Mirrors for the mind: boring runs and Rothko paintings
Pounding the pavement through suburbia, the mind wanders. I’ve run this route countless times and so, with attention diverted from the boring, often repetitive scenery, I’m left with my own thoughts.
Sometimes I find it helpful to set off for a run with a specific thought or idea in my mind, to develop, advance, persist with, or pick apart. But I also allow the trailing banalities of my early morning brain. Most runs are a bit of a mixture of the two — with varying degrees of equilibrium.
I think about breakfast; work; family; art; nothing. Whatever ‘nothing’ is. Or how difficult I’m finding this first half mile. I mutter and grumble to myself.
Maybe I should’ve had that coffee. People survived without coffee before coffee was a thing though right? How long have we had coffee? Not as long as potatoes I dare to say. What?
Internal monologues rattle through my mind, self-indulgently, as if I’m reading a novel about myself. Rehearsals play out, in a dress rehearsal of my mind.
“How will I address that conversation I said I’d have?”
I’ll think about likely responses, unlikely outcomes and full blown arguments, sometimes saying them out loud, practicing my replies and preparing myself for the worst, angriest, least likely responses. I can feel my heart beat stronger.
How does my breathing feel? What’s my cadence? Does any one care about cadence? Should I care about cadence? I’ll make my breathing rhythm match the cadence… uhh uhh huhhhh, uhh uhh huhhhh, uhh uhh huhhhh…
A moment of clarity.
“Mirrors for the mind”, that’ll be the title.
Boring runs and staring at Rothkos.
Running through nowhere and thinking about everything.
“Boring runs and Rothko paintings.”
I’ll keep saying that out-loud. It’s my only form of note-taking. Will I forget what I said when I get home? I often do. I’m annoying myself. I often annoy myself.
Legs feel better… niggle in the sides gone… Breathings OK… eyes are watering though. Definitely not buying artificial fabrics anymore. Micro-plastics, chafing, polluting… uhh uhh huhhhh, uhh uhh huhhh… Mirrors for the mind.
I mutter incoherent jumbled thoughts.
Lawns are essentially biodiversity deserts. Humans are the real plague of this Earth. Native species… native species… native species… something about native species… uhh uhh huhhhh, uhh uhh huhhhh, uhh uhh huhhhh, uhh uhh huhhhh…
Running allows me to follow, scrutinise, and make sense of jumbled thoughts like these, to test ideas, air thoughts, and give voice to tribulations. I can’t listen to music whilst running for this reason — I’d rather not be distracted in the Benjaminian sense, by using the activity as a form of escapism, but as a tool to open and expand trailing thought and catalogue internal monologues. I’m running repetitive routes to seek purity and clarity of contemplation, however trivial or non-sensical the thought might seem. The deflection from the world of objects allows for this meditation to occur. I’m thinking about looking at abstract paintings, in particular Mark Rothko, which in a peculiar way, can produce a similar affect.
In his excellent lecture at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2014, Christopher Rothko, psychologist, writer, and son of Mark, suggested that his farther’s paintings were hardly paintings at all, but suggestions; ideas that come into being at the moment of interpretation by the viewer. The reduction of form and lack of reference to the world of objects, he suggests, shifts focus and attention to the inner world of ideas and emotion.
Many people have reported emotive, moving, even spiritual experiences from viewing Rothko paintings. I think this is partly due to the monumental, almost imposing scale of many Rothko works; but also the way in which, through the universal visual languages of colour and shape, they manage the often difficult task of achieving the simple expression of a complex thought. Together, these attributes create the transcendent affect of enveloping the viewer into a deeply personal, intimate and silent dialogue. This interaction is as much an encounter with ourselves as it is with a work of art.
The chemistry between painting and viewer discussed through Rothko’s work is even more pronounced where curatorial approaches have refined the viewing arena. For example the subtly lit Rothko room in Tate Modern, where nine maroon paintings are hung in a compact space, is likely to be the closest you will get to experiencing the sublime whilst in a city of more than nine million people.
Even more enveloping is the deeply immersive Rothko Chapel in Houston Texas, where monochromatic paintings of biblical proportions surround the internal space of this non-denominational spiritual sanctuary. Even more enveloping is the deeply immersive Rothko Chapel in Houston Texas, where monochromatic paintings of biblical proportions surround the internal space of this non-denominational spiritual sanctuary. The Rothko chapel is a stage where dramas and tragedies of the human condition are set — where discoveries are made within our inner selves, by simply being present and being invited to think about what it feels to be alive and how it feels to feel this way.
Despite the initial, perhaps materialistic appearance of simplicity in these paintings, there is a wealth of depth — even, unlimited depth once activated by the viewer. Nathan Dunne wrote a piece about music and Rothko in response to witnessing a man called Timothy shout ‘We are homeless, homeless’ (and subsequently get removed) before these black paintings in the Rothko Chapel. The simplicity of abstract painting opens a whole world of complexity and in this example Timothy decided that they communicated with him through the lyrics of Paul Simon.
While representational art — of the landscape, the nude or the teapot — generally requires the viewer to see a certain object, Rothko’s abstraction allowed Timothy to hear the subject of representation.
For me, when I stand in front of a painting by Mark Rothko, I might just think about nothing. I might enter into a world not unlike the trance of meditation. Where thoughts pass though for me to persist with them, process them, make peace with them, and let them go. Or I might think something else entirely. It really does depend on what you bring to it. As the age old saying goes, you get out what you put in.
As discussed, this is not too dissimilar to some thought patterns whilst out running. For both experiences, the deflection from the world of objects helps achieve this state of mind, diverting attention to our inner selves. For running, a ‘boring’ or repetitive route empowers this process, in a similar way that curatorial devices help with the activation of Rothko paintings. I need empty space, where I can extract something valuable within the noise of my brain, from what can feel at first like almost nothing.
