Dear LO,
This contribution is dedicated mainly to 'Terra', Leo Minnigh's dog.
Once, she went out for a walk, on her own and Leo was beside himself with
sadness. While Terra was beside herself with walkingness she was filling
herself with joy. And so, when she eventually got back home dear Leo was
seen, at a distance and from an Angelic Meadow, to be dancing like a
child, again ;-) ( technical note: de Bono is an author and de;-)Bon(e)o
(passive brackets) is a dog biscuit... )
Put on the meandering hat of your choosing Leo, Andrew is set upon a
meandering ;-)
(Rick) I have attached a one page MS Word doc with leo's picture embedded
for possible inclusion into the archive.
[Host's Note: the Word doc is at
http://www.learning-org.com/docs/LO30013_LeoSelfPortrait.doc
..Rick]
Harwich, London, North Moreton, Oxford, and back again >>>>> Itinery (hard
and linear)
Amsterdam. >>>>> Concept (soft and fuzzy;-)
The concept of, say, Amsterdam (- a city we both know) is like a dream or
a vision it has ramifications and has suburbs (de Bono)
We were walking through a mall (Yuk! Consumer's paradise .. my idea of
hell;-) and among the throng of happy consumers (consumptives;-) Leo says
"Halt! Look!" as he points at the tiled marble floor .. was it marble Leo?
He shows me how the sections (cross sections ;-) of primeval animals are
embedded into the modernist cityscape...right under my feet, I am walking
on the backbones of pre-historic ancestors, as others perch upon the
shoulders of giants;-). Time (as a tag) is enfolded<>unfolded. The brain
can only see what it is prepared to see. If the brain contains complex
concepts then we can perceive the world through these concepts {words},
this is perception. -How are we going to create new words? Edward de
Bono, The de Bono Code Book. ( substitute world for word if it seems
appropriate;-) Well, Leo thanks for the downward vertices so increasing my
perception manifold ;-)
Po - A word that de Bono invented and he laments that it's slower to catch
on than his other invention, lateral thinking.
It signals de Bono says, This is provocation; see where your mind moves
onto from this provocation. Po is more important because any self
organizing system, like the brain, forms asymmetric patterns and there is
an absolute need for provocation in order to cut across patterns.
Provocation is an essential operation in creativity.
I am reminded of Signal Based Communication in Peter Beamish's work, that
which enables the paradoxes of communicating in the Chamber of Evolution
and Rhythm Based Communication from the Chamber of Altruism. For most
people I suspect, most people who try to create things like, say LOs do
not sufficiently appreciate the difference between description and
perception. The nub of de Bono is I sense, the nub of the work Sajeela
Ramsey worked so hard to bring from the background to the foreground ..
the presencing power of real perceptivity. It brings forward new ideas,
words, emotions, connections, images, visions, concepts, worlds ;-) There
is a blind spot in using the same old tired terms, signs and words and
phrases...and do Bono's mood right now I intuit to be one of fed-upness
;-) so much so that he thinks the mistake many are making in this seeming
trivial matter (think butterfly now and alcoholic habituation) is in fact,
FATAL (-my capitalisation). I agree with his sentiment ;-) (A sideways
reference to the current stock market malaise ;-)
I mimic de Bono... It will happen somehow sooner or later, the numbers say
it. The sooner element will depend on those able to understand it all and
its need to presence and the value of its presencing. The later element
will depend on the influence of those unable and easily outraged; they
will impose their owned ignorance on the others.
One more thing about that, Leo and LO. De Bono characterizes the birth of
words to a likeness of the child in my interpretation. Entering the world
in a state of ignorance relative to current knowledge, just like the child
does. And I more than like, but love my final borrowing from his latest
thinking, We are forced to perceive the world in an old fashioned way. It
is for precisely this reason that language has become a barrier to human
progress. For example, the perception of profit has severely limited the
social development of business and value creation in society. Mmmmm ;-)
Leo, it is easier for you because you have stepped into the same stream
twice ;-) What did that crazy old geeky Greek say, Panta .... something or
other?
There is a little known moment in the life of sagely Confucius when he
lifts up his skirt and jumps full into the stream ;-) When you have time
my dear friend, look up the etymology of the word apron and follow it back
into the mists of earliest time .. you will find there a stream
unimaginable in its purity (leptons and their like;-) .. it is the very
dancing skirt of creation invested ;-) herself...though with that would
take in a new stream .. and most are content to slither in the mud of an
old and dying river course, full of pollutions and corpses and
quick-sands. In systemic terms the living are already dead, they just lack
the perception to see it. The lack of belief may be an (t) issue ;-)
Now, we will share the river that runs through us, each and every, the
very source of it all. Standing at the table, the entropy was exported
into you, and subtlest man you are, you began to dance where you stood, I
saw you move and lift, and through the three simple stages you began to
slide from the river bed to the sky above, a lightening pole ;-) standing
somewhere between heaven and earth and surrounded by waiting flowers.
Pregnant sheep, lambs hidden. From the flow of your own rivers and streams
up-flowed against gravity and confusion a creative collapse you birthed
your best self-portrait. Entering the chaos with just enough belief you
plucked out a small masterpiece and you gave it freely to me, compounding
the inter-est. Leo, many people talk of vision, it is quite another thing
to do it.
Now Leo, please jump into a river that runs uphill with me. Like those
salmon ;-) we will swim against the tide and maybe even smash ourselves
against rocks...it is 1980 and I have just graduated and I am tangentially
involved in a workshop for severely impaired learners. I write to a large
and profitable company who, I happen to know pulp and waste miles of
paper. I just wanted a few metres of paper for the disabled people to
create their owned visions upon. Well, Leo, the world is simple, they
said, NO! Mmmmmm.
Now it is 2003. I see in a vision a man, working with young people with
physical and mental disabilities. (Snapshot...At and I, in private, think
about how light propagates forward and this in relation to entropy
production...) then a phrase pops up from the sky and it is written colour
outside the lines... that is a good isn't it Leo ;-) This man then I see
working with(in) these people is an abstract artist, Tim Lefens. His
description of the environment in which he facilitates (makes easier)
goes something like my impression in some large company (sic) offices ;-)
called suites ;-)... -he moves through a maze of automatic doors, sterile
hallways, rude personnel and maddening red tape to discover... The care
attendants seem to treat the students like furniture... (We have too many
people in here, let's get lean, downsize .. Hey! Let's get rid of some
people, move 'em over there;-) ...Lefens moves in closer, looks 'em in the
eye though ;-) beyond the severity of the limitation...what a fast moving
stream is the human eye is it knot, dear Leo ;-) ... He finds intensity
and intelligence, he sees past the drools on the lips, the spastic
movements and even their immediate slumbers to what? Patience is a virtue
;-) These young people, though they have state of the art communications
equipment still do not communicate in speech... How like....STOP I
digress...a meander...forgive me all unmeanderers.
No Lego (TM ;-) pre-assembly, caricatured, pseudo creative navel ego floss
for this man... He casts aside Styrofoam (TM;-) craft projects left behind
by a previous art teacher and sets up real art supplies. He devises a way
for them to select colours and after that they drive their wheelchairs
over prepared canvases, the expressiveness blows Lefens away ;-) (That's
one for otto) ... He rigs them up with laser light pointing helmets and
introduces them to contemporary techniques that artists use among
themselves in their own COPs aka (schools)... movements
Leo, Mr de Bono, I just typo'd the word movewents...Aha!...Press on...(
that one's for Francisco;-) ... Now, fasten your seatbelt dear Leo,
because now you must come back into the soft focus of the happening
picturing process... uninhibited by scepticism and even harassment from
school staff and the indifference of family members the artists surprise
themselves ... with the height of their success ... including a sell out
New York show and CBS coverage. They find thought he greatest joy in the
transformative act of painting itself: a rare moment in which they
transcend physical limitations and express untamed spirits.
Does that look, feel and sound at all familiar ;-) Leo?
In the image before me the boy sits head tilted surrounded by the
paraphernalia of art creationing and about ten feet away from him, another
person dances to his tune, flinging pigment upon the canvas. I cannot see
the laser light, but I can see the transference of his energy. His name is
Rafael ...I am sharing a note that you sent me on arriving home Leo...it
will resonate more widely now.
Andrew, I saw in the museum also a superb small exhibition of drawings and
woodcuts of Anthony Gormley. This is a must for you. If you have the
chance to see this, take that chance. I knew some of his sculptures, but
was not familiar with drawings. I made notes of a text accompanied with a
peculiar picture. It was a large black silhouette of a head, with inside
this block a small other drawn head of a man. The text was: The
relationship between mental and physical space is of central importance. A
drawing is a lens which can be looked through out into the world and back
into the mind";. (Antony Gormley). Sounds good, isn't it?
LeO, Senge said that we will learn best by learning from and by nature's
ways. The artist Jackson Pollock, when invited to study nature to help his
creative development said, "I AM nature."
I know Gormley's work Leo .. he was the man who made the Angel of the
North.
Imagine that, Leo ... an image looking out at you ;-)
Love,
Andrew
Post script.
"...The last 15 years have witnessed the ascent of an alternative view,
that of embodied or enactive cognition. This new wave arose because the
computationalist doctrine failed to account even for the most elementary
coping with the world: walking, perceiving object in a natural setting,
imagination. Slowly the cards turned into considering that the basis of
mind is the body in coupled action, that is, the sensory-motor circuits
establish the organism as viable in situated contexts. From this
perspective the brain appears as a dynamical process (and not a syntactic
one) of real time variables with a rich self-organizing capacity (and not
a representational machinery). So in this sense the mind is not in the
head since it is roots in the body as a whole and also in the extended
environment where the organism finds itself'.
Francisco Varela
Self Portrait, Leo Minnigh
Acrylics on paper A3
March 2003
But there is something in the modern painters that appeals to us more
personally and intimately .. perhaps the modern ones are deeper thinkers
.. I think old Millet was right when he said that men were absurd when
they wish to seem other than they are. It is a common place saying, and
yet it is fathomless, as deep as the ocean, and personally I think one
would do well to take it to heart. -- Vincent, 21st July 1882
(About this time Vincent went out alone to explore his creative process
;-) He painted something, then reflecting ;-) wrote, -It surprises me a
little, I had expected the first things to be a failure, though I supposed
they'd improve later on; but thought though I say so myself, they are not
bad at all, and I repeat, it surprises me a little.
Note to this painting: It has been my experience over the years, that
people can create the most exquisite works of art, almost instantaneously
as in this fine example by Leo and yet not wish to place enough value to
want to keep it. I have come to understand this as a kind of creative
collapse, in which I think they do intuit the greater value which is only
truly realised when it is given away, freely given way.
Surprise and emergence go together don't they Leo, -like a beginning with
no end and an end with no beginning n;-)
Thank you, again for the great gift that you are and for the smaller gifts
that you left with me, when you returned home.
Love,
Andrew
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