Take a term, phrase, or sentence that interests you.

As you take in what you just heard or read, notice the before-words sense of it inside you. Allow all thoughts, feelings and body sensations to be present. After a time let words come…an understanding in your body of the material you are exploring.

Take what came, write it down, or have a partner say it back to you…

Notice if the words say your sense of it. Re-write or re-phrase the words until they feel exactly right, and your meaning is taking shape or becoming clear.

How do you understand this? Notice the sense of it…

What does it mean to you?

In your life, what does it mean?

‘In art, the genuine creator… is not just a gifted being… but a man who has succeeded in arranging… a complex of activities… for their appointed end, of which the work of art is the outcome.’

[breath] hmmm

so if I take my instructions and say ‘taking in what you just heard, notice the sense of it inside you’

…there’s a sense of order and power.

… [long pause]

…a certain kind of working…

and proceeding… which…

… [long pause]

puts things in a certain complex order, to achieve a result.

… [long pause]

There’s something coming now about understanding…

I think the question would be ‘How do you understand this?’

Notice the sense of it…

… and that’s different from trying to figure out how… he meant it…

because I don’t know how Matisse meant it…

but this is what I’m getting from reading this.

… [long pause]

And then I think you could go to ‘what does it mean to you?’

Okay, can we test it with another sentence?

It means to me that there is a… let’s see…

… [long pause]

It means that there is a way of… ordering… complex activities… which result in a work of art…

something one… does with their consciousness… or consciously is doing…

which involves a certain intelligence in arranging things in a…

…I don’t know, I’m going in circles now.

… [long pause]

As a painter what it means to me is to…to be…in command of a range of complex activities.

And that that can be done… if one takes the time to… learn or study…

What’s also important here for me, in doing this presentation… is that the meaning doesn’t necessarily come that quick, like a thought.

It might take a while to put it into words.

It might not happen in a few minutes, or an hour.

… [long pause]

Personal meaning… might not have words yet.

…[long pause]

But there may be a body sense of it already…