Merton's Mistakes

(And yours): an exercise

On Sunday I began to think a bit about the legacy of Thomas Merton as an artist. A good book on the subject is Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton by Roger Lipsey. There, Lipsey tracks Merton’s later life interests in contemplative practices of art, particularly zen painting.

Lipsey writes:

I do not think that Thomas Merton in the 1960s had to become a visual artist of such concerted intent and drive. That he wrote was his destiny. That he kept a journal was, no doubt, destiny. That he lived a life of unceasing inquiry and prayer, and was a capable scholar of Christian literature—these things were somehow seeded and likely. That his search for a living Christian mysticism ultimately led to rich parallel worlds in Zen Buddhism and later in Tibetan Buddhism—this, too, though impossible to anticipate, belonged to his calling. With rigor and heart, one thing led to another. But nothing, it seems, led inexorably, non-negotiably, to the serious practice of abstract art. We can construct a plausible biography around the fact that he freely chose in late 1960 to begin exploring with brush and paper the common ground between Zen calligraphy and the visual language of his contemporaries ‘in the world’….. A number of forces and circumstances at work in Merton’s life still remain for discussion. But we should recognize that his visual art, sustained over some eight years, arose from the surplus in him—a surplus of energy and intelligence, inquiry and camaraderie. Merton knew the concept of ‘the Prolific’ in William Blake. That memorable term refers to those who give abundantly to their fellow human beings. In his maturity Merton was of this kind, and his art was of this kind.

To arise in art with abundance, from abundance. Another word for this is play. Later, Lipsey writes that Merton’s art was not a “part of the command performance.” Exactly. Play, in fact, cannot be connected to command performances. The two are handled in different regions of the brain, producing very different outcomes for learning. Delight (endorphins) drives the first, stress (cortisol) drives the second. One is made for flow-state learning. The other for execution.