Daily Nourishment for May 14, 2024: Get Closer to the Actual Experience
Daily Nourishment Read Time: 60 seconds
Pause/Prompt/Practice Time: 15 minutes
“Even now, just by remaining so mysteriously fixed in my memory, the painting poses a question that, once again, remains even after I have attempted to answer it, and that is, not how does the painting work, but how does the memory of the painting work?” - Lydia Davis
Pause.
Do a few rounds of a breath prayer/meditation using a word that represents something you want to receive during the inhale (peace, rest, freedom, etc.) and a word that represents something you want to let go of during the exhale (anxiety, busyness, oppression, etc.).
Prompt.
Look at the painting Les Bluets by Joan Mitchell and read the quotes below about the painting by Lydia Davis.
“On one visit I walked out to Mitchell’s studio to look at a painting. I don’t know if this was the first time I went into her studio. I liked the painting very much and thought there was no problem with the way I looked at it. It was what it was, shapes and colors, white and blue. Then I was told by Joan or someone else that it referred to the landscape here in Vétheuil, specifically to cornflowers. Whatever I had known or not known about painting before, this was a surprise to me, even a shock. Apparently I had not known that an abstract painting could contain references to subject matter. Two things happened at once: the painting abruptly went beyond itself, lost its solitariness, acquired a relationship to fields, to flowers; and it changed from something I understood into something I did not understand, a mystery, a problem.”
“I had had other striking experiences of incomprehension, the most extended being the weeks I spent in an Austrian first-grade class listening to the German language, before it began to change slowly, a fragment at a time, to something I could understand. Years later, when translating French texts into English, I struggled so hard with the meaning of certain complex sentences that I was sure I felt this struggle physiologically inside my brain—the little currents of electricity sparked, traveled, leaped forward against the problem, fell back, leaped again from a different side, failed. But this experience caught me unprepared, in its novel form — no words, but three panels of blue and white.”
- Lydia Davis
Practice.
Set a timer for eight minutes and take notes on the painting, the quotes, and the questions below.
—What do you want to understand but will never fully understand?
—What have you been unprepared for in the past few weeks?
—What blue things can you find in your home or wherever you are right now? Make a list.
—What do you remember about a painting or a show or a film you’ve seen in the past? What have you forgotten?
If you like, use your notes to start a new poem, story, essay, or a letter to a friend.
Want More?
Read “Les Bluets, 1973: A writer wrestles with a painting” by Lydia Davis
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Upcoming Workshops & Gatherings
—The May Co-Writing Schedule is live. Learn more here.
—This month’s Revision Stations Designed by Lauren Winner gathering will be on Saturday, May 25th from 10:15-noon CT.
If you have something that needs revision attention, you will not regret attending. Promise.
Today’s Daily Nourishment was provided by Charlotte Donlon.
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