The drawing in space of a Minotaur by Picasso only exists in photo form. It is one of the few things that he did that is not a saleable artwork. The photographer took a flash photo in a total dark room on a long exposure. As the flash went off it captured Picasso on the point of drawing. For the rest of the exposure, Picasso and the room are no longer visible and it just captures the quick sketch that he drew with a flashlight, so what you have, is really a superimposition of a flash photo with a photo of a drawing with flashlight.
what do i do?
David has a private practice in Brondesbury, Northwest London where he works predominantly, either in person or by phone, with those who identify themselves as artists, musicians, writers, actors, architects and designers or who are otherwise involved or dream of being involved in this field. He uses this background in psychology to address the challenges faced by anyone involved in creative endeavour. Some of these challenges are the very practical ones that we face in the outer world such as finances, health problems etc.,, some of them are connected to issues of self-belief and inner criticism and some result from the complexities of our relationship life. And, in particular, there are those creative blocks that seem to thwart us in the very area that matters most to us.
My interest is to discover and develop lively creative ways to address these difficulties and so I describe myself as a facilitator in this area.
FACILITATE – 1.to render easier; to promote, help forward 2. To lessen the labour of, to assist.
These days the word facile is often used in a derogatory way, but in the dictionary it is described as easy to do, easy of access, accomplished with little effort. Moving without effort, fluent and this is surely the goal of any practice that we undertake.
Indeed, when someone is a true master at what they do, it is often said that ‘they make it look easy’ or it seems ‘effortless’. Sometimes a person is said to have a ‘facility’ for doing something, a precocious natural gift, as drawing was for Picasso or music for Mozart. For most, this facility comes only with extensive and repetitive practice.
So this modest sounding word can also extend to the most supreme accomplishments. The facilitator, no matter what her/his field of interest is always trying to find a way to do things more simply, more elegantly, with greater economy and less effort – what T.S, Eliot, in The Four Quartets called:
“A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)”
A facilitator then is someone who tries to make the challenges and difficulties in people’s lives easier, so that they can flow more easily with them, around them and, at times, against them.
WHAT DO YOU DO? - a brief story.
I was sitting in a small restaurant with a friend and at the end of the meal we ended up chatting with the owner and the person at the table next to us. The owner asked us what we did. A simple question that people meeting for the first time ask each other all the time. When you are a banker, a plumber or a doctor or the pursue any number of other occupations and you say what it is you do, most people feel they have a fair enough idea . However if you are an artist, a musician, a writer or you work with people in the area of psychology, you will often be asked ‘what sort of paintings do you paint, what sort of music, in what way do you work with people.’ The answer to this question is never really satisfactory – describing what you do never gives as clear sense as actually seeing someone work or seeing the results of their work. Most people are familiar with the work of Picasso, but the film that showed him drawing on a glass panel with the camera behind the panel was a revelation – you saw the process of him working and coming to the end result. HOW you do what it is that you do is as important as what you do and in some professions the WAY you relate to the people that you work with is also an essential element and important in all, yet none of this is answered by the question ‘ what do you do”. Now an artist can show pictures of what s/he does, a musician can play a recording, but when you work with people in what might broadly be called a ‘psychological’ way, there is nothing visible to show. You rely on recommendation, testimonial, but even that does not give a very clear idea of what you do with people. Ultimately you rely on experience itself.
So in answer the restaurant owner, I said that I mostly worked with artists, writers, musicians, actors and designers around their creative aims and their creative blocks and challenges.Her reply was “I am none the wiser”!!!
This occurred at the same time as I was thinking about creating this website and her question ‘What do you do?” constantly echoed in my mind and I wondered whether it would be possible to create a site that didn’t just talk about what I do, but also conveyed something of the experience and the sense of it. The style and content of the site would need to reflect this.
