{ if / then}

As a younger woman, I was obsessed with Surrealism, and especially, the female surrealist artists. To me, they represented a freedom and boldness that just did not exist anymore. The way that surrealism was influenced by dreams (or the subconscious),  indigenous art, the drawings of children, and creative works by those considered insane or in mental institutions, was fascinating to me because these were such raw and untraditional inspirations. It made for art worth looking at. Art not always technically well-executed, but always part of a larger conversation about what made art critical for the continued evolution of culture. The ladies, in particular, seemed to dive deep, with intensely personal art full of dark, mysterious, symbolism. I also felt that many of them: Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Leonor Fini, in particular, made rich and masterfully beautiful art that told exploratory stories that sought full exposure all that lurked beneath the surface. The courage and beauty of their works still take my breath away.

In those years, I spent a great deal of time with other artists and we all wanted to explore and see how far we could push things. Playing with all kinds of media, but also, diving deep into ourselves for whatever was there that needed exploration and expression. The collision of these two experiences happened frequently  and friends and I would often spend hours playing Surrealist games.

The most popular of these games and one you have no doubt played yourself, is Exquisite Corpse. In this game one person draws part of a body, then folds a sheet of paper over, exposing only the ends of the lines they have drawn. The next player continues the drawing, not seeing the work of the previous, likewise, he or she hands the page to the next player with only the tips of the drawing’s lines exposed. This player finishes the drawing. After every player has finished, the page in fully unfolded, revealing the body in its entirety.

Another common Surrealist game is ‘if/then’. In this game, players all get a small square of paper. Each writes an ‘if’ statement, such as, if the sky were full of doves, or if tomorrow never arrived.  The sheet is then handed to another player, with the ‘if’ statement hidden. Players all add a ‘then’ statement to the page. When all the players have finished, everyone opens the papers and reads the statements together to make a full ‘if/then’ statement.

Usually, for the first round or two of either game, there would be absurd drawings with heads at both ends and statements that made little sense and caused lots of giggling. But, something amazing would happen by second or third round; everyone would synchronize. I don’t know if I will ever fully comprehend by what mechanism this occurred, but, it always did. Somehow the creatures sketched would wind up with mostly matching scales on each section, or dragon heads and feet. The ‘if/then’ statements would go from things like  if the jackalope ate a rainbow then the semi truck crashed yesterday, to if answers came easily then questions would be meaningless. Synchronicity would find its way to us and everything would align in a most magical way. No one would speak about it. We’d all just look at each other and grin so wide our faces nearly cracked.

Now, I think everything works this way. It is like Rumi said, “What you seek is seeking you.” Given enough attention, you can harness synchronicity so that it feels less like an inscrutable force of nature and more of a reliable law of matter. It can take a little time, but things seem to right themselves and order find its way out of chaos with a little bit of concentration.