Storytelling is important to me, and fun to engage in.

I love art-making, it's where my imagination can travel freely into curious new worlds.  Part of that form of expression is storytelling through various creations: images, characters, sounds, songs, sculpture and writing.  My last post was a story that playfully asked a question about the mind, and whether we can see it and touch it.  I enjoy pondering the meaning of things in my drawings, underlying and overt.  As I draw, my mind constantly churns: analyzing and turning the process I'm engaged in physically to make a piece of visual art into an exploration of that experience.  My mind becomes an ally, a partner, an echoing voice that accompanies my drawing process.  Often when I listen to music while drawing, I can reduce the volume and activity of thinking.  I also experiment with not listening to music to allow myself to focus on drawing and solving problems that arise in fulfilling the creative vision I'm pursuing in a certain piece.  This piece below (The Source of Thinking, 2008) is the next in my first series of pen drawings.  It reveals the combination of visual-motor actions combined with accompanied thoughts.  The pathways the piece contains represent both visual and intellectual patterns of thought and interwoven memories.  Simplicity and complexity coexist, teasing each other forward in a dance of curiosity, of magic and wonder. 

If you met your Mind, would you recognize it? (The Bingo-Zingo Theory)

'Meeting of the minds' is a phrase that intrigues me to think: is there a mind to meet?  Humans refer to mind as something intangible, a mysterious rider within us, but what if it is a liminal being?  Maybe I've seen it without realizing it?  Perhaps it became insulted that I haven't acknowledged it before, and didn't say, hey, what's up, finally, we're meeting, great!  "You want coffee, or some particular type of mind-juice?"  Does it want and can it get a drink sometime and have some laughs?  Should I be paying more attention to it as a separate entity?  Can it become upset with me?  Does it have friends it complains to about me?  Do they meet on a regular basis?  Is it a little avatar in my body somewhere, or some curious extraterrestrial appendage?  Is part of me, or it's own being?  Does my mind experience human emotions, lonely, happy, sad, angry?  Maybe when I experience certain emotions, I'm mirroring them from the ones my mind is having toward me?  Is mind a concept, a religion, a Hollywood scriptwriter's invention?  Can someone direct me to the mind center for some answers?

I keep imagining a squishy thing in the shape of a moist, rich cupcake (triple chocolate) in a red velvety, loungy bathrobe, laughing it's ass off at everything I'm doing.  What a lucky formless squish-ball!  And I'm its inseparable workhorse, its dog.  Ok, I admit it, I'm jealous of my mind's freedom of control.  It commands me in a series of rigidly dominant, and often non-linear string of endlessly intense jabber, and it mostly won't take no for an answer.  It's fooled, however, by distraction.  And in this I've been practicing to become a master.  But am I fooling myself, or my mind?  

I've tried everything from therapy to traveling around the world, dating, swimming for miles, only to find my mind a constant companion without ever meeting the dude.  Again, I'm not sure I'd recognize it.  What the little corpuscle do while I'm sleeping.  It could be refueling with some wretched crew in lascivious places, trying to steal my liver or mess with my Facebook timeline to make me an organ donor.  

Why such negative suspicion Sheldon? (Sheldon is my nick name since about 1989, the year the earth stood still for 43 seconds and my mind delivered to me this funny nick name; fyi: 43 seconds being the average time it takes to do many of life's essential things).  The time that humans are occupied with daily life functions (43 seconds), is when the mind worms its way to visit alternative existence planes to cozy up with other sub-terrestrial bio-squishy beings, and demand I stop everything to focus on yet a new tangent.  So what does this squish-ball/ray-of-light/bio-puzzle look like?  And what social network does it frequent?  Start-up entrepreneurs and venture capital firms want to know.  Are you friends with The Mind?  Yes, we're in constant contact!  Too constant! 

Do we sense the mind, feel it, hear it, smell it or just imagine it to exist?  Exist?  Who said it exists?  Well, ok, I guess I've inherited that belief.  And if it exists, what form and shape is it in?  Or do these forms and shapes change?  Whoa, chill out Sheldon, just be...remember your Buddhism; breathe and catch your breath (another phrase worth exploring at some future point!).  

So if thinking exists in, or as a part of the mind, and I can't locate my mind, does this mean that thinking doesn't exist?  Bingo!  And if thinking doesn't exist, then rationality and its objective elements of invented realities don't exist.  Second bingo.  So then only bingo exists?  Bingo.  Now we're getting somewhere.  Well, actually no, because somewhere doesn't exist either.  It went with everything, nothing and now and then. 

You have to retain something to acknowledge nothing.  But is Bingo something?  You can't take everything away.  Well I guess I can part with everything, since Bingo is so all-encompassing.  And it's a BIG relief to remove the stress of having to account for everything, to handle everything, and to call everything something.  Something is definitely gone too!  And good riddance.  I've hated something for years.  I've dreamed about getting rid of that too, but that's a hard one to get rid of.  I may try a surprise sleep-mission extraction tonight to get rid of that.

But what if I yearn for a little Zingo every now and then.  Zingo?  Yes, I've discovered that Zingo is the mind of Bingo.  But since everything doesn't exist and everything includes now and then, and they're both gone, then I'm really only left with a confirmed ability to use Bingo.  I may try to locate the existence of Zingo one day, but it won't be easy.  Bingo wil be hard to catch off-guard.  I could try to replace Bingo with a new acknowledgement term, but then if Bingo wouldn't exist, I'm not sure I'd recognize the new word to acknowledge that everything doesn't exist.  I'm keeping Bingo just in case.  

You see, Bingo is not only an acknowledgement of a moment in time, it establishes that time doesn't exist.  But you knew that already, right?  Time was invented by Hollywood writers to formulate scripts for human existence, and to fight off evil film critics before they ate up all the craft service.  Who do film critics think they are?  The mind of Hollywood?  Bingo. Now we're looping closer to a theory of Bingo-Zingo mind.  

Actors so far: You + Story people x Critical Self-Deprecating Awareness + Stuck in the past = Reality we call The Mind.  

Whew, got that into a semi-workable formula, and just in time too: everything was trying to return and bring something, now and then and possibly even mind itself back into the picture.  Damn that mind, it's everywhere and nowhere all at once!  So Sheldon is upset with the notion that a thing called mind is following him around in a shadowy, weird kind of stalker way!  Bingo. 

Mahtohk

Mahtohk. 2010. Daniel Falk. Pen and pencil on paper. A bird eyes a distant horizon within a landscape of joyful exploration.In Hebrew, Mahtohk means 'sweet', and certainly this bird is enjoying a sweet landscape to be joyful in.

Entity: Reaching for Peace

Entity: Reaching for Peace. 2012. Tel-Aviv. Daniel Falk. Pen and Colored Pencil on Paper. A dove in the center reaches toward the sky, perhaps towards the sun or heaven, as a sign of peace being possible for human beings to achieve. The horse-like figure appears to be flying, encouraging and supporting the climb to achieve peace in our time.  

My Artwork For Sale on Society6

Grateful Soul - Tribute to the life and music of Jerry Garcia

Grateful Soul. 2012. New York and Tel-Aviv. Pen and Pencil on Paper. Daniel Falk.

Surrounded by a swirl of life and musical memories is Jerry's sagely face.  A 'steal your face' image appears faintly in the lower right portion, inhaling and breathing the very fire that the Dead's music conjured up for Deadheads to dance to and spin new webs of magic.  A Tye-dyed foundation honors the community Jerry proudly lead for so many wonderful years, and all along, the music never stopped.  Thank you Jerry.

Daniel Falk - Art Show! Tel-Aviv, Israel

A man and his selves (Hollow Man). Series A-4.

A man and his selves (Hollow Man). 2008. New York. Pen on Paper. 18 x 13.2 cm Series A-4

Rooted to an invisible ceiling, a hollow man evolves as two separate selves.  His outer self manifests as a human interface that manages various things, like work, friends and romance; his inner self is where all the wild stuff happens, desires rise, intentions form, reactions occur.  He tries to remain hollow, ready to adapt and cope with new circumstances, but things keep growing on him, forcing him to constantly manage nature’s inertia in a biologically sticky world.  Luckily, Hollow Man can manifest helpful characters: a sexy blonde woman floats in his inner eye’s mind-space, balancing his moods; and a teenage antelope that forms his right ear guards both thoughts (inner) and actions (outer).  A fire-like substance appears in his throat that keeps biology at bay and channels his mind’s experiences and visions into a passion-rich life.

Goat and the Farmer. Series A-3.

Goat and his Farmer. 2008. New York. 18 x 13.2 cm. Pen.

The farmer in profile and his skeleton is all that remains from his wayward goat, which has eaten almost every ounce of muscle and organs from his defenseless body.  The drab, expressionless farmer seems somehow relieved to shed his earthly form.  The goat becomes his captive savior.  Like the artist himself, the farmer shifts roles to relate viscerally with generations of artists who’ve suffered their master’s requirements while sneaking some time for their other interests beyond mere survival. The goat, slightly above and left of the farmer, shows its exaggerated darkened eye and vertical pupil, one that so vigorously enjoys the loom of its captive feast. But how did the farmer become captive?  He lost a wager with two vagabond angels, cupids in fact, that fell from a heavy sky onto a branch in one of the farmer’s fields.  Mesmerized, the farmer joined in a long night of “story-telling” with the angels, which found him elevating beyond his worldly body for a time.  Seeing the farmer vulnerable and seemingly occupied elsewhere, the goat feasted. 

A Horse Runs Up The Mountain, Series A-2.

A Horse Runs Up The Mountain. 2008. New York. 18 x 13.2cm. Pen. 

How does a goal come into focus?  And why does one goal become more preferable than another?  Is it based on mere survival, this common churning and yearning that drives living beings and flora to develop ever more effective approaches to living, of improving their quality of life?  Visible here is a progression, from valley, guarded by an extending tree-trunk, up to mountains glowing with future promise.  A bird-like creature in the middle helps guide the horse safely to its goal: the peak.  But a horse has little reason to charge up to the mountaintop.  Something else has caught its attention above the mountaintop.  This is a fable of reaching beyond the observable and for something one perceives to be within reach, but is perhaps more a part of their imagination, which has created a powerful drive to climb higher, to explore, to unite the solid internal nature of living beings, the mind, with the will to connect with external forces.  Connection with external elements, secular or ethereal, suggests searching for a source of validity of one’s life.  

Series A - Pen Drawings 2008 -2010 - Series A-1. Woman Emerging from the THicket of Time.

Woman Emerging from the Thicket of Time, 2008, 18 x 13.2 cm. Pen on paper. 18 works.
2008-2010.

My explorations with my first pen series begins with a dominant figure surrounded by chaotic, yet orchestrated movement and characters involved in their own stirrings and tasks.  Somehow they are swept together, each heading in different directions at the same time (is there really such thing as the "same time" experientially?).  A slice of time reveals characters blended together, each generating their own scene, or are they just manipulating to the best of their ability?  Figures appear to dance as part of a larger image that provides energy to relate, progress, persist and expand.

I'm excited to share this series with you and look forward to your comments.  Thank you.

Recommended music to listen while viewing: Rodrigo y Gabriela & CUBA, 11:11. 2012.