The way to do is to dobedobedo

and all that jazz...

Abiding… like the Dude. Buddha image: Krishna Kumar Shrestha / CC BY-SA

There is no need to run outside
For better seeing,
Nor to peer from a window. Rather abide
At the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart and see
If he is wise who takes each turn:
The way to do is to be.

The Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu: Witter Bynner version

These days the first lines should say: There is no need to go online for better seeing, nor to scroll through social media…

Another way to abide at the center of your being… Photo by PxHere

And another way…. Photo by PxHere

What’s the difference between being and doing?

It’s easy to say the way to do is to be, but that’s only half the equation of dobedobedo. The other half is the way to be is to do. We get born, we have bodies, and we have no choice but to do, do, do, no matter where we be—looking out the window, or searching our own hearts. There is no escape from dobedobedo. Being and Doing are like breathing in and breathing out.

Where does TRY fit in?

Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. ~multiple attributions

Is there a difference between trying and doing?

Yoda, is trying really any different from doing? Isn’t everything we do an experiment, a try, more or less, seeing as how we live in a world we barely understand, much less control?

The kind of try Yoda was belittling is a holding back try, a not really trying try. An equivocal try. A fraidy cat try.

What I think Yoda was saying is: go for it, don’t hold back your energy and conviction. (And if at first you don’t succeed, go for it some more.)

The dictionary defines try as: to make an attempt. Some tries are extremely well-prepared—the result of experience (lots of previous tries), determination, and commitment, but they are still attempts, just ones with a high chance of realizing their intention. There is no try because everything is a try.

I admit there are situations where we want/need/demand DO straight up rather than TRY on the rocks. When I get on an airplane I want the pilot to fly the plane, not try to fly the plane. Ditto when I want someone to wire my house or perform surgery or any other specific task that requires specific results based on specific actions (specifications).

But in any situation, deep shit can happen. However much we think we know what we are doing, the unexpected is always a cool breeze at the nape of our necks. And the more we abide at the center of our being, the better the chances are that we will be able to deal with the unexpected, aka the present, aka what’s actually happening right now. Dobedobedo.

Mistakes are part of the process, unless they aren’t…

Recently I viewed a life-size cast of Trajan’s column at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The actual structure is about 30 meters (98 feet) in height, 35 meters (115 feet) including its large pedestal (at the museum it is in pieces) and covered with intricate carved relief sculpture. It is an amazing work of art.

I couldn’t help wondering what happened when someone who was making a tiny part of this literally monumental work had a slip of the chisel. It had to have happened in a work of that magnitude, didn’t it? I don’t know enough about the techniques of this kind of carving to know how hard/easy it would be to fix a mistake.

Aegidius Sadeler, view of the column of Trajan, shown with its pedestal dug out from the earth, surrounded by buildings at the base of the Quirinal Hill, Rome, from the series “Ruins of the antiquity of Rome, Tivoli, Pozzuoli, and other places,” 1606, etching and engraving, plate 31 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The crossing of the Roman Army over the Danube River in the first Dacian War (the large figure is a personification of the Danube) (detail), Column of Trajan, dedicated 113 C.E., Rome (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Now we have Photoshop, 3D printers, CNC routers and other digital tools that open new doors to new spaces in the process of making. And there are still plenty of mediums that do not respond to digital manipulation. I have made many drawings in ink or paint in which I tried as hard as I could not to make a mistake, because correcting my mistake would be so difficult or impossible.

Not being able to correct a mistake, or only with great difficulty, has to narrow the field of what we attempt from the beginning. The easier it is to make changes, the easier it is to create without fear—to TRY things and if they don’t work out, to try something else. The easier it is to make changes, the more the concept of ‘mistake’ loses its meaning.

In the process of creating, of making, ‘trying’ means moving from interior imagining or visualizing to taking actions in the external world, to ‘realizing’ your vision. Realizing is a process of being and doing. It’s not a magic wand in which the process is condensed into a single wave of abracadabra. It’s making moves and seeing what happens…

Have Photoshop, will experiment.

I love Photoshop. Ever since I started using digital tools for illustration I have loved the freedom to try things, to mess around, to engage in a much more fluid workflow. I usually begin on paper or board, with pencil, ink, or paint. So far I have not been able to replace the feeling of pencil on paper. I wish I could. But there is a sensuousness and flexibility of touch that I can’t get on a screen with a digital pencil, even with a textured screen protector.

The ‘hard copy’ I create becomes something I can play with after I scan it. I can move elements around. I can make them larger or smaller. I can slide colors in all directions. I can work in layers. Layers are brilliant. They allow repositioning of elements in relationship to each other; they allow alternate versions to co-exist and lots of other kinds of experimentation.

The figures began as a hard copy drawing/painting. The torn paper is a photograph and everything else happened digitally. More theater illustration here.

Does having so many options drive me crazy? No. Plentiful options are not a problem when you are on an artmaking thread. To do anything creative is to experiment—to try—and then to allow (and work with) the mystery of coming into being. Coming into being is when the work itself, first as a whisper, and then with increasing clarity and momentum, tells you, the maker, what it wants to be. And your job as the artist is to hear and obey. The further you go the more your options will be limited by the integrity of what you are making.

Can we apply this idea to life itself?

I have so much admiration for people who have the courage to use life like Photoshop; who get ideas and try them out with the confidence that whatever happens will be okay and will lead on to the next step. I want to be more like that.

Maybe it’s not a perfect comparison because in Photoshop you can go back to a previous iteration, and in life you cannot. Or maybe that’s not true. Even in Photoshop you are not really going backwards… you are going forward based on new information which has given you a new perspective. So going back is going forward, like life.

Photoshop and life are mediums. We are the artists. At our best our options will be limited by the integrity of who we are and who we are becoming.

To be an artist in the medium of life is simply to have confidence in being alive. Everything Max Ernst said in Desiderata. It’s a great feeling and nice work if you can get it.

I certainly don’t feel that confidence all the time. When I do, it’s not champagne and fireworks, or a marching band; it’s more a gentle buoyancy that holds me, holds my being, and gives me the support I need to be and try and do and become.

May your being be your doing and vice versa. May you dobedobedo. And if at first you don’t succeed, you know what to do next!

---