply as possible the ups and downs, the bouts of jealousy, as if it were all happening to him. He would do this with either gender.

Marcel’s father, a prominent doctor, began to despair for his son. Marcel would attend parties all night, return late in the morning, and sleep through the day. To fit in with high society, he was spending vast amounts of money. He seemed to have no discipline and no real career aspirations. With his health problems and his mother always spoiling him, his father feared Marcel would be a failure and a continuous burden. He tried to push him into a career. Marcel placated him as best he could—one day he told his father he would study law; the next day he talked of getting a job as a librarian. But in truth, he was banking everything on the publication of his first book,
Pleasures and Days
. It would be a collection of stories and sketches of the society he had infiltrated. Like Thierry with the Norman Conquest, he would make this world come to life. With the success of this book, he would win over his father and all the other doubters. To ensure its success and make it into more than a book,
Pleasures and Days
would feature the beautiful drawings of a high-society lady he had befriended, and it would be printed on the finest paper.