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It has long been part understood that altered consciousness evokes visions that are used to make art. Think of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan (“A damsel with a dulcimer/ In a vision once I saw”), reportedly a result of an opium dream.
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What occurs to me (and granted it’s a pretty old thought, dressed up by recent neurological research) is that artists, like masters of meditation, are able to achieve an altered state readily, without “artificial” stimuli or illness. They seem to be able to achieve these states more easily than others in our rational, conscious-brain-oriented society. On A&P we talk about being “in the zone” or not noticing the passage of time while we are working. We see things differently because we’re talking and looking at art, as Birgit did on her walk after Steve’s post on quotes from O’Keefe. Sunil talked of living the life of art. I noticed that sometimes I see differently when I’m casually photographing.
We use specific activities or objects as triggers to that altered state, which might be why Karl and I are neither self-indulgent nor masochistic when we work outside. We can obtain some condition of mind that is conducive to our art work; we find our “sense sublime.”
It’s this old knowledge, now validated by science, which provides not only a reason homo sapiens are religiously inclined, but, more important to this group, that art might be a specific function of those altered states. With that knowledge, it’s possible to gain credibility for the importance of artmaking to the whole of civilization. Lewis-Williams says that the earliest “artists,” particularly those who depicted clay figures and skulls with predominant eyes (I keep thinking of Emerson’s “Transparent Eyeball”), were not among the elite shamans and high priests of an organized religion, but rather ordinary people expressing what they saw in their day dreams or fatigue or hunger."
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