Graduation Speech by Sean Kernan
Think_n_See
interesting. TnS
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"And so, as you go forward in Life..."
A graduation address for those of you who weren't paying attention the
first time.
This is a talk given at the commencement of the photography and film
programs at Rockport College in Rockport, Maine. Why would you, a
working professional, need such idealism? Well, in fact it is entirely
practical. Read it and you'll see.
And while it was addressed to photographers and filmmakers, the
questions it raises arise constantly in our work in communications.
When I was asked to talk to you today my first thought was that I was
supposed to give you a dose of wisdom before you wander off into the
Fog of Life. You can save it for when your ideals and your reality
diverge...which they soon will, I promise. Listen carefully and you'll
learn where a certain sphinx awaits with a serious question. It will
insist on an answer, and I am going to tell you what the question is so
you'll have time to think about it. (Is this like cheating on a test?
You decide.)
Up until today there have been any number of people who cared about
your work- your teachers, your fellow students, some friends. But by
Monday it will be down to that one person who got you into all this in
the first place-your inspiration, your truest critic, your most
faithful supporter, your lover and sometime-enemy...yourself.
Yes, this is the person who steered you away from a practical course,
say, pre-med or business, or perhaps prompted you to quit a perfectly
good job to pursue photography.
What could you have been thinking?
Well, you weren't. At least not in the sense of considering the angles
and calculating a choice. Art, which is so powerful and compelling, is
a path that makes no sense at all when you think about it this way.
But there are kinds of thinking other than thoughtful analysis. They
are invisible, like the wind, seen only by what they stir up.
Here's an example that most teachers wouldn't take as an instance of
thinking: Michael Jordan can run down a court, stop, turn and take
three steps one way, fake, take three steps the other way, turn again,
jump and send a ball through hoop that he hasn't looked at since mid
court.
Most people wouldn't call this thinking at all. But some thinkers do
call it intelligence. Educator Howard Gardner in his book Multiple
Intelligences, calls it kinetic intelligence. Dancers use it. So do
neurosurgeons. Surprise!
And he cites other intelligences-musical intelligence, interpersonal
intelligence-and adds them to the verbal and mathematical
intelligences, which were, for years, the only ones educators
acknowledged. For the most part you can't measure these intelligences,
but you can see what they do. And here's the thing: they all come into
play in the work of the artist. That's you! You integrate them in ways
beyond understanding. And you don't need to understand them, any more
than you had to understand grammar to begin speaking.
So, through some kind of invisible extra-conscious thought
process...something happens, and you can't say what it is. You just see
the results. For us it might be a photograph, but it could be a
painting or a performance, or some poetry, or a sequence of film. And
when you experience what making it does in you, that can change
everything.
It certainly changed me.
I was working in theater right after college. It was a new theater, so
it ran on pure intensity, and I threw myself into it day and night for
2 years. It was great, but after 24 months of this, I was completely
burned out. On my few days off, I wandered away from the theater
looking for a place to lose myself. Instead, on one of those days, I
found myself. What a surprise!
It was in a room of an old abandoned house. There was a window with
ripped, white curtain luffing into the dark. I took a picture.
When I printed it, I saw something that stunned me. The photo itself
wasn't that great, but it had an effect and a meaning that the room
itself had not. It was lonelier and spookier than the room. It was not
just what was in the room that made it happen, it was what was in me.
And I only saw this when I saw my picture.
How did I do this? I thought about it then and, ever since, tried to
understand it. And I've managed to understand some things about it, but
these slivers of understanding have never helped me to do it better.
And I still get my first inkling that a picture might be good when it
surprises me. It looks rather as though someone else borrowed my camera
for a moment, someone who's a much better photographer than I am.
I venture to say you've all had this experience. Something you have no
recollection of doing turns up in your work. You know just how exciting
it is. Get a few of these and you can be forgiven for thinking, "I
could do this. I could be a photographer." This is the way these things
begin. You make something that says you are better than you thought,
larger, wider, deeper, fuller. And once it happens you want it
again...and again. Who wouldn't?
So we ask ourselves, "How did I do that? Let's see, I had my camera, of
course. And it was 5 in the evening-that nice light-and I was in a
part of town I'd never been in before. And, uh, I was wearing my green
sweater."
So we try to replicate the circumstances. We gather up
talismans-camera, green sweater- and a little before 5 we head out
to another part of town...or another country, someplace we've never
been, hoping for some good light.
But it wasn't the sweater, and it wasn't the light, and it was never
the camera. It was something else, and here's what I think it was:
To tell you, I have to introduce the idea of something called the
heuristic process. The word heuristic derives from the Greek work
eureka, which means 'I have found it.' And it describes a process in
which we give ourselves so deeply to the act of perception that we take
what we see right into ourselves and then give forth a version of it
from inside, tinted by all of the possibilities within us, transforming
the way an oyster takes grit and makes a pearl. Understand that this is
a lot more than catching something we see on film. It is making a new
thing. And it is this mysterious event that lifts one photo out of the
piles and piles that we make, up into the realm of art. And that photo
we've made, charged with our resonances and possibilities, is what
others get to see. But the biggest result is not the picture, it is
that after making it, the patterning inside us is different than it was
before: we are expanded by the event.
I'm not speaking figuratively. Thanks to brain imaging, we have started
to see something of how we're changed. When the brain encounters
something new, something it has never seen before, its neural pathways
shift, and some synapses become more active while others become less
so. If someone sticks wires on your head and knows what they're doing
they can see the image of your brain on a monitor. It lights up like a
pinball machine.
Then after the stimulus is removed the brain reverts toward its prior
state. But it doesn't go all the way back. It retains some of the new
patterning. You create neurons every time you learn something new as a
record of how to do the thing. You do this only when you learn
something new. The first few years of your life were completely taken
up with this patterning and stretching as you encountered the bright
light of birth, then 'Mama', then 'doggy', and on and on. This is
exhilarating, but after 40 or 50 years of it, it can become a bit too
intense. I guess that's the reason that people tend to get conservative
when they grow older: They want things to stop and stay where they are.
But not artists. They go looking for the change. It feels great to
them-a snap of fear of the unknown and a triumph over that fear,
something new, then a rush of dopamine to the brain. How many times
have you done some kind of new work and felt moved by something odd and
unfamiliar about it, knowing that this is it, the new thing?
If you feel this happening, the trick is not to try to name it. Just
keep it going as long as you can. Surf it if you can. Name it later.
So this is the real and secret reason for wandering around with a
camera and an open mind. Making art changes us. So does looking at it.
Richard Serra, the sculptor, said (vehemently, as he says everything)
"Art has no function!" He meant that you can't sit on real art or cook
on real art or live in it (he was talking about architecture). But I
think it does have one function, which is to change those who make it
and those who see it. Of course, it is not the only thing that does
that. New arguments change us, new concepts, new people, new
places...even propaganda. But artists make the change from inside. They
use it to grow themselves. It is exalting - and exaltation is pretty
hard to find in the everyday.
So there's a succinct definition of a good day of art for you: the
person who comes home from making it is not the same person who left
that morning. It may not always be a huge change, but its there and it
adds up.
And if you do it enough, you start to trust the process without
understanding it. You start to count on it, to invoke it, to work with
it, and as you experience it you are less and less willing to accept
from yourself work that looks like something you've seen else where .
Of course, imitation of other's work can be a productive way to
investigate form. I spent years driving around looking to see if Walker
Evans had missed anything. Then I was Irving Penn. And, of course,
Robert Frank. (Who wasn't?)
But while doing this, you keep an eye open for your own work to start
to emerge. The clue is that it looks like nothing else you've ever done
and it seems unusually alive. Remember, you don't want to make
something that looks for all the world like a photograph, you want to
make something that doesn't.
And, when you do have an experience of change, and start to follow that
experience looking for more, you're done for. You're like a mouse that
has been caught by a huge invisible cat. That cat is going to bat you
around at will for as long as it wants to. Sometimes you just want to
be quiet and you pray for it to stop. But if the cat ever does stop and
leave you, I swear, you'll go looking for it.
And the cat does leave.
After a while, artists begin to want a few basics in their lives. They
want a car that reliably starts. They want to live free of roommates.
They want a house, health insurance, a spouse, children.
So those of us who have been infected by art eventually begin to think
about how one might go about getting some of these things.
And we become aware that there are jobs that are called 'creative.' A
would-be novelist might get a job with a trade publication. A painter
might start designing or become an art director. A photographer
interested in art might, as I did, fall easily into advertising.
And, lo, the bills are paid and our financial worries are over, or in
some cases escalated to larger ones...a boat, a summer place,
orthodontics.
But here's the thing: this kind of creative work isn't really artistic.
It can seem artistic because it uses some of the same skills. But think
about it. When you do art work you leave on your journey without
knowing the destination. If you have goals for your concepts, they are
there to be exceeded.
But in 'commercial creative' work you are told where to go at the very
beginning. You are directed by whole communities of people, most of
whom are not artistic in the way that you are. They are not looking for
you to change your mind or theirs. Specifically, they don't want that.
They want you to affirm what they think.
Think about that change of mind, the thing that is the real reason you
do what you do, the thing that nourished you before you came here to
study and nourished you through the program. It has been a kind of food
for your life till now. So what happens if you stop eating?
Nothing much at first. Besides, you will be busy enjoying the fruits of
your career. It secures your place in the world, and you do need that.
Still, in time you may notice things. Maybe you are at a movie and
there is some image you didn't expect that just alarms you by the force
of its truth. Maybe some music just takes you inside it. Maybe you come
across some piece of work that once transported you. Maybe that work is
your own, and it dawns on you that you haven't done anything like it in
years.
Doing the work of change is the taproot - a crucial part of your
life, a reason you are who you are, and if you cut it off, that part of
you will wither.
And that's when the Sphinx-remember her?-shows up. You tend to
encounter her in the middle of some struggle or upheaval. And she puts
her terrifying question in a slightly exasperated voice. She asks,
"What are you doing?"
If you look at the question honestly, it will send your thoughts back
to what you started out to do. It wasn't to get a job, it was to find
things out.
Well, that's not what you were expecting to hear about at your
graduation, was it? Your creative death?
But bear with me here, I'm trying to jump you over this whole thing.
I'm trying to get you familiar with what might happen so when you
encounter it in your own lives maybe you'll think back. ("What did that
guy say at graduation?")
So I'll tell you about all this now. And by the end of dinner tonight
you will have forgotten it entirely. And I hope you may never need it
at all. If, for example your ensuing work is such that the Guggenheim
turns its entire property over to you for a show at age 35, as it has
currently to Matthew Barney, if you're that focused and motivated you
won't need this.
But I did need it, and lots of people I know did, and do.
I got lost. I became so involved in my work, in being a good commercial
photographer, that something just...left. I never even noticed.
To be sure, working at a job, being good at it, is not wrong.
Absolutely everyone has to figure out how to live. And as often as I
fantasize about being somehow supported so that I can do what is
important to me, the fact is that being an artist is not God's Holy
Work.
But, even if you pursue the 'job' of a gallery artist, you gravitate
toward making work that dealers like, that sells, that gets you
recognition: you may start turning your back on impulses that don't
accord with this. It is hard to set aside something that in one way is
working quite well for you. I remember a photographer telling me that
the great teacher ,Lisette Model, looked at her work and said, "Go take
pictures of things that are ugly."
So graduation day is a good time to decide that, no matter what else
you do, you will keep doing whatever you need to do to make work that
moves and changes you. And, if you wake up someday some years hence and
find that you haven't had that shiver that your pictures used to give
you, as I did-well, its not the end of the world. And there is
something you can do on that very day.
I picture creativity as a large room with many doors into it-music,
writing, film, painting. You've been used to going in through the
photography door, but say it has become so clogged with abandoned
projects, unexamined ideas, ego, and other trash, that you can't push
it open, can't even get near it.
What do you do? Forget photography. Set it aside. Go over to another
door and push on it, and you'll find it swings right open. Make some
music, try out for a play, take a poetry class. Not because you want a
career in theater or to become a poet. Do it to change your mind again.
Do it seriously, give it your time. Don't worry about doing it well,
just do it. Let it happen in you. I tell you that something will come
alive in you again.
Does this work? For years I've conducted a sometime workshop that is
often filled with fried photographers. We do exactly what I described
here and you can see the ice in their minds breaking up.
Would it work for writers? Naturally. They would just go take pictures.
Doing this new thing may or may not invigorate your career. But don't
insist that it has to. Just wake up. Have that experience, seek it out,
and see what comes of that. Then go where it sends you. Do what the big
kitty says. After all, this is what got you this far, and it can take
you much farther..
And, with luck, you'll have that wonderful experience that mixes
epiphany with the moment in a roadrunner cartoon when the coyote runs
off the edge of the cliff and out across the air and doesn't fall. The
trick, if you're a coyote, is to deliberately not take it in that
you're running on air. The trick if you're an artist is to take that
startled energy, that awareness of awakeness, and somehow keep it going
without stopping to think, How am I doing this?
When things really begin to happen, it can feel just like something is
going badly wrong. And that is just the time to really persist. I had a
Tai Chi teacher who called this "investing in loss." He was telling me
to balance on one leg, sink lower and lower, and relax my muscles
completely while doing it. Obviously impossible, and I just on kept
falling over, so I complained that his teaching wasn't working. But he
pointed out that while I had stopped relying on muscular effort, I had
yet to put my trust in chi. I would have to let go even more, keep
falling over, if need be, to get to the point of giving up what I knew
to reach what I didn't know. I would have to invest in loss, and if I
did, chi would support me. Now, I didn't even particularly believe in
chi, but I persisted, and it worked. I was stable and strong. (And I'm
still not sure about chi.)
But here's a warning: a return to making our art is not a return to fun
and ease. I don't know where this idea got started that creative work
for the accomplished artist is a serene progression, but it's not. It
can be transformative and exhilarating and all that, but I've never
found it to be easy.
I have just finished several years of work on a book about trees,
photographed in beautiful forests all over the world. Because the
forests are bucolic, people assume doing the work was serene stroll in
the woods. It never was, not once. It was fraught, very often frantic
and anxious, sometimes exhilarating, but never calm. The reason is that
I wasn't looking for trees or serenity. I was looking for that
controlled explosion of art. I never really trusted that it was all
around me, even though it had revealed itself hundreds and hundreds of
times before.
People assume that because they take most of their pictures on
vacation, being a photographer is like a perpetual vacation. That would
be like seeing an entertaining movie and assuming that making it was
entertaining. People who make them know better.
Of course, we still seek to be secure in what we are doing, and we
start trying to find some certainty. But I heard Serra speak recently,
and some one asked him about gaining enough understanding of one's idea
so one could start working on it. He said, "The place where you are
dumbfounded by your own lack of understanding is the place to start
working. Once you stop doubting you might as well stop working."
This is where your real work begins, every time you begin it. And the
end is not to make pictures but to change your mind. If pictures come
of it, or songs or paintings, think of them as by-product.
So that's your piece of Graduation Wisdom.
But since you are image-makers, I want to leave you with a more direct
experience that may make it clearer. So close your eyes and listen.The
way the word sinks into the deep snow of the page.
The deer lying dead in the clearing,
Its head and antlers transparent.
The black seed in its brain
Parachuting toward earth.
The poem is Silence, by Gregory Orr. When I first read it I just felt
thoughts drop away as I was taken into the presence of that poem. It
changed me to read it. And then I thought, what makes this poem work so
deeply? It is this mystery that keeps me coming back, keeps me trying.
That's the work, then, to make these things in ourselves, to bring them
out into the world.
I honor the works you have made here at school, but much more I honor
your working. Those who can recognize it, always will.
Stay awake.
- Sean Kernan
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From: http://www.seankernan.com/html/articles/graduation.html
See his photographs at: www.seankernan.com (choose full screen Flash)
Think_n_See
* ...something happens, and you can't say what it is. You just see the
a performance, or some poetry, or a sequence of film. And when you
experience what making it does in you, that can change everything.
for a moment, someone who's a much better photographer than I am.
again...and again. Who wouldn't?
expanded by the event.
that morning. It may not always be a huge change, but its there and it
adds up.
it, and as you experience it you are less and less willing to accept
from yourself work that looks like something you've seen else where .
you will wither.
photography door, but say it has become so clogged with abandoned
projects, unexamined ideas, ego, and other trash, that you can't push
it open, can't even get near it.
off the edge of the cliff and out across the air and doesn't fall. The
trick, if you're a coyote, is to deliberately not take it in that
you're running on air. The trick if you're an artist is to take that
startled energy, that awareness of awakeness, and somehow keep it going
without stopping to think, How am I doing this?
description above!!)
A quote from Richard Serra: "The place where you are dumbfounded by
stop doubting you might as well stop working."
of it, or songs or paintings, think of them as by-product.
... very related to "Flow."
... very related to Kathy Sierra on how people learn only from what
surprises them:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2004/12/getting_what_yo.html
smilingbear
"You don't want to make something that looks for all the world like a
photograph, you want to make something that doesn't."
Simply wow.
Think_n_See
"...something that doesn't."