Heroes Not Zombies

Sometimes I notice that something I’m looking at strongly reminds me of something else. In fact, isn’t that the fundamental way in which we engage with the world?

Whatever we are looking at, hearing, sensing….wherever we are….our experience is unique. Even a person standing right next to us in that same moment will have a different experience.

One way to consider this idea is to think of two people walking along the bank of a river. For the first person, throughout their whole life they have found something soothing and calming about the flow of a river. They look at this river, walk beside it, and feel calm. It delights them. For the other person, rivers are associated with danger. Maybe somebody they knew fell in a river and drowned one day. Maybe they, themselves, fell in and almost drowned one day. Every time they approach a river, any river, they feel anxious, insecure and unsafe. They are alert to the possible dangers.

These two people are sharing a moment in time and space, but neither of them is having the same experience as the other.

I often wonder about the connections we make in our minds….the memories which come to the fore, the emotions and thoughts which arise, in any particular moment. And how those memories, those thoughts, those emotions and, yes, beliefs, fashion each and every new experience.

When I looked at this scene above through the viewfinder of my camera it looked pretty much like you see it here in this photo. Instantly I thought of Magritte’s “Day and Night”.

And in that moment I wasn’t seeing just some clouds in front of a blue sky over some rooftops. I was seeing a work of art. It reminded me of an early scene in the movie, Basquiat, where the artist looks up at the sky and see surfers.

It set me off thinking about the power of art to change the way we see, not only the moment we are looking at a particular painting, but the way we see the world ever after.