Alan Bray
2007 Biennial Talk
Run Time: 7:36
I have always found it exciting and mysterious to just sit in some ordinary place and give myself to it for hours. I try to be there completely and let the place swallow me up in its rhythm, which goes on every hour of every day, with or without me. Doing this I have learned how to be still and alert.
A place reveals itself slowly as layer upon layer of my own self-consciousness dissolves and the intricate structures of phenomena—the branching pattern of trees, the drifting and melting of snow, the meandering of flowing water—advance and take precedence. The revelation of these and countless other structures in their enormous variety impart to a place its astonishing particularity. The experience of becoming a part of what you are looking at is compelling and elusive. Because the incomprehensible connectedness of nature lies beyond the physical experience, you have to rely on resources that are as much the province of memory and dream as of your skills as an observer. The process of achieving a role in that connectedness is one in which intimacy and affection serve to reorder the experience of place. Certain elements become amplified and others diminish as what you see folds into what you feel and know.