INTRODUCTION TO "WALKING IN DIFFERENT WAYS OF SEEING"

WALKING IN DIFFERENT WAYS OF SEEING.

            Somehow, this title is difficult to understand, but once I can explain what the project consists in, I´m sure the word game will be understood.

While trying to go back and see where this idea comes from, I discover it´s very intertwined with many other experiences, although this particular form of the experiment came to me while I was in Vienna last June.

             I have a very special connection to this city and have spent a lot of time there. I´m fully aware how biast I must be, to always seem to see the good parts of it.

            Anyhow, this time, for some reason, (probably because I was happy to continue working in my studio in Ibiza and didn´t really “need” to travel there and had no working materials with me) when I arrived and went walking in the city, I saw it all looking dirty. People looked unhealthy, and overall I had quite a negative impression. What also added to this was the heat wave that makes me useless. 

            The next day, same thing happened, same impressions. So this time I thought I needed to stop and see why this was happening, I suspected it was more to do with me and my perception, than the city itself.

            I sat down in a café and started downloading all these impressions in my booklet, analysing and comparing my past experiences with this one.

            I came to the clear conclusion that it was me. I wasn´t in the mood to just be on holiday and do nothing,  when I preferred to be painting in my studio.

            I was once again confronted with this feeling I hate of absurdness and pointlessness. I know this, and find ways to put myself in these situations to train myself to tolerate it. But there is a quicker part to me that always finds a plan to fits both my interest in tolerating doing nothing and my neverending urge to engage in interesting projects.

            The idea that came to me this time, was to walk in the city with no plan, defined direction or purpose. Looking at the streets beyond their content, as if I was from another planet and had never seen it before.

            While walking, try and look at it all from a fresh point of view, as if I had never known the use and context of each of the elements. As I had this idea I returned to the concept of a labyrinth. Life lived in the Labyrinth, as we take choices and move through it.

             I suddenly conceived an experiment for a large painting. The painting as such would only have one initial idea to work on once the smudges were on the canvas.

             I´d have to work it into being a labyrinth, but not in a traditional sense, just keep the concept in mind as being a space one can move through being limited by the walls of phenomena we perceive.

            This painting, (or more than one if needed) will be the visual support that I hope can reflect a mind changing exercise I want to practice on myself for approximately one year.

            Every day I will work on this piece I will first go on a walk for an hour with no purpose other than train myself to see what I already know, as if I had never seen it before. Then when the time is up, sit down and write in my booklet about everything that I felt and perceived that I can remember, whether it is relevant, interesting or boring.

            Write it all down with no judgement. Who knows if I might find any sense in it later. After I´m done with the writing is when I can get down to the painting of this panel.

            I don´t intend to paint what I have just experienced, or illustrate it directly. I hope to have expressed it all in the writing. Once empty, I can just paint with no intention again. Listen to music as I do usually and just let it happen. 
      See what occurs.

            Since I came up with this idea I have been practicing it regularily.

 It immediately changed my perception of  the city, while in Vienna. It was no longer unpleasant or lovely, it became different and interesting.

I spent hours walking in this way. 
Some days were easier to do than others. 
Some days I kept getting distracted all the time by whatever I was seeing and thinking in normal ways.

            It has been similar to keeping the discipline of meditation. Every time I was back on the old way I had to correct my attention and keep focused. I found that listening to music in my headphones was a very good way of keeping a distance with the surrounding.

            Music helps me see it all from a different point of view. I used a lot of Marconi Union tracks, Brian Eno, Robert Rich.

            Some days I just heard one track in a loop for one whole hour, just to not change the mood.

    I have walked though well known streets, new streets, in Vienna and in Ibiza. 
    I have also done it while sitting in a park, a café or in the tube.

            On days I have trouble concentrating I find starting off by siting is an easier way. There is more control over an image that is somehow fixed. When moving though space, things don´t last so long to keep the attention on.

I originally thought this might be an interesting to have an MRI test done at the beginning of the year and then a second one at the end of it and see if there would be any tangible evidence of change. I haven´t yet found collaboration and I am not fully convinced it might be necessary. 
As this experiment is only practiced on one individual the scan doesn´t seem to be worth trying.

If anyone who reads this blog and follows some of the experiences I describe thinks this work might be of use to any other study, I am very willing to hear about it´s details and quite probably would like to take part, if it compliments this work in any way.

   

Some details of the process of this painting...

TREE OF POSSIBILITIES

              

          Another idea comes to me almost at the same time, while Walking in Different ways of Seeing. It will be the other painting.

            A "Tree of Possibilities" that explains visually where I feel I´m at in this life I´m experiencing. The image comes to me like a map I can trace where I have been, where I aim, based on where I am at present. Something like that.

            The society I live in affects me, as much as I try to work from my own criteria. When I was a teenager and most of my friends were into partying, I was into philosophy and trying to understand the world I was supposed to live in. I have observed how, from a young age we are taught to aim for wellbeing in ways like you need to study a good career, or get a good job, make money to live well, may be get a good home, may be a mortgage, find a good partner, a good car and be able to go on nice holidays, then of course, have a family when you have all the rest worked out and so on and so on.

            Then there are those who reach my age now, around forty, and have failed in most or all of these aims and at times feel like life went by too quick and didn´t get all of that on track. Others who have done all of that are now facing a “where do I go from here” situation. The Children no longer need them so much, the partner in life is now boring, the job is no longer challenging and one feels slightly empty.

       
     From and early age I have been driven by the love for discovery and curiosity. As I grew older I kept this alive though each decision I was able to make, trying to never get into  non stimulating jobs, relationships or situations .

I never want to loose that fascination for discovery.

          
   I never decided I wanted to be a painter. I just discovered that while painting I could access this subconscious mind that gave me so much information to work on. I found a certain freedom inside me while putting myself in the state of painting. Painting only complements or enhances a way of discovering, coming from a kind of collective unconscious. It´s new for me, even if it has already been experienced by others.

            This Tree of Possibilities Map I quickly drew in my notebook was sketched to not forget this initial idea.

          I felt we start life in this body at the trunk and whether the decisions are taken by us, out parents or by life itself, we can trace a line from one branch to the other.

            A way is marked. We think, as we grow up that we have free will to decide either this or that way, but in this illustration I see it´s free only in a limited frame of possibilities we are given in life.

Our decisions are really shaped by our attractions and repulsions (represented by the little faces and beings in the background), these also being a product of our automatic response to life.

            Anyway, by seeing this image I then saw there are so many branches of this Tree of Possibilities that I haven´t taken. Somehow I feel they also are a part of me. I also live with all the things I know I haven´t done or felt.

             I asked myself what happens when I reach the end of the branch and look into the abyss. Is this where those people are who have done all the ambitions in life and now are stuck waiting for life to grow the branch for them? Is that the place the successful artist or scientist reaches after a great breakthrough and feels there is nothing important left in life to make a difference? Is that the point they become depressed and unmotivated? Is that the place they are waiting for life to surprise them?

This is the point I reached in this image when I decided that if I was to reach this place, I´d like to be the spider who connects and threads all those ends of branches to create a rich and fulfilling now. 

         By connecting, I mean to bring all those other possible presents to the now, accept all the paths that didn´t become active, and include them in my present.

       I was explaining this to someone and they asked me, “what does that mean in practical terms?”. 

        What it means is that usually one limits ones moves to only slightly stretch experience, in ones possible world. I never went to University, I might have been limiting my academic knowledge to this fact, but the reality is that I can share my knowledge in this field. I might lack many structures for this but I shouldn´t limit myself. The other example is that haven´t had children. I could exclude myself from certain circles and experiences because of this. Or I can choose to embrace the experience of others and be an important part of their lives also. These are two quite large issues, only briefly mentioned, but then there are others like the society one chooses to live amongst, it could be any other I crossed and was a part of for a time. I can also make that a part of my present.

          It´s all about transforming a memory that would naturally go stagnant over time (nostalgia) and turn it into an alive experience of the present that nurtures me now.

        This second painting that is related to the first, is all about a very personal experience of life. 

 It´s about bringing out all those details and feelings. 

A kind of exorcism to the phantoms of the past. Bring it all forward and clean the space of old dust. Symbolically.

       While painting it, I go back and rescue memories and play them through, to reach different versions of myself, welcome them to the community and make them part of me now. 

       Each moment I recall a decision I made, or life made for me, is represented by a symbol in the bark of the branch and then kept in a dictionary for myself. 

Each symbol has been created while visualising the moment of change, the moment just before I took the other path, when it was still present. 

(at the moment only in my Dictionary of symbols and moments, still not transferred to the painting)

Empty circles that will contain the symbol for each path crossing.

         I guess the part where I can see the roots will be the baggage from family passed down for generations.

         An other aspect this Tree shows me is that many of my discoveries I find so valuable and special, others have already discovered. I can feel quite disillusioned when this happens, but this graphic of the tree shows me that I´m still digging common grounds. When I find others have discovered the same as me before I should take it as important information to grow on the subject and then will be able to grow further knowledge upon these discoveries. It´s a push forward to go even further. 

      Good answers to questions bring more good questions. If the answer brings comfort it´s not real. It is suspect of not seeing the whole thing. Something is missing. Nothing is only comfortable if real.

        During these months I have been working on both these paintings quite consistently. The days I am able to go and walk for an hour, then write and then spend a long day painting, I usually work on the Labyrinth. 

       The days I have to fit in other work and can get a couple of hours work in the morning and a few more in the evening and can´t be so focused, Im only able to work on the Tree of Possibilities. Some days I work with phenomena and other with full subconsciousness.

PROCESS IN IMAGES:

First stages:

Next phase:

THEN: 

WALKING IN DIFFERENT WAYS OF SEEING.The experiences.

25th of June 2017. Vienna.

         This time, here, I see it all looking dirty, scruffy and uncomfortably hot.

I don´t find the freshness I used to feel.

        I know it all, and walk through the streets without really looking. I´m just going places, blindly.

Stop

What is this numbness? Where am I really while walking?

I guess I´m thinking about this or that very vane or very important thing. Isn´t that how usually is? Isn´t this why we get addicted to travelling to new places? To feel the freshness we loose though believing we know what surrounds us.

Cynical.

I realise then, how important I find this issue.

Just look at children.

Just remember how it was to be a child, when it was all new and ready to discover.

That doesn´t  need to finish once we´re adults. 

I have always worked on this. It might even be the most important issue in life for me. 

That is why I paint. 

I have found a space I can still feel I´m discovering, not only in shape and forms that are created, but in the discipline of reducing judgement, letting the unknown arise and being surprised by it. Painting brings me into this space.

listening to "Deep blue day" Brian Eno

Back to Vienna, while walking the streets that this time look different. I realise I now know the city quite well and got into the habit of walking to places, rather than through places. I wasn´t looking, observing or taking in anything new. I felt it was my responsibility to change this if I wanted to continue feeling the fascination I always enjoy of having the streets surprise me with new impressions.

I decided initially to walk as if I didn´t know the streets.

 Walk with no direction or have anything specific to do.

 Just observe while walking.

 Let the details speak to me and tell me where to go.

Try to not control the space. Just observe as much as possible.

Go into the details and smaller dimensions.

Go large into the bigger dimensions and see things as if I was a giant.

Alter the elements to other values and perceive.

Set aside understanding of uses and see the items freshly and perceive.

So many ways of seeing that change meanings and perception.

Diffused vision to take away perspective and details.

27^th June. 2017 Vienna. U6
listening to "and then so clear" Brian Eno.

“… in the train I remember to do the exercise, just for the sake of practice still. I look down to the floor looking for details to observe I had never seen. May be looking down so nobody thinks I´m doing anything strange. Looking down I see many feet in sandals. Each foot seems to have an expression and a life of it´s own. Each toe looking out into life after spending most of the year inside a shoe. Some looked happy and smily, other looked shy, other looked twisted in their habit of contention and now weren´t able to spread out and relax.”

“…I find it so much harder to do than I thought at first in theory. Concentration on this task is not easy. Anything serves as a distraction. Don´t be too tough, just keep trying, as much as possible till the muscle of habit builds strength. Even just a few moments of concentration feel timeless and valuable. Just keep trying…”

4^th of July. 2017 Vienna.

“ I have done this exercise in various times since it occurred to me, but I can say today is the first time I seriously maintained the purpose for more than an hour. I left my flat walking randomly and now ended up at the Stadpark where I sat on a bench writing this down.

 I felt the sky was closed, like a blanket over me, dense. Also like walking in a tent. The buildings became jelly like plastic. They were not solid, they jiggled with the evening light and while going around corners or curves seemed to be embracing.

As I walked I felt the ground as sponge and I bounced up at each step.

The air was also quite dense at times, like going through silk.

I felt at one moment as I saw a building with lights on at dusk that the sun was trapped inside the building and was wanting to get out. It was claiming the attention of all those humans walking in the street like me to please open a window and let it out but nobody heard it. All humans moved like shadows with no body. No perception. Just going from one place to the other without really being in the present space. I was only an observer and should not intervin.

I felt cars that were circulating in the street were being pulled like beads on a string.

 I was able to play with making perspective disappear and feel the cars approaching me were like soap bubbles getting larger and then as they went past me, shrunk gradually.

I felt a tree coming towards me to cover and protect me, I saw its lower branches reaching out for me.

7^th of July 2017. Vienna. First district walk and Musikverein.

“Tried doing the exercise in the Musekverein. Kept getting distracted by my emotional irritation towards other tourists. I was sat on the floor in that back, (the cheap entrance). Lots of oriental looking tourists started gathering there also. 
I decided to sit and look at the ceiling and just listen, as seeing was difficult. Turned out I was only able to concentrate in short sequences as I was interrupted visually by the bright light of a mobile phone near me doing selfies and verbal sound over a sound I was highly enjoying. I tried to observe my reaction to this as part of the exercise and it lasted moments before I found myself being angry as opposed to observing myself be angry. 
      The exercise consisted in this case of maintaining an exhausting thread between the detached instances and the identified ones. I was really trying to be stronger in discipline and will than in simple reaction, but wasn´t too satisfied with my efforts.

 The instances I was able to see beyond the place I was in and the situation I was in, I was able to feel how the sound of high pitched sounds visually hit the walls and went in them, filtering, turning into solid memory. The walls are made of solid sound and melody. The high pitched sounds I usually have trouble with because of my hearing, didn´t stricke me as I was expecting. My body was on guard and didn´t get wounded by them, and finally was able to relax and follow them into the walls. Space was filled with sounds made of light creating shadows.

    These were instances interrupted by sounds and lights from the people around me. I also found myself wondering whether they were able to hear the music, as I looked at them I once again saw humans who were actually elsewhere although their body was there.

  In the middle pause I decided to leave. It was too much effort to keep a balance between the music, other noisy tourists and my exercise.

 When I left I walked though some streets in the First Distric. I was only trying to do a bit more of my exercise but found myself once again surrounded by hordes of tourists, and I could only see them in the same light I had just experienced the ones in the Musikverein.So I sat down in a café and wrote all I had experienced. Some of what I have just expressed here. An other part went into a text I reflected on the idea of tourism and it´s impact on the environment, but that is not part of this exercise.”

10^th of July 2017 Vienna.

“…walking again though the city with no direction. Started near Westbahnhof, wondered though seventh and eighth district.  Trying to perceive the streets that surround me as if I didn´t know them. Not understanding the meaning of a building, tree or car, nothing. I first sat down to capture the exercise and once I felt I was in this state I was able to walk though it. I can´t describe much apart from being attracted constantly by the idea that the pointed rooftops and inclined perspectives of the skyline seem to be driven by a need to go up in the sky. Always pointing up, quite different to the flat roofs of Ibiza. Ambicious buildings.”

11th of July 2017, Vienna.

12th of July 2017, Vienna.

12^th of July 2017 Vienna.

“I start walking with diffused vision to get rid of perspective. I see shadows and shapes, light and dark. Sometimes I walk into a darker area and others, more often towards lighter ones.

 I stop this way and then feel I´m being easy on myself by only asking myself on this walk, through some streets I know very well, to just look for details I had never seen.  This is the easier way into this exercise on days I´m feeling lazy. So I walked and just looks into details I had never seen, certain windows, plants, cracks in the pavement or in a glass window. A stain, a mural, a sticker… infinity of objects, one after the next, so much that it ends up by also putting me in a state of being somewhere completely new, like I have never been there. The space turns into a who different place.

The movement of the cars and people around me while I look into static details feel like the frantic movement creating an elastic complicated embroidery that is in constant change, am I in this movement or am I out of it?.”

14^th of July 2017 Vienna. Schönbunn.
listening to "What we left behind" by Robert Rich

“…today I went walking in Schönbunn. The ground captured a lot of my attention. How it felt on my feet. I was looking into the patterns as I walked and saw circles in circle in circles. Grains in grains in grains of sand and dirt.

     The trees were warm and embracing, reaching out around and over me in a network. Pointing my attention in many directions.

      The elements were all alive, vibrating. As I looked up to the sky from under the trees it felt like a way to infinity”

....then Ibiza...

19^th of July 2017 Cala Xuclar. Ibiza

Between travelling back to Ibiza and doing other duties I didn´t make a space for the exercise yet till today. I went to the rocks with a friend and while she fell asleep  I sat with my legs in the water feeling the constant wave braking on me. 
     Initially I was sat there to feel the movement of the water and work with my automatic reaction to each moment the wave hit me, I wanted to breathe and get rid of the reaction in my body. As I was doing this I remembered my exercise and thought this was a good moment to try it again. There is a certain alertness given by contact in the sea. It must be a primitive knowledge of the force it has. I thought this alertness was interesting for the exercise.
 I watched the constant movement in the sea in front of me to the horizon. I felt there was no difference between me and it. I was the mass of sea in movement. The freshness of a new moment and space was evident. Every instant is new, describing it just feels like it kills what I felt.

  I then also did this out of the water, sat on a rock looking into the hill I had to my side.

 As I saw detail in details, distance disappeared, dimension disappeared. Each branch or rock was the centre of a new image, giving a whole different picture, or reading. It was very easy to engage in this exercise in a natural environment.
      I felt that when one stops to look at something with all ones attention in nature, it seems to open up to a smaller detailed one, then from that one the next. Un folding in a sequence that captivates ones attention like a kaleidoscope.”

24^th of July, Ibiza.

"Today I walked listening to the music of Marconi Union in loop “Sleeper” again. It was the first day I did the full exercise from home into town. I know this way so well I thought music would help me to separate me from the known. It was already quite hot although still morning. It took me a good fifteen minutes walking before I was fully concentrated. It happened when I reached the fountain area. I felt I was in an unknown place, similar to Brazil. The details I observed gave me information of run down surfaces, dirty tiles on the floor, harsh colours from souvenir shops with all the plastic lyloes out for tourists. I was able to feel I was in an unknown town just observing what was immediately around me without knowing what might be around the corner.

Buildings appear to be saw edged cutting into the ground, cutting through violently the trees and remaining countryside.

         Buildings are gigantic monsters  looking over the line of trees, looking for the next pray.

In a way I feel  threatened by this white large mass (hotels), attracting little humans into it´s guts to turn them into waste.

          Palm trees have a naughty nature, cheeky. Tall and thin go up above the rest to shake their feathers in the wind and dance, but don´t get caught up with the moving trash at floor level.

Human bodies moving like shadows in harsh colours. No presence.

I observe the emotional effect on me. Don´t stop the sensation, just recognise it.

Walking in this, though this. Wonderland at it´s worst. “

25^th of July 2017. Ibiza.

Walking from the studio to town, (San Antonio) and back.

Ways I know very well.

Finding it quite hard to get away from the known.

I got sensitive to the light, finding disorientation in it.

So I concentrate on looking at the shadows on the ground immediately front of my way.  Shadows are the shape without the content, altered by the point of view, light and ground, easily creating new information.

Once again I find a wonderful tool to play with and enter a new dimension inside the one I thought I knew so well.

Some shadows move and flutter. My attention is attracted to this movement.

Life represented by movement. Movement is telling a story, giving me information. Subjectivity, creating my own story from plain facts. Imagination.

Access to meanings I already know but didn´t recognise till I invented a story that was already part of my unknown.

Today I finally started the Painting after the walk. The large piece I want to work on during this process.

 I had prepared them a while ago but was waiting for the right moment to start the process. Today was cloudy and the studio therefore wasn´t so hot and I could bare the heat.

I prepared two bases to be able to then choose one of two possibilities. It was so intense and wonderful to spend the whole day there and see, finally, what it unveils. One of the pieces was more smooth and didn´t have so many details in the smudges. It was all in yellow and ochre and I decided this will be the Labyrinth.  I then decided that the second piece would be the base to paint the other idea I had in Vienna about the tree and my unlived experiences.

  I ended up playing around with the tree painting because it was easier to manage as an image, and for the moment just look at the yellow one to see what it tells me.

27^th of July 2017. Ibiza.

Walking from the studio to town (San Antonio) and back.

Listening to Robert Rich. Filaments. Majorana.

My attention goes along the horizontal lines drawing me towards the horizon line the sea marks.

 There are layers. The layer of the hill marking the start of my box of reality.

Next layer is white and grey, all along the layer of the sea, over the line of the horizon. This layer is aggressive and harsh, looks like a skin wounds, hives damaging the natural soft layers.

When I got back to the studio and wrote this (and a few more elements that have already been mentioned in other walks), and realised the contrast I had felt between walking in the city in Vienna and the Town in San Antonio. Both are urban areas, but each spoke to me in a very different way. I was seeing each window in Vienna as an eye or a new world to discover. Here I was perceiving an aggressiveness that surprised me. Here I was seeing monsters.

I worked on the piece after writing all my experiences in my notebook. I had ideas come to my mind constantly while I just observed them but didn´t follow them up, kept working on details that don´t reveal anything to try to lead myself to abstractness. Listening to music.

After lunch I worked on the blue base one and worked more on the tree. I got some ideas on how I´ll work.

The blue intricate base is asking for lots of detail and work. I kept seeing faces in all the shapes. All kinds of weird animals and beings. After the pressure in the morning of pushing myself further into the abstract, I let myself just indulge in playfulness and just follow this easy task of illustrating all the faces I could see.

30^th of July 2017. Ibiza.

Walking from the studio to town, (San Antonio) and back.

Today the Palm trees are clapping.

The large Hotels are growing out of the ground like big mushrooms.

All is alive. Bins, post boxes, traffic signs are all expressive, naughty looking.

Cars move as beings, also expressing feeling though their shape.

As I see it all alive like a child´s comic, placing eyes, noses and eyes on it all, I suddenly find a thought cross my mind that then changes the mood of what I´m seeing. I recognise the childlike aspect of this view and turn into the rational adult for a moment, telling myself it´s all my imagination, its actually all dead, we think we are alive and actually just automatically walking though this program and it´s all dead, but we play pretend it´s all alive.

 I finally choose to return to the childlike view of it all being alive because I get interaction. Things communicate with me and tell me things. The other way, I walk isolated, unable to relate. Unless of course I take the active role in a sleepwalking society, then I become the “observer” of this disaster.

For this day and discipline I stick with being the child.

1^st of August. 2017. Ibiza

Walking to and from the beach Es Puetó.

I feel the heat. Quite uncomfortable. Walking and sweating.

Today the space is perceived through my feet and the ground. The images I walk through are conditioned by these sensations.

I feel the ground under my feet has pulse, it´s a stressed pulse by the heat.

2^nd of August. 2017. Ibiza

Walking to the beach and back. Listening to Robert Rich. Filaments. Majorana.

It´s early in the morning. The air is still very fresh and it´s a contrast from yesterday. My perception focuses once again on the shapes and less on the body sensation.

Many perceptions are similar from one day to the next, although each day there is one or more elements my attention goes to more. Today the horizon line kept me concentrated. The rest around it seemed meaningless, like clutter. Those monster buildings eating the essential line of life, eating the line between blues I walk towards and never gets closer.

6^th of August. 2017. Ibiza

I have been walking every day this week in the morning most days, before it gets too hot, just after running. While I run up the hill into the countryside I also remember to “run in different ways of seeing” and I get glimpses of this alternative state of mind. While running I can´t maintain the attention long enough for it to count as the exercise, although I can say I think I have developed a tool I´m now able to access this state consciously.

  When I´m in this alternative state of mind “the unknown”, somehow it feels “out of time” and so having experienced it for short amounts of time make me feel different after, like after the experience of a dream. One knows it a dream but it can affect the way we feel after. This is the same for me with this exercise.

     During my walks I observe my lack of continued discipline when I´m affected by the surrounding influences I judge negatively. I observe this phenomena and acknowledge it.

9^th of August 2017. Ibiza.

Walking listening to “Sleeper” of Marconi Union. It´s become a part of this exercise and at this time it is my ally in this discipline. The perfect combination of breathing rhythm,” monochromatic” the surrounding details into shadows to play with. The music helps me focus and cut out chatter.

Today cracks on walls and in the ground were the focus. I watched one as I walked past and felt it moved passed me. As I continued, the next crack in the asphalt pointed to the next and so on… from one to the next. The streets were made by cracks in the earth and up walls. Surfaces made to let this phenomena appear in many colours and shapes. All the same entity.

16^th of August 2017. Ibiza.

As I walk this week I have done various techniques to keep focused. The one that now has worked interestingly is to focus on the light on the buildings and transport this image to a memory of a space in a town that I didn´t know and fuse both the memory and the place I´m at the present into one different space.  This way I get to be in a new space completely. I lose the logical sense of what I think I might know is in the streets behind. This way, I walk through a street unknowing the space and orientation it is in.

It´s difficult to explain in words.  As I walk through these streets there is a similarity to ones I walked though in Brazil, Mainland Spain, Mexico, etc, so I access a memory of this similar space through the light it has from the sky that is what can bring it to “anywhere” in the world, and believe I´m in that space I walk though when I don´t know the place and fuse it. This way, I work with a continual sensation of being in the unknown.

No conclusions I can capture, I float in the unknowing.

 It is one of the most powerful parts of this experiment.

19^th of August. 2017. Ibiza

Today I have had to go back to just trying to find elements in the space I walk through that I have never seen before. I hadn´t walked for the last two days and I was in a disperse mood, so I had to go back to the easiest of techniques. No high expectations, just find details I have never seen before. It worked. I had yet again a different experience, ending up, again back in the deep state of “new place” I had been practicing so much last week.

26^th of August 2017. Ibiza.

Walking from home to the beach and around a part of the bay.

9:20am. Already very hot. The sea is very flat. I keep getting attracted to the line of the horizon again. This line shows me a series of other parallel lines. My eye is impacted by the horizon line in the sea and keeps finding all the horizontal lines everywhere else that I lay my sight on.

I don´t do to well today at tricking my logical mind. I keep “understanding” the view around me and I try very hard to not comprehend its use in our life.

27^th of August. 2017. Ibiza.

I walk listening to Sleeper track in a loop, over and over again. I must have walked for about 45 minutes and now I sat down in the Coffee 5.0 Hawaii to write while I have a coffee.

Today I have been very attracted to movement this morning. As I walked and felt the waving trees, stretching vehicles, moving bodies, and I am walking in “static-ness”. It felt more than once as if it was all flying by me as if on a film. I wasn´t feeling my body when this happened. I was detached from everything, myself included.

This experience when it happens leaves me feeling weird for a long period of time, sometimes the whole day. This bodily detachment makes it hard for me to relate to others. On one hand I find it special on the other there is a part of me that feels sad or uncomfortable with this feeling.

  If I tried to rationalise it to be able to explain how it feels it is almost as if I felt nothingness was sad. It might be when my rational human side meets my spiritual detached side and the human part feels sad to loose the lovely things its attached to and enjoys. I might be totally wrong but it feels something like that.

30^th of August. 2017. Ibiza.

In the past two sessions of walking I have felt this weirdness I described earlier. Nothingness. It´s hard to write anything about this because I can´t capture o remember the phenomena that happened (if it did) during the walking. I just end up kind of not feeling anything. A part of me isn´t happy with this, I feel slightly out of it.

Once back in the studio I wasn´t engaged in my painting part either, I felt kind of stuck in the Labyrinth painting.

I decided to go into the Tree of Possibilities one and I started painting as a fiddle, just repeating patterns and little by little I was engaged in the playfulness again.

I realise I need a certain balance between pushing my nature slightly on the edge of comfort but also having it´s playtime. In the playtime I get so much information I value from my subconscious. If the discipline is too concentrated on pushing my limits I can loose the motivation or enter a state I´m not ready to stomach for so long.

1^st of September 2017. Ibiza.

I experience automatic recognition of my surroundings.

 I use diffused vision technique and bring it all into greys.

I automatically find myself valuing.

Walking through the space created by the phenomena creating shapes.

Light and dark, shadows move, shapes shift and imagination rapidly associates one part with the other.

Shapes, as they turn into recognisable objects create a flow of thoughts communicating through the use and function they have,

they talk to me in this way.

I diffuse my vision and take their possibility to communicate from them and turn into a mass of greys,

 where everything is the same,

 all is made essentially of the same mass.

Moment of realisation while I do this: I discover though this experience that as I see it all being the same mass I am also a part of this, so I am what I am surrounded by. The qualities that define me as an individual are just my “uses” and “functions” I have in my interaction with my surrounding. These are all just ways of communication.

I therefore realise the importance of Communication in this world I live in If I want to be in it. I need to know how to interact. On an automatic basis we learn certain ways. If we really become conscious of this power and ability and how it works we might be able to reach a higher refined and more fulfilling interaction. Food for thought. Centre of gravity question I now also carry.

4^th of September 2017. Ibiza.

The Labyrinth, created by the erosion of habit.

 Once and over again over the same paths,

Creating in this way,  space in matter.

Life forms in movement over the surface of the rock,

Humans, animals, water…whatever it might be, all in motion,

all following a natural path,

given basically by gravity.

This Labyrinth has ways that have been created by particles that not only have carved the surface, some have penetrated under the first coat of matter, creating new connecting paths, invisible to the eye.

5^th of September 2017. Ibiza.

Today I can finally feel I can “see” a primary version of what this Labyrinth I´m working on will look like. Might this be also an illusion and my need to get a grip on the knowingness.

Yesterday´s session in the studio revealed a concept I can understand and this gives me a ground to work on, but I still struggle to keep in the unknown.

Might be juggling between both stated. Today I find myself asking questions of logic.

How does one move through this labyrinth? Where does it lead me?

Are the ways it takes me though more valuable than the pace I go towards?

How do the spaces I find myself in speak to me?

Some shapes are organic and other are manmade, what is inorganic about humans? Mind? Rationality?

I see a difficult terrain to move over. Sometimes the grooves go down deep and are dark and then at times the path brings me to a hill top from where I can view the larger picture I´m in.

I see various perspectives playing together but all tied together by gravity.

The importance of gravity. Remember.

7^th of September 2017. Ibiza.

Something changed since last Monday when I started to perceive the Labyrinth with logic. I now see some sense in it and I might need to discipline myself away from that, as I do while walking. It´s like when one understands something, it´s really hard to pretend you don´t understand it.

 The key tool to get myself away from this habit I guess is to try to find a small flaw in my belief or see the reverse reality. Unbalance the belief.

I now am able to walk with good long moments of detachment and otherworldliness quite on demand. When one tool doesn´t work the next one does, a technique for each state of mood I might be in. When I get my notepad to write it all down, there is very little I can recall to put into words, it seems to go like a dream that fades back in the past “now”. When I get into the work on my piece I call Labyrinth I find my mind is active and playful and tricks me into phenomena.  Last month it was different. When I got back from walking I was able to write down more of my impressions and then paint out of habit, just following shapes and shades without my thought taking over. Now the nature of the process has inverted although I try to keep the same discipline.

 I also know I´m close to having to having to start a work that will take up most of my time and I won´t be able to dedicate as much time to this discipline and I think I feel distracted by this thought when I´m actually painting.

8^th of September. 2017. Ibiza.

I keep seeing words floating though the ways of the Labyrinth.

I have tried to ignore this image or impulse for the last two sessions but now I realise I might have to recognise this idea to let it leave. If I repress the impulse it will get more prominent and I´ll think it´s important when it might not be.

More than the fact of words or no words I´m more interested in the aspect of repression it revealed to me.

Painting the Labyrinth. Pause.

I feel the rock,

Gravity,

Passing of time,

Time that is somehow ephemeral,  leaves its trace though the ways in the labyrinth.

Time here is not linear

Time overlaps tricking its way out of space.

9^th of September. 2017. Ibiza.

After I come back from my walking  in different ways of seeing I sit in the studio and my attention goes to the painting.

 As I look at it I find myself thinking that what I call a Labyrinth is in constant movement and might end up as something totally different. I must also listen to what the image that is evolving has to tell me.

20^th September 2017 . Ibiza.

It´s been more than a week now since I have been able to do this discipline.

I have done it sometimes in short sequences while walking to and from somewhere but not having the space to write it all down and then paint.

 I have had to spend time on my other work so when I get a while it is easier to spend some time painting the Tree of Possibilities, less stress on me, less discipline.

Today, though, I was able to find the space in time to do this.

I went walking into town and back.  I first felt it was difficult to concentrate, partly because I hadn´t done this for a long time, and the other reason being my phone was broken and I had no access to my music in the earphones while walking to help me detach.

I felt the focus of attention found it´s strength in my hands. I felt my attention go over all my body to try to find a sensation to connect with what might help me concentrate and I found my hands. They seem to be physically reaching out in tension to concentrate, as if to listen with attention.

As I walked back and went under a part of pine trees I had the sensation the trunks in front of me were inviting stairways up to the darkness. It was dusk, still a bit light. The trees seemed like black holes into the sky, the galaxy and the trunks were the stairways up to reach it.

29^th of September 2017. Ibiza.

I haven´t been able to go back to working on the Labyrinth painting since the 20^th of September. Today I was able to Walk in different ways of seeing for a while and I had a perception I remember. I seem to see many vans moving by me on the road. They all seemed like snails to me. Lorries and vans, all carrying produce on a kind of factory distribution belt, the road, sliding past me to a previously assigned destiny.

Just a note, no time to paint unfortunately.

5^th of October 2017. Ibiza.

Still no time to paint and follow up this project, it looks like I have to wait till January 2018 to go back seriously to it.

  I still walk in different ways of seeing as much as I can, even if I can´t do the writing and painting after.

Tonight as I walked back from class along the promenade in the dark night I could just see the lights of the hotels, streets and cars. The sea in the bay was very still and the reflection of these lights created long fine stilts the buildings stand on. The Palm trees act as darts that have landed from far away.

I diffuse my sight as I walk and the lights go into different shapes, somehow I read letters

2nd of January 2018. Ibiza.

Back on the tracks finally. Feels strange now.

I randomly did the exercise at times, over the past couple of months, to not loose track fully, but now I actually went out and did it with just this purpose I realise how mild the experience is when it is done for a longer amount of time.

Once again I helped myself get in tune by using the headphones and playing “Sleeper”on a loop.

During this walk I worked on finding details that I had never seen before. Certain things hanging in balconies or following the edges of buildings and finding grooves or cables. 

Details, details, details. No pressure on the fact of being meditative, letting myself reach that point thorough “boredom”. Little by little almost without me noticing I find myself reaching into an “anyspace-place” I consciously lay with this perception for a while. 

As I focus on meaningless details in the way I could be anywhere in the world. My memory invokes other places I have been and I feel really there also. This experience got me thinking after I had finished walking. I felt I had travelled without leaving my daily place. Like a strong dream where you swear you were ACTUALLY there, experiencing.

The painting session was very good. My mind kept floating in the sensations and I seem to just paint automatically. Doodling into the Labyrinth.

5^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

I walked out today in the same area as usual, nearby my studio.

I didn´t have the headphones on today.

It was difficult to concentrate again.

 I rescued the sensation I got from my last walk and also disciplined myself to just look at the details. Today I kept getting side tracked by the thoughts that these elements brought. This always happens to some extent but I can usually watch the thoughts, but today I seem to keep rescuing myself miles away in thought and not knowing how I got there. It seem to take hold of me.

    I tried diffused vision for most of the time left and it felt unknown and undefined. I kept wanting to “understand” the smudges and feeling uneasy with the space.

   Overall it wasn´t a very fulfilling experience today. This might have been an awkwardness I carried from before and was unable to leave out of it.

Painting was supported by extremely loud music, may be trying to shut myself up. Mind chatter going on and on in loops. Unsolved issues munching away my energy. So clearly so!

8^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

Over the weekend I also did a very small 15 minute walk before painting and it was very good. It made me think that continuity is more valuable that the amount of time in a session. It´s like training a muscle. Once you are in shape you can benefit from smaller sessions also. It seem like in 15 minutes I was fully engaged, when the time before a whole hour wasn´t enough.  I guess that to do this properly I have to resolve issues somehow so they don´t interfere with the work.

Anyway, today, I did a full hour session. I also went for the “detail searching technique” and it took me to a space of puzzles.

It started by concentrating on the patterns on the pavement of the promenade. One piece fitting into the next. My attention went on and on, from the paved path to the buildings and small walls that meet and more and more pieces all fit one into the next. It all felt like this, wherever I looked.

Puzzles, more puzzles. All man made. We walk though and on a space organised into spaces, definitions, where one thing ends and the next starts. Some are cluttered and other give more sensation of space.

I walked with a sensation of having discovered a revelation.

 Once I sat down to write all this down in my diary I rationalised these sensations and perceptions as I usually do. I looked up to the sky and over to the sea and it´s horizon and couldn´t find the same puzzle. I guess it is also there, well, I know it is there but it wasn´t evident to the naked eye. I know we only imitate nature.

When I got home I sat in my garden and I also looked for the puzzle sensation and there I was able to “see” it. The bark on the trees, shapes in the leaves, etc…

The puzzle represents the balance. Once we move one element, it affects all the rest and it is no longer the same. Here I find myself returning to one of the founding ideas of the painting of the Labyrinth. We are all a part of the network that connects us all and affects us.

10^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

It´s cold. Colder than usual. I feel like I´m walking though Vienna.

 I walk with headphones on hidden under the woolly hat. Today it´s “What we left behind” from Robert Rich.

I walk in and out streets nearby the bay.

I focus on diffused vision and get the space as a sensation.

Light and dark. Heat and cold. The air is cold, then the sun strikes out strongly from behind a cloud and burns. I sense a conversation between warmth and cold, like two alive entities each having their turn to express their word. I listen to them though the music I hear, it all becomes part of the same perception.

The puzzle effect also reaches out to me again but I don´t follow it too much today. It came more as a memory than a path I walk though. Each day even when experiences are similar, they can be totally different, just depends where the attention is focused on. I observe that fact and am fascinated by it´s power.

15^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

Today I walked into town from the studio. Headphones playing Marconi Union “Sleeper” in loop.

  Once again the air is cold and I´m wearing warm clothes.

  I´m taken in by a line today. I find myself following with my sight a line in the ground. I feel as if I am colouring it in with laser as I follow it up and down a wall and back into the pavement, zigzagging between the tiles.

Following a line as far as it will go I find is a new experience and very different to what I have done so far. Somehow it feels quite distracting and too close to having a “thing to do” . I decide to stop that and the only way away from lines is to walk along the beach, so my steps take me there.

As I walk along an extremely tame shoreline. Just a few soft waves folding over the hard sand, bringing in seaweed residue from last weeks storms. Little brown flakes float in clouds being washed up  with each fold, creating with each movement a new paintings. I spend most of the session here just watching the shapes form and wash away. Movement spreading elements in random shapes. I find this hypnotising.

As I walk home the sun is shining strongly in my face and I feel like two bodies in one. All my backside must be about 10ºC below my front side that is taking in the sun that is so warm. 

Again cold versus warm in conversation, each putting though their point of view and power. 

I carry them both in me, giving them both a space. (even though I might get a cold! Ahhahaha!)

19^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

 Verticality.

My attention today goes to all vertical objects.

 I see them communicating amongst themselves.

 Making an effort to go above the average and reaching out to an other plane of communication.

Objects grow high and rise to a different plane to exchange ideas that below can´t be heard because of the constant chatter.

Some rise up straight and others more crooked. Sign posts are clear and simple, symbolists.

Trees are more complex and have so much more to say in many ways.

 I see chimneys sending smoke out, burning the old and sending out a brand new message in particles that will then bring new life.

The old information from the lower realm turns into new ones who travel up to the higher ones.

 Low and High.

 As above so below.

Verticality speaks to me.

I also see it as a sound graphic.

Vertical-ness is high pitched in sound.

Today I specially tune into the high sounds that take me up high very quickly and back down.

Contrast.

Loud and scratchy to high and space.

22^nd of January 2018. Ibiza.

(Listening to Marconi Union. Sleeper.)

 Light shines in different directions,

 I see connecting lines of light

Seems as if they create the matter I can see.

A touch of light creates the objects I see

Thin beams of light bounce off and hit on another object

It now is there to see

Magic lies in light

Magic

Light

These two words seem to embody a lot of the experience I Had today as I walked.

As I found myself writing in my booklet, the words I was finding to try to explain this didn´t seem too perfect.

Almost like trying to write down a dream and as you put it into words you feel as though you are looking the essence of the experience and it is changing with the words you find to describe it.

It comes from the un-logical mind, and when trying to fit into our space-time continuum it fails to represent what it was.

24^th of January. 2018.  Ibiza.

Night walk. Just Walking in different ways of seeing and not then painting the labyrinth.

Light and dark play the game on me.

Light again, but this time in greater contrast of creation.

Most of the walking was experienced through movement of light catching my attention, like a TV screen in a room that pulls my sight over to it constantly.

At one point I stop walking and stare into a darker space into a field. 
The shapes drawn by light become, little by little, (as they get further from me, and my surrounding source of light) more abstract and fainter, till they turn into black.

I feel the black space is uncomfortable, uneasy. 
The sensation in my gut, as I look into this space a while longer feels like a deep hole, infinity, nothingness. 
My sight recovers the view of shapes and feels better with this distracting shapes I can “play” with, and interpret .

  I come away from this Walk with one important idea to  explore.

Darkness.

 I realise I never go there voluntarily and I feel I might find some interesting feelings there.

I think an interesting place to sit and meditate would be the entrance of a tunel, where light goes gradually into dark. 
I would be in the light looking into the dark.

It was very clear to me the game moving lights plays on me when walking in such a contrasted space.

26^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

Daytime.( Listening to “Permeate the Divide” by Robert Rich.)

The most noticeable aspect of todays walk was the strong sensation of Gravity pulling my feet to the ground, as if I had magnets in my feet  or mud absorbed my stepping. 

I was walking most of the time on paved ground and none of that was possible but I felt a great heaviness in the feet.

As I looked around as I walked I felt all the other objects grounded, routed.

I felt a great presence of life under the ground.

 Ground being alive, palpitating.

Me walking on an alive ground that attracts me down to it.

27^th of January 2018. Ibiza.

Daytime.( Listening to “Permeate the Divide” by Robert Rich.)

I had spent many many hours lately walking with the music of Marconi Union, the theme, Sleeper. It had become an anthem for this walking. It now had the power to pull me into the exercise each time, just out of association. Even when I heard it at home, it brought this mood to me.

  As I had just received the music of Robert Rich´s latest work I wanted to experiment with it while walking in different ways of seeing. Yesterday was the first day I tried it and it took me a while to concentrate.

 I had used the “searching for unnoticed details” and blurred vision to try to connect. Finally it seemed to click while listening to a track I then realised was called “Permeate and Divide”. 
Not sure if the track did it or if the constant effort just took off at that moment but the fact is that was the opening point. I then couldn´t listen to other tracks so I continued by playing this one in a loop.

  I valued this experience more today. So I decided to go out and walk on just this one track one and over again, see what happened.

The ground was once again the main focus. I still felt this gravity pulling but much lighter than yesterday. Today it was more like just being well aware of the contact with the ground.

The shapes in the pavement move as I walk and turn into one or the other puzzle of geometric figures. All fitting perfectly into each other.

Lines draw shapes,

shapes draw figures,

figures draw limits,

limits keep me comfortable,

comfort sets my alarm.

My alarm tells me to be aware.

Awareness unfolds a different world in the one I  was living.

Awareness is Presence

Presence is present

The present is inspiring

Inspiration is now, discovery, fascination, now.

After this, I just remember how many times I have been asked, what do I get inspired by to paint. I think this long line of words could be one possible answer.

29^th of January 2018. Ibiza

Daytime.( Listening to “Permeate the Divide” by Robert Rich.)

Again I go out into my labyrinth to listen while walking the same streets that once again become new ones to me.

Today I also feel the ground under my feet pulsing, as if I walked on a breathing being.

 My brain is very talkative, more than usual, going over this and that. The body sensation of walking on an alive being makes me think of all the dimensions of nature, the cosmos, us in it, ecology, plastic waste and etc etc…

I decide to just keep looking for new detail in the visual field, one, then an other, then an other and so on, keep a rhythm of findings going that will work to discipline myself to not get stuck in an idea.  It works. After a while, I just seem to be listing findings. A towel on a balcony, a broken corner, a little window with a pink curtain, a blue line I had never seen, a cat, etc.. It turns into a rhythm to not think. Much closer to what I aim for.

As I look back on the walks, I must say, even if I walk though similar paths and know them very well, each time I seem to have a very different experience and I guess that has to do with choosing or finding a point of focus that makes the rest of the context take on a different meaning. Almost like travelling each day to a different place.

2^nd of February. 2018. Ibiza.

Walking on wet ground. Wet pavements.

Puddles are still.

Puddles are windows to an other dimension.

Puddles are my doorway in, today.

I see reflection create shapes, obviously inspired by what is directly over them but they get to be interpreted into the puddle language.

When the puddle receives a small impact in any of its surface or vibrated from under, the ripples move the image and changes the message.

Puddles could act as mirrors, but they have a personality of their own.

Water is fluid with no beginning and no end, it just fill into the shape it´s held in, by solid matter. 

The reflection in the still water created by shadows divide the space up into different sections. 

The doorway puddle that reflects shapes becomes more attractive than the one that just reflects the sky.

 I get a doorway into the sky on the ground.

The sky is too empty and vast. It feels to far away.

So, exactly this is why I stop and take more time to gaze into the sky puddle. This is how I describe it now. Right back when I was doing this I get the feeling of looking though skylight .

5^th of February 2018. Ibiza.

Listening to “Biode” once again.

Walking over the sand in the beach and I´m drawn constantly to the shapes the sand reveals from the movement of humans, animals or objects over it.

I walk along the beach because it´s where I don´t find other people walking. Theay are all walking along the promenade. People can be a distraction when I´m not hiding behind my sunglasses I don´t have with me today.

It´s cloudy.

Today, as I just said, my attention is mainly on the ground.

Shapes left by moving bodies.

I realise I recognise the meaning of these shapes and how they were produced. It is precisely that knowledge I want to shut down.

How can I just look at it without understanding it´s a consequence?

How can I just look at the shapes themselves with no understanding?

I stop walking and need to just pick any section of the sandy beach and choose it to look at it.

Fixedly look at just one patch. Concentrate on one part. No exploring, just there.

Look and look and look and look…. till I´m bored with it, really bored with looking at the same spot.

Just when I get bored something goes “click” inside. My boredom triggers playfulness in my mind. I start to “imagine”, play with the image, create.

My mind has found joy in monotony. It finds a way to create phenomena out of nothing.

 When I think back at the experience as I write, I realise how important for me this little discovery is. There is a great clue to how creativity works in this.

Monotony can be the repetition of something over and over again.

Say it’s a shape or a sound if it were music. The repetition of this at first might seem boring, but over time, it creates a new shape, a new sound or melody. So, in itself it takes on a new meaning. It turns into something else.

If we follow this process, we can each time take a larger view, each time going out further and further, to embrace a larger picture.

The vision comes away from a concentrated point and expands out into infinity.

Structure.

Structures that support greater structures.

We capture the dimension we are in, the one that fits our space.

Fractals come to mind, might be an other image that explains this understanding.

12^th of February 2018. Ibiza.

I have walked a couple of times during the week and my attention seems to be attracted to patterns.

Shapes within shapes.

Structures in larger structures.

What is holding all phenomena  into shape in space?

What is containing the shape that creates space?

Even when I went walking somewhere without doing this exercise I found myself looking in this way.

What is the architecture of matter? What sustains shape?

 I hold this question as a mystery.

I guess there is a physics answer to that and I know about it but it is still slightly beyond my grip and I like to keep the fascination awake.

14^th of February 2018. Ibiza.

So, again, I find myself walking along the sandy beach. Taking in the ephemeral shapes left by the transit of moving bodies over it.

I´m taken to movement.

The waves change the shapes of the sand constantly.

Time.

Change.

Movement.

Art.

I have an understanding that art might be the trace movement leaves upon matter in time.

It might be because we can only acknowledge  the trace a moment leaves, and not the instant in itself.

I recognise the yearning to be present in the present is what might make me appreciate art as such.

Seeing art as the physical embodyment of an instant, memory.

Memories are moments that have left an impact in us at many levels.

Memories create a space or image we can access time and time again.

Memories are art forms of the brain.

We have created wonderful technology to store and record this.

Film, sound recordings, photography…

All of them are part of our creativity and self-enhancement.

But…

…the more we use these devices and rely on their memories the less we use our own original muscle.

Awareness during experience created powerful memories engraved in ourselves.

Awareness while walking is what I practice.

These thoughts I write down after come from that space, even if while I´m experiencing them the rationality isn´t working in this way.

I´m connecting the experience I have felt later with the explaining of it, turning it into words that teach me what I have just experienced. This way, it seems, the experience is engraved deeper connecting the different parts of me otherwise at lose ends with each other. One part teaches the other. It´s a wonderful experience.

16^th of February. 2018. Ibiza.

I walk along the beach again.

 I use diffused vision to enter the state of awareness. Off and on. Switching from one state to the other.

I feel the boundaries in clear normal sight in contrast with the loss of them in the diffused vision moments.

Boundaries give a sense of security.

Somehow limits give a sense of comfort.

Just like children need limits to get a grasp on measures, we need them for orientation.

 I feel the limits move between the sea and the sand.

With movement, flow, the limits are still there, between the different elements.

I play during this time with the perception of the limits between the elements and then diffuse the limits with vision, once and again.

19^th of February. 2018. Ibiza

I walk on streets today, in town.

Listening to “permeate and divide” by Robert Rich, again.

I start by just looking for details I have never seen in streets I know very well and little by little I enter a new space within this one.

The awareness of these details changes the space  I walk though, just as if I was, yet again walking though a new space, like when travelling.

As I sit down to write the experience down, translating it into words I find myself thinking about presence in the present and a conversation I had with someone the other day comes to mind in this state. They were telling me about the importance of being present . I was thinking, how easy is it for us to trick ourselves in thinking we are present when we aren´t really? I work on this awareness and it is really difficult to capture. I felt that somehow it might be linked to letting go.

Not just letting go with no previous work or pure intention, but more like after an intense discipline and intention, letting go after that will possibly release you in the now. There is no brain to rationalise that instance just then, no camera or film to record it. It´s just stored in the harddrive  of experience.

I guess I know I´m trying to capture the uncapturable. I know it and still hold that intention, stretching awareness somehow.

20th of February 2018. Ibiza.

Yet again walking along the sand.

Just walking and looking to the ground, observing the limits again created between the water and the land.

My vision goes up a little, the sun is shining brightly, specially over the line that divides solid from liquid.

I find myself walking along the dividing line

Walking between dimensions.

Walking on the thin line that divides space.

Between matter and space, between the flow and the solid shape.

One affecting the other, shaping each other.

I walk on the limit between two worlds.

Walking on the edge of the world I know

Peeping into the one I´m learning, the new one

The one that each day is new

26^th of February 2018. Ibiza.

I´m walking at night

I´m walking listening to Biode again.

It´s very windy, so windy it´s hard to keep walking straight.

I´m walking along the promenade again.

I keep diffused vision to feel the space and the lights and dark play with my attention creating warm spaces and cold ones.

When I´m in this state there is one thing that captures my attention more than anything. I can´t keep my sight off the sea, there is something weird with it.

I realise there are no shadows reflecting on it.

It is usually a mirror to all the town lights and today there is a black abyss of nothingness.

I stop and look.

It´s as if there is nothing.

I take the earphones off and realise it now all makes sense.

The sea is in rapid movement, as I hear it roar it makes sense to see no reflection on it in the night.

I decide to put the earphones back on and keep walking by this abyss I had discovered before understanding.

Now I sat down after this walk to write and look back on the experience I start thinking.

 The trick the sea played on my perceptions tells me that this might mean the faster we move though life, the less we can reflect our surrounding. When a body moves past us really fast there is a point at which we don´t really see it. This makes me think that if I want to benefit from the influence of my surrounding and merge with it I must move slow, with attention and let it rub into me.

6th of March 2018. Ibiza.

I am walking though streets I know and find it hard to go past that point .

Diffused vision is not helping today.

I play the game of finding objects and details I had never seen.

A chimney, a plant growing out of the asphalt road, a stone in the rock wall, branch of a bush, some rubbish by the bin, a stain in the path, the shape of the stain, the shape of the stain related to the squashed chewing gum creating a new shape that tells me it wants to be an insect, it´s an insect created from trashed products that comes alive to jump on the grass growing out of the pavement. This grass will be eaten and disappear showing up a whole different picture of the angle of the paved way. This one brings me to a shadow that comes to life as a gigantic bird that takes off in a flight to sit on top of that building that is no longer that. Now it´s a cage full of people living in it and the bird wants to open the roof door and let them all float out like balloons full of helium. I see them float up and disintegrate into the blue sky, free of their bodies.

I wrote this in a kind of trance. The first part being a description of what happened and then it turned into a story to describe the link between one image and the next. I reread this and wondered where this came from, specially the part about the people being liberated by the bird into the sky. I recently over that past two days heard of two deaths of very appreciated people and this might have been in my subconscious.

8^th of March 2018. Ibiza.

I´m walking initially just perceiving space though diffused vision. It´s a dull morning and drizzling rain. There are no features that stand out  from the other. All is monochrome, like a black and white film.

Movement catches my attention mostly during this walk. The passing of cars and people create a movement I feel in diffused vision is similar to the fast strokes of a paintbrush over a canvas at it´s initial stage.

These movements are creating a residue and this is what marks the labyrinth though which I am currently walking. The lines of energy that whizz past create paths otherwise not perceivable.

For a time I embody into a cat, mouse or some small mammal that runs into the city. I feel the space as it might feel it. An unknown space one can move though only if one is very aware of the strong energy lines and spaces. This will help it survive.

Perception of space and movement.

11of March

Today I walk for a long time.  I decide to walk across some hills and a valley, from my home to the home of some friends. I know the path. It is not randomly walking. I use this two and half hour walk to exercise this discipline of mine.I spend half the time negotiating with myself debating wether I should keep this discipline on this walk or should I just relax. I seem to give time to do both.
The space is very open, fields on either side, no cars or people and a large blue sky above. Immensity.
This feeling of immensity distracts me from the sensation I usually have of being in a Labyrinth. There are no boundaries, no paths.
I get the real sensation of paths being an artificial creation.

The more I get into the forest the stronger the smells of the herbs, pine, rosemary, thyme and juniper.
These are the moments I let go and inhale profoundly and I find myself smiling.
The steps I take are easy and fluid.
The path I step on is known. I try to not recognise it.
In pure nature I realise the magic of what surrounds me is still present.
The trees, plants, stones, dirt, leaves etc...are all a representation of what I name them to be. I relaise they are not one given thing I need to suspend it´s use.
It´s a true element in itself and still carries a mystery to be resolved, even if we know so many of them anyway.
A group of trees take on a single personality.
A rock, a green furry bush and some dry twigs create a new being.
The sky is high and I am small.
The paths in this labyrinth are organic and relative to each other, imprecise.
In a way, as I walk on this ground I am also walking though the paths in my own body.
I am no different to this palpitating alive surface.

12th of March

I walk from and to my studio. Streets, cars, doors, windows, people, dogs and light.
Listening to Sleeper, Marconi Union.
No willingness to do this but I have discipline, so I go out and walk. Just make myself search for details I have never seen.
One , the other and the next, just one after the next, like a collection of stamps I accumulate images with no attachment or judgement. In a way I feel "bored" by this.
I keep going. Walk. Just keep making myself search for details I have never seen. Accumulate images.
From this mood I suddenly shift into a softness and pleasurable state of fascination when one, then two then three of these details seem to be saying something, creating a sentence. I find meaning in the unknown.
It feels like a dream, now, after returning from the walk as I write, I need to capture this without rationalising it too much.
The first image  can recall that spoke in this sentence was the corner of a aluminium and glass window, then the corner of a part of a balcony, then a corner in a wooden palet, and then a brick standing up by a fence made of cement. This cement is breaking in just a similar way. Each corner told me about the limit of it´s space, going back into the next space in the same angle, into yet again the same shape. I found the sentence telling me I was moving though corners looking for rectangles, that I will finally break.

19^th of March

I walk the streets I know so I concentrate on the ground immediately under my feet as I walk. There is fast movement of the ground, rolling under me as I take the same step time and time again. I get the sensation of being a hamster in a wheel, just taking steps as life slips under me.

As I do this I keep a sense of attention, from diffused attention over the objects around me, may that be people walking, lamp posts or steps.

I get a great sensation of the illusion of matter around me. I go deep into the detachment of the space I am in.

I look up and break the concentration as I reach a zebra crossing. I feel surprised to recognise where I´m at. It´s as if the lights have suddenly been put on after watching a movie in the cinema.

Today was a strong experience, took me further out from phenomena.

28^th of March

Sat on a train in Barcelona heading out of the city towards a different town.

I´m sat with my back to the direction I´m heading. Looking out the window aimlessly at all the view I have just passed though and watch it fade away into the distance. I´m listening to music in my headphones, My Brightest Diamond.

I look in horror at the size of the city and the dimension of what I see as a human disaster. Factories, trucks, concrete, waste, etc… I then remember my Walking in Different Ways of Seeing and decide to do this exercise and feel the space beyond judgement, if possible.

I get into a loop feeling looking out o the window at the rapidly disappearing views of mass changing shapes.

I find some beauty in this or that image, though what initially looked ugly before I did this exercise. I even was inclined to reach out for my camera and try to capture it and I told myself to just retain it in my memory and then write, to keep concentrating on my discipline. I tell myself I can always take the pics on my way back and now just let myself have the experience. I´m happy with that deal with myself so I can just be there for the rest of the trip.

I feel the importance of light in this trip, showing shapes that rapidly change shape and size.

On my way back on this same train I sit on the same side but this time I sit looking towards the direction we are heading. In a way I sat in the same seat, so to say,

This time I had no intention in keeping to the discipline. I just wanted to “catch” the spaces I had experienced on the way there so I could keep a real image of them apart from my memory turned into words (that many times is not too accurate).

I was finding this simple task so difficult. I had the camera in hand, ready, I saw the same spaces and they no longer looked the same. I was wondering what was going on.

 I then realised that depending on the attention power and state of mind spaces can be perceived in totally different ways.

I also had another understanding. As when travelling looking towards the direction which I´m heading, the future time is whizzing past and I get no time to digest or feel what I´m experiencing.

When I sat looking towards what I have just passed, the past, I´m able to fir everything into context much better. I feel I can get a better grip on myself and where I am. The past helps understand the present, it helps build the picture. The velocity is slower. Or that is what it seems.

This understanding though an observation of physics made me think one thought further. I felt that truly physics and the relationship between the elements that surround us is my true teacher. I have always felt very spiritual and grateful to a higher force or mystery I don´t understand and that fascinates me, nature. I was now confirmed this once more. When someone asks me where do I get my inspiration for my art. I get it from the observation of the world that surrounds me. I prefer nature but when that is not possible, I get it from any surrounding. Many messages are hidden waiting to be discovered and spoken to.

An other of the experiences I remember feeling while doing the exercise on my way there was when I looked at the rail tracks.

At one point I was looking down at the tracks from the line that would go in the other direction, and as it got closer to the city many more appeared, and as I kep my attention on the one closest to me I could also see the next two and the further they are the slower they move. Each track moved at a different velocity, and kept the shame shape of perspective. All this information created a film I watched for a while till suddenly it tuned black. With this black I got a mirror, got a view of where I was. White shades on a black shiny surface.

Suddenly, again, the track reappear and show the same film. Then finally, again, the black mirror returns.

Somehow a story was told. A story is the relationship between different elements that reflect back what I´m able to understand. New understanding can possibly be attained while not searching for precisely that. The new info is stored in the subconscious, preparing the conscious mind for the assimilation of it. It then feels like we have just discovered it, but subconsciously it was already there. I think. It´s an intuition.

30^th of March

Walking through Borne in Barcelona. Listening to Sleeper. Music to access fast this state.

Many many many people walking the streets. I find it difficult to feel the space ignoring their presence and just feel them as moving blobs. I somehow don´t feel comfortable doing that. So I indulge in looking into each face and collecting stamps as I have previously done on my walks. These are people I don´t know. I can just take in their image one by one. I see families and get engaged in quick looks of similar appearances in their faces or ways of walking.

I feel the people walking past me, some close some far, and each one carries an electricity, or an energy. I feel this more and more as I walk more and more through these crowded streets. Some people carry angles, other softness, others shine bright, others are dark and others are warm.

The street feels like it lights up in different colours, but its not really a colour in itself but a warmth or coldness created by the people who are moving though it.

A strong wind starts to blog, really strong. It is so obvious because everything starts flying around and people are all holding on to flapping jackets, hoods and hats. I sit on a high space and watch people walk by. I look at eyes now. I collect pairs of eyes in my retina. I find they are a complex space to travel into. Instances of lives, experiences all captured in them. Pairs of eyes talk to me and tell me stories. I don´t get involved in the details, just the mood is enough to get a taste.

I had never had this experience before. Not like this. I have a whole new idea coming from here. A new experiment I´m willing to try.

17th of August 2018.

CONCLUSIONS AND THOUGHTS

It has been a few months since I have updated this blog.

Life has it´s ways. Circumstances change and one has to adapt to them.

I had to quit doing this exercise in April because I got two months of a lot of work and had to sacrifice my artwork and investigation to be able to continue surviving in this world of matter.

            I believe in the fact that, although I didn´t follow the discipline of walking every day and then painting, I did keep a daily space in me for it, to contemplate how I feel about this experience. Take this break to look back on the way this has affected me.

            This kind of information doesn´t come just at once by answering a question, it comes though visiting and revisiting the space and each time, getting a part of the puzzle to understand.

            One of the most outstanding aspects I have noticed is a general sense of feeling alienated in social situations. I´m not sure if I like that too much.  When I was a child I wasn´t very good at social interaction but as I grew up, I taught myself to be better at this. I put effort into it and interest.  Now, I realise that for the past few months I have been struggling to feel comfortable in social situations.

            I do well in smaller gatherings where I can focus on someone or a subject. When there is a larger gathering and there is chatter I find myself just watching like an outsider.

            Having observed this over a large number of times, I am now very aware of it, and try to make the extra effort to “believe” what is going on. (It´s similar to watching a bad movie where you can detect all the exaggeration and flaws. It is really hard to get into a movie like that because you can´t concentrate on the content. )

            I find myself working more alone, although I make myself go out and interact.  I think this experiment will only be successful when I would be able to switch consciously and deliberately from one state to the other on my demand. So, work in progress.

            There is one social situation where I seem to snap out of it, that is when I´m with my children´s art classes. I might get there feeling like that, then, the interaction with them is here and now and is engaging.

            During the months of April and May I would sometimes do the walking exercise while I was walking somewhere anyway. No painting after.

Then I went to California for just over a month in June/July.

I never did this exercise while I was there.

I often thought of it and never had the space to do it.

I could have made the space but I preferred to flow with an extremely social time. The reason I went there, was to visit friends, very good friends. I needed to absorb as much of the shared experience with them as possible. I did so.

Funnily enough, as my attention was still revisiting this concept of Walking in Different Ways of Seeing I was getting more aspects of it, learning more about what it is that I was doing instinctively.  

Through a series en encounters, conversations and visits to people I bonded with twenty years ago I discovered that Walking in Different Ways of Seeing is a way of doing the same thing I practiced many years ago with Sensing in the Labyrinth Readers Course. The words are even in the title and I hadn´t dawned on this till I, in a way, closed this circle.

Now I have been back in Ibiza since the beginning of July and I have had the time and space to do the Walking in Different Ways of Seeing but now I feel this new circle has started and the old one closed, after all, I did propose myself to do this for  year.

This year has not been totally constant but it has brought on a new form of work.

The fact of working on the concept of the Labyrinth, (composed by matter and space) has brought to me to my current work on abstract art.

  When I tried to keep my attention on the concept, I didn´t realise I was pushing my natural boundaries and arriving at a new station I need to explore.

  Evolution in art and life are constant and it´s difficult to determine when one part starts and then ends but what  I can determine is that  I´m in a different space than a year ago.

  I felt the need to learn to flow with the original shapes that found their random colours on the canvas, highlighting and complimenting, as a way to dance with the shapes in harmony.

As I look at the pieces I have created though this discipline and  I see a molecular world, an atomic or space world. The macro or miscrocosm. Is that a way of focusing closer into the essential structure we are made of and inhabit in? Is that where this study on matter and space has brought me? Has it made a lens in my subconscious and created spaces that can either be exponentially larger than our dimension, or on the contrary, exponentially smaller. 

I´m fascinated by the life this initial discipline has taken on, bringing me to a space I´m so excited to discover.

It is not about looking at a work inspired directly by looking into miscroscopic  life or into space, and trying to copy it, or transcribe it.

It´s about the pleasure one feels by these images coming to one´s world without searching for that. It´s about the pleasure of recognising this after it´s painted.

What I learn again from this process is that the knowledge one can be taught only becomes real though ones personal experience of discovery.  This is what keeps me ticking, the experience of discovering what is new to me, even if it is already discovered by others.

When I discover it in an unexpected form it´s fascinating.

So, I was recently asked, when one saw the amount of abstract pieces I have been working on and producing over these past two months,” But do they mean anything to you? Where is the story?”

What I have just explained is the story that motivates this process. It´s not about personal storytelling, its about learning from the experience of this discipline

  I recently listened to an interview of a musician who was asked about his generative music he composes and whether he felt he could take credit for the music he had made and he said “of course”. I totally understood the answer(it was a longer answer). One creates, or places a certain set of rules to go by, and then puts the sound or colours in that system, and this creates a new image or sound. It´s a way of going beyond ones human limitations or conditioning, I think. It´s a way that works for me to push myself beyond myself.

To see the art I´m exploring now as a result of this experience please visit:
http://romanie.net/abstract-explorations-2018/