“It was very interesting reading your words about the piece…especially knowing my emotions and thoughts when creating it.
I do wonder about your words. Where do they come from…the piece, the energy from it, is it a reading, etc?”

I’m quoting Suz (Susan Morrison Sims) asking a question about the poem Painmoon in which I used words to re-express one of her paintings.

I started, innocently enough, to reply, only to discover that I was in the thick of something which had been pre-occupying my mind for a long time. The comment became post-length, and I’ve only scratched the surface. So I decided to publish this first rough draft, all messy and half-digested, in the hope that it will stimulate many others to help shed light on the issues raised. Here’s my response, then over to you I hope!!

“Let me try! Where do the words come from? Not from a reading, though I suppose it would have been interesting to use the cards to read your image - I didn’t think of it, to be honest - but that would have been something much more calculated, whereas in both cases, the poems were spontaneous eruptions in response to your images.
Where do the words come from? is answered the same way you would answer: Where did your image as a painter come from? I think real art, in any form, involves in some way allowing ’something else’ to speak through us. I call it the Unconscious. The Unconscious has more than one ‘area’ - sometimes the material it produces is personal to a given individual, sometimes it is transpersonal - material perhaps specific to, or influenced by, the collective identity of a particular culture - its history, mythology, folklore, religion and so on. Finally, the deepest and most inclusive area is the universal one. I think when you succeed in tapping into that reservoir, you produce something which is going to move anyone, from any culture, who comes under its influence - whether it is music, visual art like film or painting, movement such as dance; words or whatever else.
I guess you could argue that art, for the artist, is therapeutic at every level, but I would say that the most obvious case of this is the art which taps into the personal unconscious. I have a particular thing on my mind, and by creating in some form, I work through whatever it is which is disturbing me. By definition, the extent to which this type of work is relevant - ’speaks to’ - others depends on whether or not they have emotional issues similar to those which I am addressing. Universal art, at the other end of the spectrum is, it seems to me, qualitatively different. In this case, I am dealing with the great archetypal themes which concern all of us as human beings, transcending time, place and culture. The best test of universality is the passage of time. If we today can still be gripped by Greek tragedy 2500 years old, we can assume that it is because this work is dealing with universal themes. In divination, the 2500-year old I Ching or the 500-year old tarot, similarly, we could assume genuinely do connect with universal unconscious motifs or themes, otherwise they would long since have fallen into obscurity.
It seems to me that if we are able to operate as an effective channel for the Unconscious, we will produce art which is capable of having transpersonal, possibly even universal significance. I think also that the ‘alchemical’ dimension of art is that this universal element can on occasion be reached not simply by dealing with a great universal theme such as death, but also through the way the artist handles some very small, mundane, banal topic or observation. For a poet, for example, this may often be in the rhythm, lilt or sonority of the words - the music of tone and beat, like in music itself.
Dylan Thomas’s Fern Hill has always been one of my favourite poems. The theme - loss of youth - is a universal one, but that is the only theme for quite a long poem. What makes this poem so powerful, I believe, is the lushness, the vitality and magic of the Creation which is summoned through its symphony of sound:
‘… And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light…’

Perhaps, in the case of poetry, what you are aiming for - if you aspire to touch the universal element - is to create a silence between the lines. And the only certain way for that to happen is for the words to come through you, rather than from you. But then, I don’t think this is certain either, since what may come through could be just a pretty dressing up of our own parochial and trivial preoccupations.
Maybe the only way a person is going to touch that universal dimension is by acquiring an element of universality in their own being. In other words, I have grave doubts that any egoist, no matter how ambitious, can ever sit down (or stand up - dancers can hardly sit down to it!) and produce great art. I have the feeling that to produce great, universal art, rather than simply being, for example, a technical wizard, the great artist has to be a person of great soul. As I was writing this, two sets of images were coming to mind - Picasso: often, I believe, no more than a technical wizard and Chagall, whose work, for me, is full of soul - whether or not it exhibits a high level of technical prowess.
In short, Suz, this comment has turned willy-nilly into a post - and I shall post it forthwith, because I feel that it it touches on important issues, but does no more than dip a toe into the water.”
What do you think?

I have a feeling I shall be doing a lot of commenting on this myself. I have the distinct impression that the above raises more questions than it answers!