Without Words: Asemic marks and sounds

It started with writing in my journal every day, and then not - because I was writing and reading the same whining about pain day in and day out. (For those of you who are new, I have lupus, as well as chronic pain due to a back injury that has led to three surgeries. I state these things as facts - part of my life, nothing more, nothing less.) I needed a way to express myself, just to get jump started into the day - to get it out of my system. When the first thing you register the moment you wake up is pain, or it is the reason you wake up, or can't sleep, or what ever, it gets old. So does talking about it, writing about it, journaling about it, trying to work with it, trying to get past it, ignoring it, etc, and my journal allowed me to purge and move on, but then that stopped working.

One day, this is what happened:

(clink on image to see in detail)

Which evolved into this set of 4" x 4" books hand written on tracing paper, sewn, and nestled inside a plexi box -which I constructed and then dremeled the same glyphs on, and rubbed paint into.

I have found many artists use this form of expression, which I've learned is called asemic writing, markings, scribbles that resemble words, but "having no semantic meaning". Tim Gaze has even created a free e-journal dedicated completely to asemic works! If you google it, you'll find there is a lot out there.

That's the technical aspect of it, but the deeper meaning...

As early back in my life as I can remember, I could let myself essentially disappear, into the process of making art. I didn't know, until much later, that I was practicing a form of meditation - taking my body, mind, and spirit to a place of oneness. This is where I would (and still do) return when the world around me became too violent, too chaotic, too exciting, simply too much. Art is my practice, my prayer, my inner peace; the process of creating is my breath, my heart beat. my pathway to truth. If, however, I choose to indulge my ego, and force an artistic idea (the way I might force my body into a defined proper stance in mediation) my mind is everywhere, my focus nonexistent, my peace out of reach.

Keeping preconceptions out of the way, staying present in creation's divine energy, takes me into the flow where boundaries between my body and my art begin to blur, and all sense of my small sense disappears.

When I practice "asemic" writing I am able to tap into that creative mediative flow directly. There is a cadence, a rhythm, an hypnotic repetition to the process. The results could be perceived as boring, by the viewer - the way 'just sitting' is too tedious for some. Upon slowing down and taking a closer look, my hope is that more will be seen and felt.

As I scribe I feel I am hearing ancient voices, foreign prayers, and reading through my body's eyes - words in a language I do not fully comprehend. The process of rendering takes me outside of myself, into a strange and unknown land - one of reverence, very personal, and deeply in need of a witness.

I can't seem to resist putting these things into a video, since it's the best vehicle I've found, to take you through my books - page by page.

https://youtu.be/5KmyPDFbxTo