Lifeletter #145: Let Life Take You By The Hand

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
–Pablo Picasso

 

I have an uncle, David Douglas Duncan, who is 99 years old–a totally unusual and deeply inspiring person. “I was incredibly lucky. I really am a very lucky fellow,” he says. “Born in Kansas City, Missouri, and knowing nothing about Picasso, I had the audacity to knock on his door, became his friend and took thousands of photographs, of him, his studios, his life and his friends.”

I grew up surrounded by all of my uncle’s magnificent books about life with Pablo Picasso. To a child, these were not really books—they lived and breathed the spirit of Picasso’s life and his art. Picasso’s art was and is amazing; but I was always more interested in how he lived. One of my uncle’s great gifts to me and to the world has been to transmit this very vividly through his photographs. In one of his books there is a picture of Picasso sitting in a chair in his studio, all by himself. He is so still, facing into what feels like an immense and silent space. The weight and the vastness of his soul pours through that image, like music.

Another one I loved when I was growing up is Picasso after lunch one day, scooping the spine of the fish he has just eaten off his plate, and immediately incorporating into a piece of art. The look on his face is so innocent, playful and wild. I would look at that image over and over, feeling something so mysterious about how he was connecting with everything around him: “The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”

One thing Picasso said comes back to me again and again: “I am always doing what I do not know how to do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”  These words awaken a spark in me, like a mantra flowing straight from the fiery heart of his creative spirit. He was not a man who needed to settle anywhere and hold on to what he had accomplished. That’s what made him such a genius. As soon as he reached one artistic horizon, he started moving towards the next one, without waiting for anyone else’s encouragement or approval. His courage and his artistic integrity were  like a force of nature.  “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction,” he said. You can feel this, in the photographs, very clearly.

Thanks to my Uncle David, I grew up immersed in the feeling of this beautiful, wild, innovative energy, and it has profoundly impacted my life. And the life of my daughter. I think it is what allowed me to leave the beautiful life I had in Nelson and strike out into unknown territory, at the age of sixty five. Discovering how to live in a city, after living for more than thirty years in the Himalayas and very small towns, is quite an adventure. Sometimes I find myself muttering Picasso’s words to myself, as I stumble through my days. There is so much I don’t know how to do. It feels very edgy sometimes. It’s not quite as intense as when I came back from India and had no clue how to use a bank machine. But still, I feel the destruction that was an essential part of my creative movement.

Tonight I took my daughter out for dinner, and parked in a parkade for the first time. There were no parkades in the Himalayas, and only one in Nelson, which I never went near in over fifteen years. I didn’t know anything about how to go into a parkade, and there was no-one around to ask. It felt like such a dark, empty space, devoid of humanity.  I felt waves of anxiety washing over me, as I repeated, “I am always doing what I don’t know how to do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” I managed to get my car into a very narrow spot in the parkade, but it was much trickier getting out. At one point, as I kept driving down and around, I thought I was going to end up trapped in some subterranean cavern, with no way to get out. In those moments I find myself wishing I had stayed in my quiet little mountain town, where everything was so easy and familiar. Where I would not be gripped by the kind of irrational fears that cling to our feet when we step into the unknown.

But I couldn’t stay. Something bigger than me drew me out of Nelson. This happens when we let life take us by the hand. Something bigger than my Uncle David drew him into Picasso’s life, to bear witness to the force of creative energy pouring through this man. An energy that was certainly bigger than Picasso, who let life take him by the hand so many days of his life.

Without ever meeting Picasso in person, I have participated in his life and his legacy. I am so grateful for this, for all of the gifts that we give to each other, and receive from each other, that we may not even be aware of.  I am grateful to my aunt for marrying my uncle, for joining her life with his, in love and devotion.

When I came back from India and was starting my life all over again, I said to my uncle one day when we were having breakfast in New York. “I don’t know how to do this—start my life all over at age 50. I’m too old.”

He put down his fork, looked and me and laughed out loud. “You’re just a baby,” he said. “You have a whole life ahead of you.” He was right. It’s just as Picasso himself used to say, “It takes a long time to become young.”

I offer this Lifeletter to my beloved  Uncle David, and how young he is at 99. I have been gifted, blessed and nourished by the deep curiosity, the profound generosity, the spirit of adventure and gratitude with which he has lived his life.

 

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says Look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.

He says keep looking, stay curious.

He says there is no end to seeing.

 

…He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,

 

every one of us is ancient,

every one of us has a body.

He says every one of us is frightened.

He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

 

He says everything is alive –

shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.

Wood is alive.

Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

 

He says don’t be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.

Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

 

-Roger Keyes

 

 

with love,

Shayla