Over the Mountain

Over the mountain.

My relationship with Big Savage Mountain started over ten years ago. I had just moved to Frostburg from Rockville. I was 20, extremely naïve, idealistic and adventurous. It was super bowl Sunday and the Redskins weren't in it, so I didn't care about the game. I didn't know anyone here, really, not one person, and back then I wasn't even half the fluttering social butterfly I've become. It was cold, but not bitter. Snowing, but not heavily. I didn't know the geography, the roads, the trails. I knew North and West. I knew what I wanted to do.

I got up early. Put on the winter clothes I had, which by mountain standards were hardly late summer attire. They were clothes capable of getting you from your car into a building in the suburban DC climate, but I didn't know that; they were winter clothes. I walked out of my Main Street apartment and went west..

The bank thermometer said 24. I thought nothing of it. West, then North, that is what I thought. Before the day was over, I was going to find PA. I was going to go west until I found a road that went north, then I'd go north until I saw a sign that said, “Welcome to Pennsylvania”.

I knew nothing of orographic lift and adiabatic cooling; of “winter”. I walked. Over Big Savage. Walked north through Finzel. No food, no water. PA was close, I knew it. I was cold, but I was determined. The snow was falling heavier, the drifts deeper. I walked.

“Welcome to Pennsylvania”, I had made it. I was cold, tired, hungry, thirsty. Time to go home. I walked fast. I was frozen. I walked as fast as I could to stay warm. I walked south. I walked down the mountain, it was easy. Too easy. I got colder. Painfully cold. I remember trying to comprehend that kind of prolonged cold, it was something I had never felt before. I remember when I got back into town, that feeling of “A few more steps, just a few more”. I remember jumping into the hot shower and thinking the water was fire—it burned. I remember thinking, “hello mountain”.

Now, we are as well met as a boy and a geological formation can be. I learned how to put the right clothes on too.

Since that day I have walked, biked and skied over Big Savage hundreds of times. Today me and my bicycle got to say, “hello again” for the first time this year, and it felt pretty damn good.

Firewood according to Oy

Firewood according to Oy

It was cold and snowy, but it was time to cut firewood. Maybe I am a bit set in my ways, but I always stay one year ahead on firewood; not “I try to”, no, I do, and have ever since I moved into my house 6 years ago and had the option.

I start in March and like to be about done by May. I don't have to be, but procrastination is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Thinking about “not doing” something that I could be doing is intolerable. (Yes, throughout college I was that kid that finished almost every paper the night it was assigned. To a “c” standard of course, no need to overachieve in academia—i know where my priorities are).

I've come up with a host of weak logical reasons that this is an important activity. I think the wood is dryer when you burn it after it is fully seasoned. I value efficiency, and I want every stick that I cut, split, stack, season, carry into my basement, restack and finally burn, to give me the most heat that is possible. The small increase in Btu’s matters to me, especially over a lifetime.

I will pick up little twigs if I drop them—every bit matters, I really believe that, and I live my life that way.

Stocking up also works as a health insurance policy. If I do ever get hurt, I can grudgingly give up the stock pile of heat that I stashed away.

But those reason's are incomplete. If it were up to me (and wood didn't rot), I would probably stock up 25 years worth of wood. When the sun is shinning, it feels good. The chainsaw hums and vibrates as it effortlessly rips the wood. The pieces wait for the wedge to be hammered in followed by a shattering “crack” of finality and permanence as they split into pieces—it is satisfying.

It is zen.

For those of you who are unaware, I am Buddhist. Down to my core. As far back as I can remember I have been.

In my life the dog I live with, Oy, is perhaps the creature I am most fascinated by. When Oy goes for a walk it can be -5 degrees, with a 30mph wind sandblasting us with snow and he has a big grin on his face. He will give me a look that says, “THIS is fun!”.

If it is cold, hot, rainy, whatever weather the universe throws down, it doesn't matter, Oy is outside with me when I cut firewood. He stacks every piece of wood that accidentally falls into his range. Well, he stacks it like a dog would stack it; makes a pile, then relocates it again and again. All the while frolicking and jumping on to me with mud covered paws and a gleam in his eye that says, “THIS is the best thing EVER”.

Sometimes he is cold. He is wet. He is tired. Sometimes he is injured from his own misadventures (did you know a 40# dog can break a 3/8” steel cable on a regular basis?), but he plays; he smiles. He loves the moment; lives the moment, because THAT moment was the best one ever.

He is right. So as I cut wood and did yardwork in the cold and snow the last few days, I thought about him. Cold hands, a runny nose, wet feet, sore arms and back. It is all part of the experience, and the experience could be amazing. If I can't enjoy the activity I'm doing, rather than assume the activity and circumstances are the problem, I think it is likely that I need more practice overcoming the adversity I am presented with.

Rather than say, “If my fingers weren't so cold, I could enjoy this”, I think, “I'm going to learn how to enjoy this with cold fingers”. And then I practice. Again and again, because I'm not a dog, and accepting things as they are is not my natural state of being—I gotta work at it.

“Shut up and smile” his look says to me as he interminably stacks wood in the mud and snow. Smile because it is absurd not to. As a human, I aspire to be mindful and appreciative of life in a way that is innate and effortless to a dog.

So I cut wood, and practice.

Oh, and if you didn't know this about me, I make everything have meaning, then over think it some more for good measure.

The Isolation Experiment

The Isolation Experiment.

Winter in Frostburg.

This was not my first time, nor will it be my last. It's funny how brains work, how humans work, and what deprivation does. We get weird, predictably, but we get so much else too. Days are lost, times are “suggestions” that have no real meaning. But I'm getting ahead of myself; first I should explain my situation and what I was trying to do.

Six months (plus a little more) a year, I run an open studio at Penn Alps (www.spruceforest.org). There, I work on metalwork and interact directly with customers. It is great for production work, and great for paying my bills. It is less great at fostering creativity, which I prefer to do in isolation rather than a social setting. Most of my income is made between May and November, which leaves the other months “free to creative pursuits”. Now, don't start idealizing this, “wouldn't it be great fun to just make art everyday” and so on—yes, it is, but after your few accumulated ideas get completed it gets really hard to continue being creative for months with no immediate incentive. Compound that with years of struggling with “creativity” as a commodity that can be used up, 6 months of “make anything you want” is really a tough order to fill.

Through the years, I have used various methods to deal with the visual artist equivalent of “writers block”. Sometimes a new tool does it, a new technique or a new skill, but this year I wanted more from myself. I wanted to learn how to design; I wanted to understand creativity, what it is, why it is, how to use it, and how to get more from it. I wanted to find where it comes from, and the best way to harvest it.

Some small trick was not going to get the results that I wanted, I really needed to invest, to focus and to put myself in a situation to understand this process, so I chose isolation. This is not the first time I did this, nor is it the most ascetic I have ever been with it; I allowed myself about an hour of “people” a week, less Thanksgiving and New Years. The goal was November 1-March 1, but late February I realized my brain was fried and the gig was up, so I did abort the mission a bit early, but I'm not dogmatic—I'm pragmatic and I don't like the idea of wasted time.

The idea was if I stayed away from people, I would not think about people--I wouldn't put thoughts into my social relationships and it would allow me more time to think about art. It turns out social relationships run deep in surprising ways, and the things we do to maintain them take more time and brain power than I had ever envisioned until I really cut them off.

It was uncomfortable, I'm not going to lie. I am an introvert, really, I am an extreme introvert, but still my brain is wired for people. It is wired for “touch”. What happens to your senses is something I can't explain to you, but I really would recommend going a few months without any substantial physical human contact, it will really make you appreciate the next time you get a hug from a loved one.

No, those sensations, those feelings don't go away, they start out and endure as whispers that periodically say, “you are human, stop trying not to be”. But, they do blend into the background and it is not hard to move past them (although eventually, they win. They always win).

Another problem that has happened -everytime- I have done this experiment is something my hypochondriac friends would laugh at. At the first cough, or the first cut, you illogically bring yourself to the conclusion that you are going to die. To me, this is the most important part of the process, and I have -always- refused to dismiss the illogical “I’m going to die” paradigm. Maybe I am wrong, but I find it extremely important to embrace this. It instills a resolute urgency of “now”, live now. Work now. Speak now. Put everything you have on the table, work as hard as you can, because kiddo, your days are numbered, and that cough—it'll be pneumonia before you know it. And you know what, no one will know, no one will notice that you haven't been around because you set up a situation where not being around is normal. This too is important in the process—the freedom of realizing that “no one is coming” is pivotal.

All mundane things had to be simplified and mechanized as well. Food, clothing, etc, but that was easy.

So, there you have it, step 1 in this experiment, I push my mind to embrace a reality where NOW has urgent gravity, I'm on my own (I have to fully BELIEVE that my social life is closed or else those “whispers” get loud) and the mundane is settled: That is where things get started.

Where do you start a creative pursuit? What is that anyway? I set out wanting to make the best designed metalwork that I had ever done. I wanted to grow as an artist, grow as a person.

I started out by getting rid of that “built up creative energy”. Those projects that had been bouncing in my head for months, well, I made them. All of them. Whether they came out good or bad wasn't the concern to me, I wanted them out of my head. I needed an artistic detox if I was going to get anywhere, so I did just that.

Once those ideas were out in the world, I moved on. I sat. For hours. Days. I listened to music and books. Walked. I thought. I thought about everything under the sun. I meditated. I didn't want to force anything, so I let things just “be”.

I realized that I needed to identify what forms interested me. I needed to understand them. Break them down, dissect them, fully experience them. I looked at books, and magazines of all kinds of art. In my entire life, I don't think I had every studied art so much as I did in the first 4 weeks of this experiment.

I decided I needed to draw what I saw, but I had to change it, interpret it, because my mind could never comprehend what that artist did fully. Make the shapes into me. Make the composition mine. Understand how lines worked in context to other lines.

I got in the habit of drawing, nearly a full sketchbook full in a few weeks. Drawing was not enough. I had to make the 2-d ideas into my reality, translate them into my language. It was like having something to say, but being responsible for creating the words to say it.

Books were everywhere, I couldn't walk without tripping over an art book on most days. Ideas were everywhere. I became focused. I started dreaming shapes, thinking shapes and communicating in shapes. I even stopped having deep conversations with my brilliant dog because I realized all I cared about was shapes and I couldn't verbalize them to him.

Everyday, I was waking up and creating my own words. It was all encompassing, amazing, I really can't describe it well, but the work from this winter speaks it. It was flow, but not a temporary one—it was an enduring flow that was seamless, everything worked. I had converted myself into an efficient art tool, and as a tool, I was self actualized. I could see design, really see it. I understood it, felt it.

But tools are not human and I am. Those whispers, they never did get louder. They never did get more invasive. But, art is a language and once you have nothing left inside you to say, nothing left to interpret from the world around you, all that is left is the whispers of your bare humanity.

I had exhausted my curiosity about art, design and creativity, so it was time to move on. Time to leave my small house, to leave my jewelry shop in the basement and to leave the metal shop in my garage.

Time to take everything I learned and experienced and work it into being a person, an artist; use it as soil to grow in.

That is how the experiment ended. Not with a bang, but with an anti-climatic buzzer—times up, move along.

And that is a very rough synopsis of the isolation experiment.

Why blog? I think art without the story behind it loses some of it's meaning, and I'd like to tell some of that story. Not that every piece has a story (although sometimes they do), but it is more like every artist IS a story, and every piece of work is an illustration.

So, hi, I'm Mike.  I problem solve; often, I solve aesthetic based problems, but not exclusively. At the core, I create problems or voluntarily take on other peoples, and then solve them. Specifically, I have been solving them with metal, for money, for the last 10 years. It is how I pay my bills.

In the posts to come, I'll talk about what life is to a 30 year old guy living out the "Artist Experiment".