Practice is Meaning

November 27, 2023

I have a very astute student who brings many insights into our dialogue. The other day he was talking about a man he knows well. My student described him as perfectly nice and friendly, a good human being. But there was something missing, he said. Searching for words, my student remarked that this man didn’t have a practice.

My mind is like a Christmas tree strung with red and green lights. If I see, hear, or think something dubious or harmful or confused or incoherent, a red light goes on: Wait! And if I see, hear, or think something constructive, creative, playful, or healing, a green light goes on: Yes!

I can’t be absolutely sure that my student and I approach the notion of practice in the same way, but I’m using his remark to adorn my tree, which my student’s remark lit up, with a bunch of green lights of my own devising.

Practice, as I see it, is a sort of commitment to explore something. The exploration unfolds steadily over months, years, and decades. There’s a repetitive element involved, and also variation, novelty, sudden changes of rhythm or focus. The exploration envelops a paradox. Practice is time spent focusing on myself and not focusing on myself. By asking myself questions while practicing, by pondering my habits, my assumptions, and my inner narrative, I might affirm my individuality and at the same time lessen my importance to my own self. “I rock! I’m just a rock.”

What might the exploration or practice involve? The possibilities are endless. It might be the study of music: handling instruments, learning the structures of music, listening, playing, going out to concerts, sharing, listening, playing, listening, playing. In my case, I consider that I’ve been in music practice for about sixty years. The practice has dug deep grooves in my brain, and it has shape my life in so many ways that I can’t begin to describe it.

Or the practice might be walking. For some, it might be the ten thousand daily steps, a sort of dance and meditation, “the gym of the mind.” Walking is a communion with the city where you live and the cities that you visit: you receive the city from the ground up, and your legs, your movement, and your rhythms create urban memories that inform your perspective in life. A walkable city is a marvelous arena for practicing. A city where cars are more important than people . . . well, driving too can be a purposeful practice. A different friend of mine is a musician of breadth and depth. He drove a taxi professionally for a few years, and it seems obvious to me that his driving helped him Achieve Knowledge (and that’s not the same thing as achieving knowledge or achieving “knowledge”).

The practice might be cooking. Recipes and spices become a discipline, giving you faint but lovely connections with Madagascar, Lebanon, Mexico, Peru, and the World and the Universe and the ALL-UPPERCASE. Or the discipline might be how you handle a knife and how you slice a tomato. I’m sure, sure! that somewhere on this Earth there’s a person who’s attained Buddhahood by Slicing the Thousand Tomatoes (and the One Finger).

Repetition on its own has many merits, but the kind of practice we’re positing here requires alertness, curiosity, involvement, observation, persistence. I actually think it’s possible for someone to just “go through the motions” of his or her practice and still get something out of it. But when you pay attention to what you’re doing, how you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what kind of person you are while you’re doing it, and what kind of person you become through doing it, the repetitiveness is a gift like no other. Your field of perception expands. You acquire skills. You accumulate memories, stories, sights and sounds attached to your practice. Practice gives you direction, and direction gives you meaning, and meaning gives you meaning. Also, Practice Gives You A Blanket, Heavy And Cozy And Soft.

Knitted by Alexis Niki over many months.

Envy Yourself! (to the extent that you can)

August 26, 2020

Although envy is incurable, today I’m proposing a cure for it.

Envy is one of the seven capital sins, together with Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy—wait, let’s start again. Envy is one of the seven capital sins, together with Washington, Moscow, Berlin—well, never mind.

Envy is a nasty little psychological habit that has the power to ruin your life. If you aren’t familiar with the concept of envy, then I envy you. So, let me explain: envy is a misdirection of wanting. Envy is “wanting gone bad.” Envy is resenting someone for having something that you don’t have. The something can be an object, a quality, a characteristic, a talent, an achievement. Or good looks, or lots of friends, or sweet-smelling armpits, for instance in babies after their bath.

Minestrone ingredients (as per Jamie Oliver): 1 clove of garlic, 1 red onion, 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, 1 courgette, 1 small leek, 1 large potato, 1 x 400 g tin of cannellini beans, 2 rashers of higher-welfare smoked streaky bacon, olive oil, ½ teaspoon dried oregano, 1 fresh bay leaf, 2 x 400 g tins of plum tomatoes, 1 liter organic vegetable stock, 1 large handful of seasonal greens, such as savoy cabbage, curly kale, or chard, 100 g whole-wheat pasta, ½ a bunch of fresh basil (optional), Parmesan cheese.

Envy ingredients (as per The Envy Recipe Book): resentment, ill will, malice, yellow bile, black bile, bitterness, frustration, obsession, daggers, rat poison, anonymous letters using cut-up headlines from a crumpled newspaper, rotten moldy Parmesan cheese years—years!—beyond the sell-by date.

From Catherine Willis’s prodigious creativity.

To explain the cure, I’ll describe a clinical case using myself as a hypothetical infected patient. I’m a devoted art lover, and have been for decades. Museums and galleries, visits to artists’ studios, pilgrimages to the birth places of great artists, books about the creative processes of painters and sculptors, I live for it all. I’m a fan of Klee, Mondrian, Cézanne, Albers; also of Fra Angelico and Caravaggio; also of Morandi, Brancusi, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin, Mary Frances Judge, Catherine Willis, and a hundred other marvelous inspired and inspiring human beings.

But let’s focus on Sean Scully for a moment. Let’s let Wikipedia introduce him (abridged):

Sean Scully (born 30 June 1945) is an Irish-born American-based artist working as a painter, printmaker, sculptor, and photographer. His work is held in museum collections worldwide and he has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. Scully has also been a lecturer and professor at a number of universities and is highly regarded for his writing and teachings.

Among many other beautiful things (this is me talking now, thank you Wikipedia), among many other beautiful things Scully paints large canvasses of juxtaposed rectangles of varying sizes, creating vibrant territories of colors and shapes that are deeply meaningful to look at.

Recently I took this photo of Scully’s “Wall of Light” sculpture at Château La Coste, a stunning modern-art open-air collection (and winery) in the south of France.

Scully is very successful, you know? He’s, you know, accomplished and probably, almost certainly very well-off (“rich”), you know? His 2006 show at the Metropolitan Museum in New York was, like, so amazing it made me feel like I was, like, a single hair on the skull of a bald gnat, you know? Scully can do a lot of things that I can’t do and will never be able to do, you know? The only way I could feel better about myself would be for Sean Scully to fail. Like, Scully = Skull; Scully is a bald gnat. I’ll never forget his 2006 Met show, or his 1996 show at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Scully won’t let me forget Scully.

If I were to envy Scully, I’d wish him ill; I’d use my thoughts of him to diminish myself; I wouldn’t “see” his work, I’d only see the difference between the vast scale of his accomplishments and of his life, and the not-so-vast scale of my own life. I’d eat rotten moldy Parmesan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The cure for envy is to look away from someone’s success, accomplishments, fame, and riches, and instead to look at his or her human qualities and artistic processes; to look away from externals and toward internals; to look away from “where someone else is” and instead to ponder “where you are yourself, and where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there.” Then Sean Scully becomes a source not of envy but of motivation; he becomes your guide, teacher, and friend.

I’m using the words “Sean Scully” to mean anyone who’s accomplished and successful, right? A symbol of a phenomenon, so to speak. I’ve never met Scully and I don’t know how the flesh-and-bones guy really thinks. But it doesn’t change the gist of my argument.

Attitude
Sean Scully is curious about the world, and also about art and human psychology, and also politics and history. To the extent that I can, I’m going to read, study, watch, study, read, and also watch and study. In my free time I’ll read, study, watch, pay attention, and absorb, digest, and integrate information. And I’ll do it not out of duty but out of curiosity, because life itself is endlessly fascinating.
Commitment
Sean Scully works hard and works well. To the extent that I can, I’m going to get out of bed committed to my work day, committed to tasks, committed to processes, committed to step-by-step procedures, committed to the enjoyment of handling my materials and playing with them. I think it was Somerset Maugham (another terribly prolific creative individual) who said that “a change of work is the best rest.” No, wait, it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who said it. Maybe it was Plato. Or perhaps the Entity Preceding Plato.
Skill
Sean Scully is very skillful. To the extent that I can, day by day, moment by moment, I’m going to improve my skills through practice, repetition, trial-and-error, thinking and doing, feeling and doing, exploring and doing. And practicing, did I mention practicing?
Growth
Sean Scully learns and grows. Before he could paint, he couldn’t paint; before he could sculpt, he couldn’t sculpt; before he could make an omelet, he couldn’t make an omelet. I’ll start by making an omelet, and I’ll go from there. I probably have another thirty years left in this life to learn and grow, to the extent that I can. If I haven’t learned all I want to learn by the time I die, I’ll just reincarnate and start again. As long as I don’t reincarnate as a bald gnat, I’ll be okay.

Ah, I was forgetting: fame and riches. They don’t matter.

I visited Google Translate and I did a back-and-forth, translating a snippet from English to Latin, then the resulting snippet back to English, and so on for a few rounds until Google sent me a cease-and-desist order.

Practice

January 2, 2016

Isn’t it strange that you can practice law, practice the piano, have a spiritual practice, and practice for your wedding?

Maybe it’s just a play on words. Or maybe the word “practice” itself is rich in meaning, and therefore useful to us. It comes to us from Greek, via Latin.

Greek praktikos "fit for action, fit for business; business-like, practical; active, effective, vigorous," from praktos "done; to be done," verbal adjective of prassein, prattein "to do, act, effect, accomplish."

To act, to accomplish; effective, vigorous. And “not theory.” Not in your head, not in a book, not a dogma, not dead. Practice must be a doing, even if you practice it in a Zen-like non-doing manner.

For our purposes, we’ll define it as something that you do regularly, in a committed and organized manner, leading to an increase in awareness and presence. It exists in a thousand forms, including the professional set of skills learned and performed with a particular frame of mind (to practice law), the creative set of skills borne of exercising specific gestures over weeks, months, and years (to practice the piano), and the quest for connection with the ineffable through prayer, meditation, song, and sacrifice (to have a spiritual practice).

How to practice practice, so to speak? Walking works beautifully for many people. Decide to walk every day—perhaps to and from work. Or perhaps as a break from work: a walk in the park, or pacing the rooftop terrace of your office building and thinking about life over a hundred rounds of a very short walk, back and forth, back and forth. Walking the dog is a practice.

You can get serious and take the Road to Santiago, the pilgrimage first established in the 9th century. Walk from somewhere in Western Europe all the way to Santiago de Compostella in northwestern Spain.

Or decide to walk barefoot, full-time or part-time. My friend John does it full-time, and he’s, like, oh man, so alive! Inspired by John, I started walking barefoot part-time three years ago. There have been whole days in which I stayed barefoot, including in winter, out in the rain, or riding public transportation. It’s an exercise in awareness and in not-worrying-about-what-people-would-say. And it happens to be extremely pleasurable.

Another practice is committing to a time and a place, and going there on a regular basis. It could be the street market every Sunday, for instance. Plan your meals, interact with the fruit sellers, watch people, taste fresh foods, enjoy life.

Or go to Starbucks frequently and use it as an office, for creative work or for office work. You can go to the same café many times in a row, or to a different café each time. Both have merits. The main thing is to go and be there, doing something again and again over weeks and months. You’ll meet people at your Starbucks office, make friends, become attached to the place and its neighborhood. And you’ll get your work done. How different is it from going to a corporate job and sitting in a cubicle looking at a computer screen? Perhaps it’s the same thing; or perhaps the cubicle can become the same thing—that is, a practice—provided that you find the attitude that transforms a constraint, imposed by circumstances, into a commitment you choose to make, with the result of your becoming alert and present.

Spiritual practice takes a thousand shapes. Here’s one: going to church every week, or perhaps most days, or perhaps every day, or perhaps twice a day. One of my devout friends calls the institution of the church a vessel for his spirituality.

My friend considers that there is no spirituality without a vessel. Dwelling in the vessel is a practice, whether the vessel is material (a building) or symbolic (a paradigm and an institution). Perhaps it’s the practice that matters, rather than the vessel. Or perhaps the vessel counts for something. All I know is that entering temples, cathedrals, chapels, and basilicas, in Paris and in my travels, is always transformative. I wonder what would happen if I did it every day, without exception.

A lifetime commitment to the church is, of course, a very formal and deep practice. Other spiritual practices are more informal. Some formalists pooh-pooh the informalists. But that's OK; the informalists pooh-pooh the pooh-pooh.

Moving toward simplicity.

You can practice a simple exercise, returning to it often and over a span of years. In sports there are many such exercises: the golf swing, the free throw in basketball, the rope skipping of a boxer. Here’s a kind of warm-up stretch. Sit on the floor, with legs bent; bring the soles of your feet together, and hold your feet with your hands; try to lower your knees until they touch the floor; now lean your trunk forward. Do it once or twice, and it comes across as an uncomfortable and possibly useless exercise. But do this one stretch every day for twenty-five years, and you might discover all sorts of dimensions, to the exercise and to yourself as you respond to the exercise.

The form of your practice—yoga, Tai Chi, tango—might be very important . . . or not. After all, every form has its enlightened practitioners and its zombies. Shadow boxing could be as integrative as an ancestral martial art. Air guitar? You bet. “Star Wars” lightsaber play-acting? Of course. The main thing is to commit to the practice and to do it with all your heart.

And then there’s the practice of a creative skill, whether you do it professionally or for pleasure alone. A drawing a day, for instance—fast or slow, as you wish; take thirty seconds or thirty minutes. Choosing pencils, sharpening them, leafing through a sketchbook, translating the swirling images of a street corner into arm and hand gestures that make marks on paper . . . if you think about it, the act is by no means banal. It’s transformative in many ways. Do it steadily over days and months, and something will get reorganized inside yourself: the way you look at the world, the way you absorb and interpret information, the way you pay attention.

The practice is primary, the skill secondary; or, to put it differently, it’s only by practicing that you gain the skill. You might want to say, “But I don’t know how to draw!” Sure, sure. That’s why you practice, you dummkopf!

A smartphone and an Instagram account, and—hey, presto! You can practice photography. Publish crappy photos of pizza slices if that’s your thing. Or develop the art of perceiving, thinking, and deciding. Photography is the reason or excuse (or vessel) to open up your mind and heart.

Walking, going to the market, stopping at Starbucks, visiting a monument, taking photos with your smartphone . . . Is there any difference between practice and life?

Nah. Life is an Integrated Practice.