fluffy tufts.
- artistforaday
- Jun 1, 2015
- 3 min read
is the name of a cocteau twins song.
and this is a picture of a fluffy tuft i found and played with, balancing it on my nose/lip tickling, for fluffy fun.
fun finding accidental toys to play with.
treasure-hunting the natural world's little gifts left along your path, finding a funny way to amuse yourself, decorate yourself, stumble upon new tastes, textures, smells, is one of my favorite things to do while walking through the world outside.
the discovery of the musical group whose song made me name this little clump of seeds playfully as a fluffy tuft was another type of treasure given to me when i was an undergrad/newly-turned art student by a friend, fredrick grimmer. i will forever be grateful to him, also for his introducing me to one of my favorite men of all time (through a book, that is): carl jung. both influences central to my developing understanding of and vocabulary for art at the time, which was in its very early gestation for me personally.
reading jung's thoughts helped me begin to shape my understanding of why it is we make art. a similar but not as comprehensive answer can be found in helen disanayake's one-word redefinition of our specie's name: homoaestheticus-- maker of meaning, creators of significance, beauty-- instead of homosapiens, which posits that our most characteristic feature as a species is our ability to know, to reason, to have self-conscious thoughts. i wholeheartedly recognize us in the first re-definition.
it was to these jungian thoughts, and to the sounds of this french philospher-inspired-monikered group, that as an art student i scribbled, closed my eyes & was taken into trance-like ecstasies with brush or oil stick in hand as i painted, standing in the middle of my room-studio.
the cocteau twins created this atmosphere of sound for my trances by using complex layers of instruments and not words, or only an insertion of occasional words, so the vocals become not unlike most classical music in their effect- pure sound without specific outside referents. i remember what one person wrote memorably- that when you die, if this is not the music you hear, then you are in the wrong place.
perhaps i would say that while you are living, if you are not able to achieve that feeling-sensation state with whatever music does that for you, you must look for that music until you find it, for then it is like being in the right place already here on earth.
and another part of being in that state for me is finding, noticing, and playing with the fluffy tufts that i am lucky enough to find along my path: be it feather, fascinating or tiny new insect, my favorite tiny blue butterfly, the rare pigeon who trusts me enough to come and land on me repeatedly to eat (this has happened only once, in a piazza, and i will never forget her), the pull and retreat of the edge of waves entreating me to run along their edge on the smooth sand barefoot, or the light smell, breeze, or feel of any one of a hundred thousand small treasures.
maybe the cocteau twins will be one of yours:
(to listen to one of my favorites, but do ignore the videos!:
or another one.... wait for the chorus:
