Last night a little after 1:00 AM, the Volunteer Fire Department's siren started wailing, which set off Thor howling at the foot of the bed; then Bayleigh chimed in from the adjoining room. So much for a peaceful night in the country. It was both a grievous and joyful way to be awakened from slumber. And by such mixed means I was brought to the edge of a major discovery.
Unable to return to sleep, I checked my email - usually a mistake whenever you find yourself suddenly roused in the middle of the night. But somehow last night, it turned out to be providential. Because right there on my iPad, the very first thing I found turned out to be the key I needed to solve the puzzle that I've been stuck on for the last few weeks. The key was there, in the form of a reply to tweet I had sent a few weeks earlier, and it contained just one word -- Aphanipoiesis. That's a term coined by the writer Nora Bateson. It means the coalescence of blessings that proceed from sources unseen, or at least that's the way I would slightly rephrase Nora's definition. And this key, this aphanipoiesis, had arrived in my conscious mind in an entirely appropriate manner, from sources unseen, thanks to the siren and howling that had erupted in the still of night. (You can read Nora's original posting here.)
But I'm getting ahead of myself. How can I expect you to understand the deep meaning of Aphanipoiesis, unless I first explain the puzzle I'd been struggling with recently. For the last few weeks, you see, I've been trying to write the third chapter in my new book -- It's a pivotal chapter, where I describe Allan Bridge's invention of the Apology Line. And if you know nothing else about Allan and his story, then you should be aware that this is the moment, which he arrived at in the summer or early fall of 1980, when he first conceived of his masterpiece, the conceptual art project known as the Apology Line.
How does an artist come up with a break through idea? Where does inspiration come from? The initial task I set for myself in writing this chapter was to identify all the important things Allan had already figured out -- the various pieces of the puzzle that he assembled and laid out on the table in front of him based on his earlier work. After all, a breakthrough is predicated on laying the foundation in your prior work.
But even after laying out all the pieces, and taking stock of the important ideas Allan had already discovered, something was still missing. The pieces alone did not lead ineluctably to the solution Allan eventually found. The big idea was still inchoate.
So I went back to look through all of Allan's writings, and the transcripts of the countless interviews he gave over the years, where he described his early adventures creating the Apology Line, and I noticed something curious. Much as Allan was a dedicated diarist and kept meticulous records of the progress of his work, he remained remarkably silent when it came to Apology Line's moment of conception. You can follow his tracks leading up close to the event and you can pick up his trail immediately afterwards. But there is a gap of a couple months that covers the crucial run up period of gestation or incubation or whatever you choose to call it when the idea first came to fruition.
And that brings me back to Aphanipoiesis. Beyond a certain point the mystery of art cannot be solved. We're not privileged to see those sources unseen. We can't be. That's just the way it is, the way our world is set up. Those deep well springs of inspiration are not accessible to the conscious mind of the artist either. They coalesce underground, the way a seedling does, where it may remain hidden though already in plant like form, before bursting forth into daylight. These are the leaves full formed underground that have been nourished solely by an interior light.
