Automatic Art
Did that Jackson Pollock piece above immediately make you feel anything profound? If so, great! Please tell me about it. If not, then you’re like me: I don’t understand his work. But I’ll try anyway. It’s only one of the most expensive paintings ever sold in the world ($140 million!).
Have you seen Ex Machina? Great movie. Here is a scene describing this exact painting:
Let me reiterate:
Not deliberate, not random. Some place in between.
This is pretty difficult, especially for me; I tend to try to conceptualize and capture everything. Leaves very little room for emotion.
“Love is like a butterfly, it goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes.
Love is like a butterfly, hold it too tight, it’ll crush. Hold it too loose, it’ll fly.”
- Unknown
My brain likes to crush butterflies :-/, so I’m working on fixing that.
You still with me? Lemme drag you back to ancient China to hammer in my point.
Tao Te Ching
The Tao Te Ching is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism.
Here is a relevant chapter about not trying:
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It can’t be gained by interfering.
- Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48, translation by Stephen Mitchell
This is my daily mental dance. I read and absorb information as much as possible (every day something is added), but then I make the time to “trim the fat” and meditate as well (every day something is dropped), in order to let all that I’ve acquired fall into their proper places.
Speaking of daily rituals, I listen to lectures and audiobooks regularly, especially during my commutes. YouTube Red so I can listen to free lectures on demand (or downloaded) with the phone screen off and in my pocket, and Audible for audiobooks.
A lot of the lectures I listen to are from the late Alan Watts.
Alan Watts
Alan Watts was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience.
On Dancing
In this lecture (unofficially titled “How To Get The Universe To Do Everything For You”), he talks about a child dancing:
We love to see a child dancing all by itself, lost in the dance, and not performing for an audience.
And we say, “Oh! If only I could dance like that. If only I can become like a child again. Innocent!”
When parents notice how beautifully their child dances, and they all approve of it and say to this child, “dance for us!”, the child begins to lose this power, and it puts on airs; it knows it’s noticed.
And we don’t like that. We say “that’s affectation!”, that’s showing off!”, “that’s phony!”.
“What we want you to do is to dance as if you had no audience, not even yourself.”
Which of course puts the child in a double bind, because it says to the child, “we require you to do something that will be acceptable only if you do it as if it wasn’t required.”
- Alan Watts
On Sailing
The man who puts up a sail is using magic. He lets nature do it for him, with the intelligence to use a sail, you see? Now, that is the most highly skillful art of all; that is Taoism in perfection.
I grabbed this quote because it fits this post so well, but I’ll admit that I’m pretty ignorant to sailing. I can imagine how the mastery of this art can translate into any other art form. For example, I’m working on setting my “sails” up correctly by decluttering and organizing my office and filling it with the proper reminders (art pieces) to allow the “wind” to push my mind in the direction I choose.
Let’s time travel again, this time back to 1609, where we focus on a seemingly innocuous, hum-drum part of a genius’s work.
William Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Just a title page. Pretty innocent looking, yeah?
Prepare for some strangeness. Watch this 13 minute video describing the title page for William Shakespeare’s sonnets, and let me know what you think:
(tl;dw: sacred geometry, mathematical constants that weren’t even discovered yet, and a surprise at the end)
Perhaps none of that was done consciously by Shakespeare himself, but rather just an unintended result of him being a regular in the genius realm. Like Jackson Pollock’s “automatic art”, you just have to let go and let the universe guide your hand. In this case, he wanted just wanted to assemble a title page, but his inner genius added sacred beauty to it without him even realizing it.
This is the stuff that transcends space, time, and possibilities, so how does a human mind, no matter how bright, contain such a thing? It cannot, so it can only at best serve as a channel, to bring a piece of the divine into this reality.
Let’s punctuate this post with another historical genius.
Beethoven

I’ll re-quote that here in case you want to highlight it:
There is no loftier mission than to approach the Godhead nearer than other people, and to disseminate the divine rays among humanity. — Beethoven
This perfectly sums up my recent efforts and what I hope to achieve. I had somehow managed momentarily wrap my head around this thing that cannot be contained or expressed through any material means. I was able to experience everything at once and felt my timeless self. And I’ve done it a handful of times already, each converging in a familiar way, but wildly different approaches to it, and wildly different lessons when I come back. I’m trying my hardest to share bits and pieces of it with the world. I want you to see it too, and come back with your own lessons.
Love,
- Tuan
P.S. We got Alex and Allyson Grey to sign our copy of The Mission of Art. It’s now my most treasured item:


