thank you for noticing
Register for Stemless, Sunday August 11, 6pm UK time
Gazing at the Klimt, she says, “There’s a subtle violence in it no one talks about.”
I can’t help looking at the wall, at the wet weave of gold, to spot the violence she sees. In the same moment I see not only the canvas but also her hand that gestured at it. I see also her arm leading away from her hand. My awareness hugs also her head and eyes, pointing. It widens still further to include myself, my own feet, the brown shadow of my nose, my faint urgency to join her opinion, my sense that she is slightly taller, knowing more than I know about art. She is a surprising bite of caramel in the movie theater popcorn of this familiar museum. I am a drenched, frolicking tourist in the rain while the locals stare at me from their sheltered bus stands.
In this very moment as you read my words, as you ignore the faint curve of your own nose, what is your whole world? What is the meaning being made by you? The meaning in fact made of you, the painting in which your conscious thoughts are simply some of the golden daubs?
Stemless calls us into noticing our whole-world meaning.
What is this whole thing? What are the demands heaped on me, with every word I read coming into comprehension? What is the dream I am dreaming? What am I imagining I am? What are you, in my dream?
We are each construction sites, ever hammering into being edifices of ourselves and the other and the moment. Stemless is the practice of noticing what is being built and destroyed and built and destroyed.
This is more possible because of a pledge we endeavor to keep: to receive with meta-gratitude every noticing. A non-verbal instance of the ritual: good noticing.
Good noticing. (n., exclamatory, loving)
A: I think I’m still holding onto what happened between me and her a few minutes ago.
B: Good noticing!
A: I’ve been able to stick to my schedule today, and it feels great!
B: Good noticing!
A: I feel like everybody hates me.
B: Good noticing!
A: I’m quite dissatisfied with this piece.
B: Good noticing!
A: I’m terrified by how you all are getting ready to leave.
B: Good noticing!
“Good noticing!” is a simple custom to recognize the gift to the collective that is the noticing and naming of something occurring in a part of the collective, bringing more of what’s happening now into participation. It is a ritual for the shared value for the project of noticing, rather than (or at least, before) rushing to address, deepen, fix, heal etc.
(It’s easy to miss the tonality of love in each exclamation of “Good noticing!” It is decidedly not passive-aggressive.)
I say meta-gratitude because the meaning that springs around me when you say, “You are a hopeless child,” might be, “You are my crushing father.” And I might name that. Yet above the sensation of that childlike recoil, I am the art connoisseur noticing that you are speaking about yourself, that there is no utterance in which you fail to speak about yourself.
Stemless is the practice of bathing each other’s worlds in appreciation and even forgiveness as our own worlds require it– recognizing that every step of bringing-into-awareness is a gift, an oily stroke, a bright green splash, from the reality artists with whom we share this fleeting bright corner.