Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2010, Page 142
manifest world as constructed and conditional, the world becomes endlessly
malleable, a fairyland for the playful imagination. Moving about the world with
a camera opens my eyes and mind to the beauty, strangeness, and mystery
of it all, while crafting images in the darkroom provides a means for
communicating my wonder and delight.xvi
Although making art has played a central role in my story of healing, that narrative would
be sorely incomplete if I did not mention my becoming a devoted consumer of art as well—
particularly painting and music, both of which I cannot imagine living without. My inner life
has been immeasurably nourished by studying the work of fine artists: landscapists of
various schools [e.g., Van Ruisdael, Corot, (Theodore) Rousseau, Friedrich, Heade, Parrish]
Pre-Raphaelites Burne-Jones and Waterhouse Symbolists Redon and Munch the French
academicians Leighton and Bouguereau American Tonalists Inness, Tryon, and Blakelock
Surrealists Delvaux, Tanguy, Matta, and Tanning abstractionists Gorky, Seliger, and
Pousette-Dart. These and so many other artists have deepened my capacity to see, and
have led me into multifarious worlds of vision, sense, and refined emotion.
As for music—well, it similarly feeds and excites the soul. My tastes are expansive—artists
too numerous to mention: from Brahms to Beatles, Debussy to Dylan, Stravinsky to
Sneaker Pimps, Rautavaara to Rasputina, Sati to Seefeel, Ravi Shankar to Smashing
Pumpkins, ad infinitum. I thank them all for the multitudes of moods and imaginings they
have inspired. Gratitude.
Endnotes
[i] ―A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from
within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. … The eye was placed where one
ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.‖
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ―Self-Reliance,‖ 1839–40. Cited in Stephen E. Whicher, Selections from Ralph
Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957), pp. 147, 148.
[ii] On the inherent opposition of ideological systems to creative freedom, Rollo May writes:
…[A]ny kind of closed, exclusive system destroys poetry, as it does all art. ...[A] sine
qua non of creativity is the freedom of artists to give all the elements within
themselves free play in order to open up the possibility of what Blok excellently calls
―the creative will.‖ ...Dogmatists of all kinds ...are threatened by the creative
freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our
anxiety over the fact that the artists, together with creative persons of all sorts, are
the possible destroyers of our nicely ordered systems. For the creative impulse is the
speaking of the voice and the expressing of the forms of the preconscious and
unconscious and this is, by its very nature, a threat to rationality and external
control.... If it were possible to control the artist—and I do not believe it is—it would
mean the death of art.
Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), pp. 75, 76.
[iii] I am currently working on a book that will explore the ―spiritual‖ in photography. This involves a
close look at writings by and about photographic artists for whom the medium has been, variously, a
path of self-discovery an investigation into matters of appearance and reality, of essence and
meaning experiments and investigations into the nature of light (literally and as metaphor) and a
Zen-like discipline of radical receptivity—to name a few of the approaches explored. I hope to weave
together voices from the history of the medium with my own evolving insights. This research is deeply
rooted in and informed by the broader subject of art and its relation to the spiritual.
[iv] The first time I saw a picture of Krishna (several months prior to joining ISKCON), I was
mesmerized by this indescribably beautiful painting (in poster form) of a violet-blue boy of
indeterminate age, head adorned with a peacock feather, and holding a flute in one hand while
embracing a contented-looking calf with the other. This was perhaps my first experience of being
drawn into a painting, body and soul, with a strong desire to enter the world in the image, to
manifest world as constructed and conditional, the world becomes endlessly
malleable, a fairyland for the playful imagination. Moving about the world with
a camera opens my eyes and mind to the beauty, strangeness, and mystery
of it all, while crafting images in the darkroom provides a means for
communicating my wonder and delight.xvi
Although making art has played a central role in my story of healing, that narrative would
be sorely incomplete if I did not mention my becoming a devoted consumer of art as well—
particularly painting and music, both of which I cannot imagine living without. My inner life
has been immeasurably nourished by studying the work of fine artists: landscapists of
various schools [e.g., Van Ruisdael, Corot, (Theodore) Rousseau, Friedrich, Heade, Parrish]
Pre-Raphaelites Burne-Jones and Waterhouse Symbolists Redon and Munch the French
academicians Leighton and Bouguereau American Tonalists Inness, Tryon, and Blakelock
Surrealists Delvaux, Tanguy, Matta, and Tanning abstractionists Gorky, Seliger, and
Pousette-Dart. These and so many other artists have deepened my capacity to see, and
have led me into multifarious worlds of vision, sense, and refined emotion.
As for music—well, it similarly feeds and excites the soul. My tastes are expansive—artists
too numerous to mention: from Brahms to Beatles, Debussy to Dylan, Stravinsky to
Sneaker Pimps, Rautavaara to Rasputina, Sati to Seefeel, Ravi Shankar to Smashing
Pumpkins, ad infinitum. I thank them all for the multitudes of moods and imaginings they
have inspired. Gratitude.
Endnotes
[i] ―A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from
within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. … The eye was placed where one
ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray.‖
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ―Self-Reliance,‖ 1839–40. Cited in Stephen E. Whicher, Selections from Ralph
Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957), pp. 147, 148.
[ii] On the inherent opposition of ideological systems to creative freedom, Rollo May writes:
…[A]ny kind of closed, exclusive system destroys poetry, as it does all art. ...[A] sine
qua non of creativity is the freedom of artists to give all the elements within
themselves free play in order to open up the possibility of what Blok excellently calls
―the creative will.‖ ...Dogmatists of all kinds ...are threatened by the creative
freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our
anxiety over the fact that the artists, together with creative persons of all sorts, are
the possible destroyers of our nicely ordered systems. For the creative impulse is the
speaking of the voice and the expressing of the forms of the preconscious and
unconscious and this is, by its very nature, a threat to rationality and external
control.... If it were possible to control the artist—and I do not believe it is—it would
mean the death of art.
Rollo May, The Courage to Create (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), pp. 75, 76.
[iii] I am currently working on a book that will explore the ―spiritual‖ in photography. This involves a
close look at writings by and about photographic artists for whom the medium has been, variously, a
path of self-discovery an investigation into matters of appearance and reality, of essence and
meaning experiments and investigations into the nature of light (literally and as metaphor) and a
Zen-like discipline of radical receptivity—to name a few of the approaches explored. I hope to weave
together voices from the history of the medium with my own evolving insights. This research is deeply
rooted in and informed by the broader subject of art and its relation to the spiritual.
[iv] The first time I saw a picture of Krishna (several months prior to joining ISKCON), I was
mesmerized by this indescribably beautiful painting (in poster form) of a violet-blue boy of
indeterminate age, head adorned with a peacock feather, and holding a flute in one hand while
embracing a contented-looking calf with the other. This was perhaps my first experience of being
drawn into a painting, body and soul, with a strong desire to enter the world in the image, to
