Blending Narratives
It was usual to make an initial visit when working with individuals referred to STAA. When visiting Patricia H, she shared her sketchbooks, packed with multiple scenes of domestic harmony depicting the room we were sitting in, Patricia and husband watching tv, reading, drawing etc. and often including two contented looking cats. Patricia hadn’t had any formal drawing tuition and she explained the multiple sketches as her drawing practise.
Glancing between the space occupied and the sketches, I began to realise that each sketch had a different focus and that both were rich in shifting objects charged with meaning. Owls, hedgehogs and swans took turns occupying windowsill, fireplace, cabinet and floor, each with their own vantage point and relative position. Various parts of a Japanese print that linked an athletic prowess now hidden along with a collection of coloured belts and trophies became prominent and faded between pages.
Over the weeks we worked together, the tenuous filaments connecting physical and imaginary worlds diversified. Daily activities and new locations appeared, histories, legends, magical worlds (astrology), film sets and news presenters migrated in crayon and ball-point ink. In the process of recovery, perceived worlds coalesced to dispel the constraints of a past trauma and lay grounds for improvement.
The limits of reason: Philip Pullman on why we believe in magic, argues that the realm of enchantment is a crucial aspect of being human and cites writers and philosophies that reflect the benefits of this instinctive approach. He describes Keats “Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” William Blake’s “Twofold Vision”, by which he means what we see when we look ‘not with but through the eye’: the state of mind in which we can ‘see a World in A Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower.” The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume’s, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Adding clarity, William James put it: “In the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favour of the same conclusion.”
These sessions were a reminder that imagination can give us an empathetic understanding of our lives, expand our perception, escape limitations and invigorate our reasoned condition. As Phillip Pullman says, the important thing is to be aware of both.
