Andy Goldsworthy is an artist of the most extreme nature. He is also a philosopher I think who instructs with his actions. After watching a documentary about him called Rivers and Tides I began to think more and more about what he does.
What Andy Goldsworthy does that is so amazing to me, is build with nature. Using only materials that are found on the forest floor or washed up on a beach he creates the most amazing sculptures and pieces I have ever seen. Whether it is a long row of flowers strung together sent snaking down a river or an amazing sculpture built on a beach at low tide, only to be consumed by the incoming tide. His art is fleeting, momentary and eventually meshes back in with the nature from which it was built.
Andy's art then is really an exercise in philosophy. We all take the bits and pieces that have been given to us, attempt to create something beautiful and eventually return from where we came. The fact that his art work is destroyed by the river rapids, or the rising tide does not make it pointless or any less beautiful, it just makes us aware to see the beauty while it is there, to realize that all great works, whether delicate stone towers balanced on the sand before the crashing see or large buildings erected with all our might and strength will eventually disappear. This fact of disappearence also does not make our life any less meaningful. In fact, and Andy's work points to this, there is a beauty and an urgency to that instant where something is created but which eventually is destroyed. Andy, as we all should, embraces this idea and builds incredible art that lasts sometimes for only minutes or hours, despite the many hours of labor it often takes him to create these works. Andy's art is also then an art of living, of embracing the inevitable and still working diligently to create a masterpiece with whatever time we have. To build a work of beauty in the face of a rising tide is an act of courage and commitment. It is a declaration that no act is meaningless and that despite the inevitable we can press on and create works of heart staggering beauty in the face of a certain fate. We do not know when our tide may rise, or if our work will even be done when it does, but still we press on, piece by piece, minute by minutes assembling a work, building a life, that tells that certain fate...I was here, I tried, and I utilized every last second. So build that masterpiece, create spectacular works wherever you can, for we are all artists and our work of art is the life we live.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Trim Your Life Away
Trim- Surfing with the wave in an unbroken line or a perfect angle.
After taking a look at Thomas Campbell's great website of surf films (trimyourlifeaway.com) and spending a lot of time in the water lately, trying to work on my trimming skills I began thinking how trim in surfing is an apt metaphor for life.
Trim, as it goes, is when you put your surfboard in the exact right place on the wave, where your speed is maximized, and your are just flowing, letting the wave take you. To trim, means to be in the present, in the ideal position, another way of saying being dialed in. Trim is when everything is aligned and all you have to do is sit back with a smile and enjoy every drop of the present moment. For me, when my board is trimming, and I am cruising down the face of a wave, sun shining, mist blowing off the back of the wave crashing in front of me, gorgeous coast line to my left and right I think man this is living. It is one of the few moments where I am so enveloped in the present, sucking in every last bit and particle of that freedom and truly enjoying the now. I am not worrying about the past or fretting about the future, I am locked in the beauty of the instant. Trimming is simple, but to get there is not easy, it takes practice, falling and a lot of finding how your body moves and balances. The key to trimming then is balance and enjoying the simplicity of the instant.
The words trim your life away then have for me a dual meaning. On one hand trimming your life away is maximizing those moments where everything is just where it should be, and your are soaking in every last drop of the present moment. It is that almost zen like moment where you are flowing, without any striving to get to that point. On the other hand to trim your life away means to strip it of all of the excess stuff that is getting in between you and the present moment. The present, the now, is something all too often obscured from us by the world that surrounds us. Where as trimming is an act of simplicity, its just you the surfboard and the ocean, our lives are becoming increasingly more complex. There is cell phones, twitter, Facebook, big houses, fancy cars, expensive dinners, fat bank accounts, retirement funds, hedge funds, 401 kS's, fast food, lots of food, variety variety variety. Life has become filled with distraction and speed, the things that keep us out of those flow moments, and constantly trapped in a cycle of regretting the past and striving to accumulate things, money, possessions for the future that we completely lose sight of this instant. Trimming your life away, literally then, is stripping it of all of the excess and really figuring out what it is you need rather than satisfying every want. If you sit down and list your needs, they often turn out to be quite small, when we step back for a minute and list the things that are truly important to us we begin to see the discrepancy between what we are content with and what society gets us so wrapped in accumulating and striving for. When we trim our lives away we get down to the core of what makes us tick, we cut out all the nonsense and focus on living the moment, being content with what we have, and putting ourselves in the ideal spot so as to be at a perfect angle with the wave of life. Trimming your life away enables you to focus on that part of life that is truly important and cruise by all the nonsense without a passing thought. So trim it away, the latest fad, the new hottest car, expensive dinners, the newest way to keep in touch with all 200 of your closet friends. Pick up the phone. Call your friends. Write a letter. Enjoy a sunset. Marvel at the beauty of it all. Life is too amazing and too fleeting to let it all fly by in a flash of I should haves, and I wants or in a blur of senseless accumulation. We don't need more. We need each other. We need this moment. We need to smile. We need to breathe. We need to be present. Right here. Right now.
After taking a look at Thomas Campbell's great website of surf films (trimyourlifeaway.com) and spending a lot of time in the water lately, trying to work on my trimming skills I began thinking how trim in surfing is an apt metaphor for life.
Trim, as it goes, is when you put your surfboard in the exact right place on the wave, where your speed is maximized, and your are just flowing, letting the wave take you. To trim, means to be in the present, in the ideal position, another way of saying being dialed in. Trim is when everything is aligned and all you have to do is sit back with a smile and enjoy every drop of the present moment. For me, when my board is trimming, and I am cruising down the face of a wave, sun shining, mist blowing off the back of the wave crashing in front of me, gorgeous coast line to my left and right I think man this is living. It is one of the few moments where I am so enveloped in the present, sucking in every last bit and particle of that freedom and truly enjoying the now. I am not worrying about the past or fretting about the future, I am locked in the beauty of the instant. Trimming is simple, but to get there is not easy, it takes practice, falling and a lot of finding how your body moves and balances. The key to trimming then is balance and enjoying the simplicity of the instant.
The words trim your life away then have for me a dual meaning. On one hand trimming your life away is maximizing those moments where everything is just where it should be, and your are soaking in every last drop of the present moment. It is that almost zen like moment where you are flowing, without any striving to get to that point. On the other hand to trim your life away means to strip it of all of the excess stuff that is getting in between you and the present moment. The present, the now, is something all too often obscured from us by the world that surrounds us. Where as trimming is an act of simplicity, its just you the surfboard and the ocean, our lives are becoming increasingly more complex. There is cell phones, twitter, Facebook, big houses, fancy cars, expensive dinners, fat bank accounts, retirement funds, hedge funds, 401 kS's, fast food, lots of food, variety variety variety. Life has become filled with distraction and speed, the things that keep us out of those flow moments, and constantly trapped in a cycle of regretting the past and striving to accumulate things, money, possessions for the future that we completely lose sight of this instant. Trimming your life away, literally then, is stripping it of all of the excess and really figuring out what it is you need rather than satisfying every want. If you sit down and list your needs, they often turn out to be quite small, when we step back for a minute and list the things that are truly important to us we begin to see the discrepancy between what we are content with and what society gets us so wrapped in accumulating and striving for. When we trim our lives away we get down to the core of what makes us tick, we cut out all the nonsense and focus on living the moment, being content with what we have, and putting ourselves in the ideal spot so as to be at a perfect angle with the wave of life. Trimming your life away enables you to focus on that part of life that is truly important and cruise by all the nonsense without a passing thought. So trim it away, the latest fad, the new hottest car, expensive dinners, the newest way to keep in touch with all 200 of your closet friends. Pick up the phone. Call your friends. Write a letter. Enjoy a sunset. Marvel at the beauty of it all. Life is too amazing and too fleeting to let it all fly by in a flash of I should haves, and I wants or in a blur of senseless accumulation. We don't need more. We need each other. We need this moment. We need to smile. We need to breathe. We need to be present. Right here. Right now.
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