Don’t you just love it when you learn something new? Recently our Masters students had the opportunity to work together with Zorana Sadiq (I’m a big fan, so it was partly selfish to invite her into my classroom) and she [correction: she reminded us all of what Masters C3 student Jessica Lalonde had mentioned!] brought the concept of Ouroboros to us. Always curious, I immediately said I had never heard of it and wanted to know what it was. The image is one of a snake (or dragon) eating its tail; a symbol of infinity, interconnectedness, destruction and regeneration. I was amazed that I had somehow never come across this idea or even the image before; it appears to me to be ubiquitous and obvious now. Britannica says “Ouroboros expresses the unity of all things, material and spiritual, which never disappear but perpetually change form in an eternal cycle of destruction and re-creation”, and this perspective is something I have had as a presence in my artistic (and teaching) practice for many, many years. So it was a revelation to me that I had never encountered this specific symbol before, although it comes from ancient Egypt and Greece. Life-long learning!
As I near the end of this phase of my life, what I would call probably Act 3 of my life–The Artist-Teacher–I am mulling such things on an almost daily basis. Purpose, meaning, connection. I am nearing the end of my 100-day creative journalling project as suggested in the Book of Alchemy (which I have blogged about previously), and thinking deeply about the artistic and creative process the entire time (as if I ever stop). And I ask myself “what does it all mean? What matters?” and reflect on my life as an artist and teacher and what I want to pass on. And teaching itself is a kind of Ouroboros, because we are at once teacher and learner, passing on what we know, sifting and filtering it through the relationships with our students, and re-learning, re-doing, re-creating in an endless loop.
It’s so easy to fall into despair and think that what we do is meaningless, but so long as we can share our work with others, be willing to be changed by their ideas and creations, and constantly reinvent ourselves, we are in the journey of life. We bring our creativity into being, we share it with others, we are transformed by both the art we make and the art we witness. Coming together to learn in creativity is the most wonderful kind of alchemy, and learning to sing, the act of singing, is the deepest kind of alchemy there is, I think. It’s a human gift, the gift that keeps on giving, the gift that returns to itself. Ouroboros.