Beyond the Frame
Recently, I’ve been spending time gazing out of the window. I have a favourite chair, a white chaise longue that we bought in the early days of our Manhattan life. Whenever and wherever we move, I always make sure that it sits in comfort by the bedroom window. It’s a little off-white now, one of the slats is missing and there have been rumblings from my husband about replacing it. However I’m unwilling to see it go. I’ve looked out at many different skies in solitude from the comfort of this old friend; those above the magical towers of Manhattan and then the silent blues of Southern California. My chair is a symbol of peace which reminds me that, even in times of the sharpest distress, it is always possible to sit quietly; gazing towards something vaster and less turbulent than the ‘foul rag and bone shop of the heart.’(1)
Matters visual have been in my thoughts these past couple of weeks. Living through days blissfully empty of many of their usual concerns, visual scenes are etched upon my mind’s eye with a painful clarity. There are the fleeting moments of childlike wonder captured with my daughter: her delight as she splashes in what, until very recently, she called muddy cuddles; her crestfallen face when she sees that the rose we check on daily in a neighbour’s garden has not yet fallen to the ground for her to carry home as a spoil of war; or her sprinting form as she chases white petals falling to the ground amidst the misty rain. Then there’s my son as he plays the piano or studies his Latin with the serious focus and depth of concentration so characteristic of him or sits next to my husband laughing as they share some humorous exchange while our dog snuggles happily beside them.
Almost inevitably, I suppose, this train of thought leads me to reflect upon the role that images play in our everyday life. In this regard, I have gradually become aware of a particularly personal trajectory. When we left our home ten years ago and travelled together, my husband, son and I, to begin our new life across the ocean, we spent the first few years in Manhattan. These were days lived free from any inkling of social media and, for me, from any of the handheld pressure of the smartphone. We took photographs to be sure but not in a planned or pressured way. If I am honest, it is the images held in my memory which are the strongest. When I see my friend and I sitting in Sant Ambroeus on the Upper East Side in the morning, after dropping our respective sons at school, I don’t just see the faces of our former selves. I hear the rain falling outside, I taste the bitter strength of the black coffee, I feel the warmth of the room and the glow of companionship. There is an undiluted power to the recollection. It lives and breathes, organically connected to the times when my friend and I, now separated by distance, reunite for treasured moments; part of the flowing water of reality rather than a frozen wave.
When we moved westwards to California with a hopeful joy that, in my case, swiftly evaporated into the formless air, a vanishing that left me numb and disbelieving for several years, everything changed. I acquired an iPhone within a couple of months of our arrival. Facebook, Instagram and the rest of the deceitful cabal devised by the technocrats of Silicon Valley followed. Eager with an enthusiasm that was good hearted in its aspirations I embraced these new phenomena. Thus followed an inevitable daily over consumption of images. More insidiously I was infected by the creeping, seeping disease which frames every moment of one’s existence with the greedy eyes of the digital glamour seeker. Our unwitting surrender of precious internal space to these devices and platforms is a human tragedy whose consequences have not yet been felt. For myself it caused much heartache and a mental tension that was severe in its consequences. I have since come to understand that spiritual survival depends entirely upon one’s determination to preserve one’s own spaciously lived integrity. Grasping and searching for external comfort or titillation, which of course is exactly what social media platforms encourage, results in a catastrophic loss of internal balance.
Living our lives quietly, particularly these past few weeks, has reminded me of this truth in a strangely wonderful way. With eyes that grasp less and perceive more, one can see the beauty of the present moment and the symbiotic shadow of its ephemerality. I’ve been spending time with the work of the Buddhist photographer Ed Heckerman. His pictures have featured in a couple of my previous posts and a wonderful photograph accompanies this one. I would recommend his pictures to anyone seeking to understand how a great photographer can capture far more than just the immediate image before their lens. When so many purportedly beautiful images today are truly ugly in their fakery and their rapacious demand for our attention, Ed’s work is exactly the opposite. His images tranquilly invite you in and offer the possibility of thought or simply a richly beautiful stillness. I will gaze at one of his photographs for an extended period of time and emerge refreshed from such a silent reverie, often with the beginnings of a new creative idea or two.
In our age of institutionalised frivolity it can seem that we are living in a time where ‘fleeting passions and manias infest people’s minds with images and distorted facts’(2). However, it’s always possible to walk on by the dime store where the salesmen with painted faces scream of yesterday’s news or tomorrow’s shiniest new deal and sit down for a while, gazing out into the space which needs no frame.
(1) WB Yeats, The Circus Animals’ Desertion
(2) Lama Jampa Thaye, Wisdom in Exile
Image courtesy of Ed Heckerman
