a tribute to deep reality: interview with artist Douglas Henson

A tribute to deeper reality: interview with artist Douglas Henson

Q: what does the phrase words made flesh mean to you?

DH: well I grew up in a Christian family, so I read the bible all the time when I was a kid. It was my first access to visionary states expressed by people, and I was obsessed with book of revelations. So that quote of the word made flesh, I carried it with me all the time. That was a part of Christianity I kept with, the visionary aspect, the mystical experience of light and entities. So words made flesh as a metaphor means to me the externalization of mental events, mental acts into physical manifestation. And that's what I see as the point of art- to externalize the mind. Its sort of like if you look at the evolution of the universe you could see it as flipping it inside out- it begins with a dormant physical world, and theres this latent invisible mental thing that pops out near the end and in a geological microsecond you have all this strange art you know thousands of paintings and all this weird stuff- and that represents the iridesence that's cast off near the moment when that latent aspect of the universe begins to become manifest, to become externalized. And recently in my art I've been using language, using a type of hyroglyphic graphic form of language as a way to summon or trap peoples projections as they're looking at it, and to investigate language which is one of the most bizarre things that we do as humans. Its weird because language or the word itself is older than human speech, I mean communication- animals do it stars do it the sun will have sunspots moving across its surface and another star will see that and vibrations are cast theres communication everywhere, nature is communication so the word made flesh has an actual pertinence to evolution itself and human beings are just like the apex of this process, and the art that human beings secrete is not necessarily ours wer're more like observers of this strange casting off and secretion of the word into the physical world.: where do you feel the art that comes out of you is coming from?

I'm not sure and that's what exciting about making art is that I think that explanation and meaning are the enemy of all art because all that it does is it locates and collapses the experience of communicating with something and so i'm not sure where my art comes from i mean i think a huge part of it has to do with a collaging of numerous different things i've experienced in my life i mean its a collaging of art that i've seen and you know a whole nother part of it is intuitive drawings thats where a lot of my forms that im kindof making right now came from is getting with a piece of paper and a pen and just letting it come out of me and not questioning it - i see it as the original definition of surrealism is that it is MORE reality not a kind of hallucinatory imaginative nonreal ansillary make-believe mythic thing- the mind and imagination is somehow existentially real, has exisential validity in it. it actually is real, you know; and i think that its become trivial in culture the imagination has become sort of a trivial thing- its become commercialized and trivialized but for aboriginal people for indegenous people its surreal in the most important sense its locating and describing those higher dimensions which are latent in the imagination, in the human mind but there are bigger versions of cosmic forms you know and patterns and a big thing thats inspired me is chaos- just in general what chaos means and what it represents and so

art making for me is a process of descending into the heart of chaos and allowing chaos indeterminancy uncertainty all those things to overwhelm and than to have the product come out of me and to not have a prejudice about what comes out of me or trying to make something comfortable or push these raw forms that come out of me into a graphic motif of some sort or somehow try and set it inside of molds that are somehow familiar to me and i think thats what a lot of people do. you look at a lot of peoples sketchbook and they have a lot of unbelievable chaotic forms in there and than sometimes their work is sortof a bastardization of the original chaos that comes out because theyve lost the source. the chaos itself is somehow more complete than a sort of lower dimensional concretization of the original indeterminant stuff and i also think that if you can keep the chaos

on the drawing "between the idea and reality"

this like a lot of other drawings came as a vision came as a complete *gestalt of information thats usually how it happens, as flashes in my mind than i make a sketch of it really fast than i draw it in pencil. than what i usually do is i take a pen or opaque medium and i go in and sortof obliterate the boundaries of what the form is suggesting itself to be. This for me is a couple or two people whove sortof been struck or something and are dissolving into themselves, into the environment theres a vibrational quality of them sortof ascending growing bigger but it cuts off it doesnt show you where the journey continues its sortof just this moment of revelation or you know something like that.

the quote at the bottom- between idea and reality- comes from a T.S.Elliot poem its a poem called the hollow men. when i first read this quote as a teenager it really hit me hard- it says between between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act falls the shadow. and for some reason i've always been obsessed with the middle of things, the process, indeterminancy is about that. its about being caught inbetween antipital points of certainty - caught in the malstrum of not knowing where to go what is true what is certain. but this quote between idea and reality is i think is a comment on the human condition in a really important way. We're all nieve in the sense that the shadow that falls is the certainty that we project onto reality, but deep reality is an uncertain unknowable mystery you know, and the mystery collapses the shadow falls when the ideas and the abstractions are seen as reality somehow mediating your experience with direct reality. and so thats also what this drawing is about the ideas of these two figures are shedding themselves theyre coming apart unlacing and their boundaries are dissolving into the larger environment into the space around them which is real which is the only reality which is chaos which is the neverending play of form and matter.

Q: who feeds your art? what ideas inspire you?
DH: Recently ive found many people authors philosophers playwrights and all kinds of people who essentially when I open a book by them it completely epitomizes what im feeling and it crystallizes perfectly everything im experiencing at this time, and a person ive been really inspired by is a guy named Antonen Arto, who was an actor in the eartly part of the 20th century. He kind of went insane towards the end of his life because he had grandiose ideas about reinventing the theater. because theater at his time was exteremely conventional and extremeley regergitated of theme and it was about dialogue and linear time. He was one of the first people to obliterate all of the norms what he wanted was a theater of cruelty that phrase can get squelched and twisted what he was really talking about is what I believe I was talking about earlier somehow a deeper engagement with reality By light confusing forms darkness yelps gulps screaming he had a very fantasmagoric hallucinatory vision of what theater should be. He has a line in one of his books that really hit me hard which is " all arists should act as if they are victims being burned at the stake signaling furiously through the flames" and that to me is, that can end it all right there, that's a statement about all of this stuff, the flames are this screen this veil of human perception, and that's all we can ever do is signal furiously through the flames, but we somehow don't do it as if we are victims being burnt at the stake because the consequences of what we are doing are somehow not feeling toned, and connected to the body not connected to the deep engagement the body naturally has native connection the body naturally has to the universe but all these ideas the extracted higher mammilian mind gets in the way, So he inspires me a lot now to keep pursuing that goal, not goal but adventure so he inspires me a lot now to somehow give a more honest and genuine tribute to deep reality and to pull myself and everyone else out of the dormancy of abstraction disconnection and into the body.

This woman singer diamanda gelass- she is one of my heros, she has changed my life. She did these records in the 80s and performances. Antonen Arto went crazy for a lot of reasons but probably a large reason was that he could not externalize what he was actually thinking and feeling out, it was so massive and so ahead of his time but I think this woman, diamanda gelass I think she probably is one of the first people that ive encountered to really fulfill Arto's vision of a theater of cruelty or a theater of hallucinatory experience with the body, a direct expression of the bodys necessity to communicate. She wails and screams and speaks in Glossalalia and babbles and shrieks and laughs and hollers, she rens her body, when you hear her sing she is a victim being burned at the stake she is signaling furiously through the flames she is doing that. her music is some of the only sounds that ive ever found truly encapsulate the latent things ive always felt in my life about what suffering means, what is actually evil in the world- i think i learned something from her that she calls living death where a person is alive in one sense in a biological sense but in another sense theyre dead because theyve been isolated from their community or have no other ability to relate to any other human or they cant express themselves or theyre exiled theyre in prison, living death is a true tragic condition and most people are the living dead you can see it you know everywhere. and so she in music is restoring vitality back to human expression to music theater and stuff. and she's 50 some and still performing. So those two people now really get me goin.

Q: 2012.... your thoughts?

DH: what i like a lot about living in the 2012 generation is that theres so much models and speculation and abstraction of what will happen and an infinite amount of stories that people cook up and really rest their lives on and 2012 will come and than we'll get to see what happens and its amazing because all those guys will be weeded out or theyll somehow be able to cook up another story. but the christians the bhuddists everyone is ready for whats gonna happen, the freaks the hippies everyones waiting for this moment and im excited to see what will happen to the world

Q:so are you resisting speculation?

DH: no im one of the people that talks the most about all kinds of far out ideas but im not attached to them you cant be because it causes all kinds of anxiety all kinds of paranoia if not that it causes a sort of hysterical obsession than you chase them and later on you find out you where so nieve and wasted so much time. at least thats my experience. as a teenager i started to read about alchemy, read about magic to read about shamanism and came up with all these ideas about how the world really works and its a simultaneous process becoming less and less attached to my ideas about what the world is about and more and more centered in my body. the only thing i'll ever know is this drama in my head- thats the only thing i'll ever truly know and i dont want to live a life of guessing and psychobabble guessing about what it all means cause you go to the grave kicking and screaming like you came in because you cant figure it out but its sure as hell fun to try and its even more fun when theres an actual real date thats around the corner thats a huge thing a real point because its a real yardstick for gauging bullshit- crap ..ector.

Q:a few bulletpoint tips for how to life a more authentic meaningful life?

DH: try to resist ideology at all costs because its the enemy of the body and its the enemy of the natural mind the peaceful mind. people can generally tell when theyre getting off the main road. resisting relationship to ideas about how the world works, to always bring attention to your lungs your legs your face your arms and your fingersand everything , thats your vehicle dont betray it dont humiliate yourself by getting lost in a jundle of things that are handed down, trickled down from god knows where; centuries of people hysterically trying to figure out whats going on when their heart is beating every single moment from the moment they are born to the moment they die thats a miracle and a mystery thats bigger than talking dark matter. No one knows why you can command your body with your mind thats the ultimate miracle and the ultimate mystery so resisting attachment to beliefs, any belief. bhuddism- you cant go wrong- a story i love about the buddha walking through the forest sees a guy whos been struck by an arrow and the guys wondering who shot him with the arrow, where the arrow was made who constructed this horrible event that was happening to him and the buddha says dont worry about where this came from worry about getting the arrow out of your stomach and i see that as obliterating attachment to ideology and belief focusing on the body the moment basically always bringing attention back to this center.

see his art at douglashenson.blogspot.com