Another battle lost! I was kindly requested to partake in the paper lamp for "your benefit" As I was told by Soumitri. So prolonging the inevitable I dragged my feet to the labs and played with paper. My constraint was paper and 6ft.....My assumptions were..................... I had no pre-conceived idea or plan to make my lamp it was to just try. So this I did. As the time passed and I played with paper the ideas began to generate, my perception and interrogation to what I was doing heighten, soon enough I was standing still and looking back. I had actually moved and experimented. Amazing! There actually was benefit in this.... I guess half way through the day I decided that I was making multiple lamps that would be self supporting [no structural support.] but only what was created from the paper manipulation. Water, fold line and heat I found to be effective methods. Which I narrowed down to just folding. Not sure what to say of the paper lamps but it was actually a good exercise to undergo, as the days navigation started with, doing the exercise to what how far can I push the boundaries.
Posted by hOuSE on 4:23 PMWhat is the problem? Is there a problem or what have you learnt? Such questions you ponder only to realise the journey you have taken, is detached from a preset destination. You look back on your tracks and see that you have progressed a long way but now begin to question how much you have displaced? The mix of emotions, overtake as you try to keep up and rationalise each one. Eventually you feel yourself begin to tire and become frustrated and slip into old ways to accommodate an inadequacy of fulfilment.
You shift you’re your focus to contextualise what your inadequacy is, you try and uncover it, make peace with it in hope of feeling whole and normal. You momentarily grant yourself refuge and elude yourself of comfort. Again you drift toward inadequacy and then you stop. Your first true discovery is made, do yo wish to understand it or not? Your journey should not be gauged on destination, time, output and quantity. You contemplate this as a disclaimer to your lack of or withdrawal of discipline. Your choice here answers your first discovery, you choose to understand and you now have a useful tool to take with you. You have invested in becoming self assured.
You have put behind your preliminary fears, you decided to maintain discipline, you begin to appreciate just how much there is to do in your world of free choice. You are fuelled and have mistaken this discovery as inherent direction, yet you know not where you are headed. Quickly you try to adjust and search for your direction you are consumed by fear of dissolution and again fall back to frustration. You dismiss your newly found tool and feel wounded by your vulnerability and decide to stop. You apply your disclaimer and walk away having nothing gained and time wasted.
Time passes, you progress on from your failure and yet still hear the calling of the discovery and somehow believe in it but you hold back. Not until you realise that with the discovery of new tools comes the discovery of a new system a new way of thinking and that your progression relies on adopting and exploring what you have not previously practised. This also relies on you being self assured at a time of knowing that you have no direction, your assumptions cheat you, and your boundaries are illusions of your fundamental beliefs that hinder your growth and development.
Are you prepared to let go a life time’s investment and proclaim that you know nothing and are wholly prepared to learn from start all over again? Weather or not you realise that you are challenging your own assumptions to ultimately understand the value of yourself as person.
From this you have identified problems, fears and tools. You favour the new world of exploration and experimentation. Looking back now, how do your reflections compare with all that you have been exposed too? Has your approach towards projects changed have you rebuilt your philosophy or just reaffirmed what you initially believed to be right? I tell you that you are mistaken should you think it comes down to being right.
You started with out expectations, your assumptions have been devalued and questioned time and time again all the while you only tried to appease your peers. You lacked self assurance. Soon after you realised that your current skin had to be shed as the alignment of what you desired and the opportunity to practise your learning to benefit you and not your assessor had occurred. Cautiously you proceeded again, you fell victim to your shed skin. Would you ever realise that if you let go and just moved forward the training would only get better and you would discover that the journey itself was of importance rather then the destination or its purpose. Or had you already come to this realisation but not been prepared to experiment? You still held back!
Through this you would learn to challenge your own assumptions, shift your boundaries to accommodate and all the time become self assured. Once you got it out and looked at it, you realised what you could use and what wasn’t needed. Your training had reached a new level. Your discipline improved. Your processes being fined tuned.
With this progression you acknowledge that currently you would move forward based on results and not ability. Finally after much time, you took your next challenge and started with ability and self assurance. You surprised your self with the journey taken your experience was challenging but equally fulfilling. Reflecting once again you discover that you were able to let go, move forward, make; no assumptions maybe not to the greatest effect. You discovered that to move forward on results was inappropriate rather that you should be self assured and learn from your results.
Thinking about Kya Hai now I rather it not be over as I made my discovery to late and feel much time was wasted as I would not allow my self to let go. How ironic that you should feel this way, as you hate time being wasted! So what do you draw from all of this? A thirteen week studio with a group of people who travelled there respective journey’s with a kooky travel agent?
Trying to be as open as I can be and honestly reflect on my experience through PKH has is proving to be yet another lesson in discovery. The Studio itself has been consistent in its approach and philosophy and yet I stand here a very much different person. I have an entirely new outlook on how to begin and experience a journey. I still look back on the studio and struggle to entirely absorb what I was subject too but I somehow cope with it a lot better now then I previously have. Why I wish this course not to be over is because it presented to me a new frontier and world possibilities with how I approach and deal with situations.
I fear that I won’t be coached like I have in Kya Hai, though truly if I’m not passionate about what I do I will fail to experience. I realise that I’ve reflected ambiguously and talking through many metaphors. My biggest achievement here has been learning through non-conventional methods and more so understanding that a practical finish isn’t always appropriate. I have always come to practise my learning to begin with research, summarisation and then to emulate. This left no room to experiment, and challenge, question maybe and but surely not challenge.
One thing though is that I’m learning to deal with areas that I’m not so interested in, throughout the course we have been asked to partake in activities and why would I be so wrong to say that I don’t believe that I have to partake? I can compromise to at least trying but I detest so much when I have to explain and defend my thoughts, I realise maybe I’m not being asked to explain but to widen or that I could interrogate and draw my own conclusions. The benefit from such a process is amazing, I’m learning to deal with some of my biggest fears which is to be assured and confident in how I approach situations and if I were to misappropriate well I would learn this surely because I would have had at least already been experimenting from which I draw experience.
Finally, what I silently to refused to partake in has been an enormous learning curve. Those damm paper lights! For so long I thought I could get way with out doing the paper light but The greater good [Soumitri] persisted that I do it. So Finally I arranged to be in the workshop and commit one whole day or there about to making a paper lamp. So I walked into the workshop sat down and held the paper, I had no pen, pencil or previous planning to my light. Normally being frustrated with not having direction I would have given up and walked out though as the day progressed I was getting more involved. I guess for me it was about just experimenting with some material and seeing how I could push it. So I may not have reached a desired outcome but I don’t care! I had a period of time where I was able to experiment and the ideas just kept flowing in. I may still not prefer to make a paper lamp but the realisation for me now is not about the proposed ending but what I do in between.
My biggest enjoyment is that I’m actually coping with change and actually enjoying doing things I my not be motivated by. To be explicit it truly is about the in between and not the end as long as I get it out of my head and onto to paper I can assuredly trust in what I do and learn from what I experience.
Posted by hOuSE on 7:54 PM
