I rewatched Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation the other day. I don’t know what prompted it. I’ve been trying to watch more movies. I watched it first when I was a teenager, but because I was so young and dumb, I don’t think I got it. I didn’t know then, that many love stories are love stories precisely because they are inconclusive…The film perfectly captures the specific kind of loneliness I’ve always felt prone to. I feel it most when I drive on the highway at night, bubbled in the car, viscerally feeling insignificant in the world of things. It’s that same quiet feeling I think everyone experiences on airplanes.
I went to the Picasso Museum over the weekend, and it was remarkable, mostly because the sheer VOLUME of how much work he made. Purportedly Picasso made 137,800 works of art in his 70-year career. The grandness of Picasso’s vision, his ability to see the world with so much freshness and vigor bowled me over — the quantity of it, the beauty of it… I was also fascinated seeing how many times he would iterate on the same idea or image, trying to find the composition that was most resonant. My favorite was a series he did of his window in Marseilles. In a week, in the fall of 1957, he made 13 paintings, most of which were 4x5 feet, of his same window, the same view, each one different. I was moved. It’s so easy to always focus on the end result, but seeing the master approach the same image with beginner’s mind was humbling. It reminded me of a quote from Shunryu Suzuki — “In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are a few.”
Not long ago, I read Life with Picasso — written by Francoise Gilot, Picasso’s long-term partner. Though unmarried, they were together for a decade and had two children. When they met she was 21, he was 61. After Gilot left him, Picasso refused to see their children and did everything he could to ruin Gilot’s career. Though I looked, there was only one mention of her in the museum. Her writing about their life together touched a nerve in me. Though Gilot was an artist too, in addition to child-rearing, much of her time was spent observing and managing Picasso. In the book, Gilot quotes Picasso as saying:
“Do whatever you want, but make a composition out of it that stands on its own feet.” It’s incredible the number of possibilities one has with three or four elements like that. He used to say to me, “You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”
I love that.
The world is changing so rapidly right now. I’ve traveled more in the past year than I probably did in the entirety of the last decade. I feel lonely sometimes, but it’s not bad, mostly interesting. I think about Scarlett Johansson asking Bill Murray in Lost in Translation if “it gets easier?” People filter in and out. Everywhere is different and the same.
At the end of her book, Gilot wrote: “Pablo had told me, that first afternoon I visited him alone, in February 1944, that he felt our relationship would bring light into both our lives. My coming to him, he said, seemed like a window that was opening up and he wanted it to remain open. I did too, as long as it let in the light. When it no longer did, I closed it, much against my own desire. From that moment on, he burned all the bridges that connected me to the past I had shared with him. But in doing so he forced me to discover myself and thus to survive. I shall never cease being grateful to him for that.” She began her life again. The book sold a million copies, but that doesn’t feel like the point. She painted until she died at 101, in 2023.
I think about beginner’s mind and the will to imagine new worlds, to re-approach the same subjects and situations with freshness, fearlessness, vigor. I saw a meme the other day that said, “It takes years and then it happens all at once.” I liked that. The opposite of jadedness, of cynicism, maybe even of fear, is to be a beginner again. The decision is always available. The window closes and opens. The window can be painted, and then painted again. You create a feeling of strength in reserve. The artist of your own life.
“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are a few.”
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I’m Alma Jette, a songwriter and artist. Please check out my about section for more about this newsletter. Every like and comment helps me to grow. And I love to grow. If my work resonates, please share with a friend. Thanks. 🤎
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Outstanding piece. Attagirl. But...I still think Picasso is overrated.
Love this! A few days ago I wrote in my phone notes, "I'm gonna miss being a beginner"; what started as a desperate wish to "know how" to make music, to learn the tools and skills to create and express myself, is evolving into a soft nostalgia for the beginning when everything was unknown and the only power driving me forward was desire. I'm grateful for all parts of the process, for learning and mastery, and this reminder that being a beginner is a choice, a state of mind we can always return to! <3