Soluna: A New Kind of Salon
“Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession.”
“If what one makes is not created with sacredness, with wonder; if it is not a form of lovemaking; if it is not created with the same passion as the first kiss, it has no right to be called a work of art.”
Alfred Stieglitz
I am first and foremost using this posting to announce the founding of Soluna, a salon intended to help people as they follow their own Way. This means I am also writing about what the Alexander Technique can contribute to our global and personal development, not only because Soluna will have an Alexander vibe, but also because helping people follow their own Way is the heart and soul of the Alexander Technique. But this post is also about Alfred Stieglitz and the history of salon culture. The life and work of Alfred Stieglitz help illuminate certain key characteristics of what good Alexander Technique "teachers” and good salons should be like. His life is far too abundant for even the vaguest description to fit in a blog post of this size, but I want to touch on a few things that stand out for me in relation to what Soluna will be and to what Alexander Technique “teachers” in general should be. On a personal and global level we need revolution. The Alexander Technique can help best if those “teaching” “it” understand some of the dynamics that Stieglitz’s life and work make clear. Soluna will actively appreciate and nurture these dynamics. The goal of this salon is to inspire, invigorate, embolden, and empower people as they discover and do the things they know (or sense, or suspect) that they are meant to do. If you are reading this, it may be because we have invited you to participate. The discussion about Stieglitz and salon culture will give you a sense of the spirit Soluna seeks to embody. At the end of the posting you’ll find a few details about Soluna and you can email your R.S.V.P.
Let’s begin with some reflections on Alfred Stieglitz. The first thing to recall about Stieglitz is that he started making photographs when photography was not yet accepted as art. Indeed, many argued it was specifically NOT art. Stieglitz fought hard to gain proper recognition for this fascinating medium, in the process becoming a technical, aesthetic, and cultural pioneer. For instance, he made the first successful photographs of night, rain, and snow (thought of as technical impossibilities at the time); he helped to develop and evolve the aesthetic sensibilities of photography through, among other things, the founding of the Photo-Secession and the publication of Camera Work; and he helped get photographs exhibited on equal footing with other works of art.
The next thing to recall is that art in general was going through some big changes (revolutions) as well. Stieglitz not only championed, fostered, and contributed to the evolution of photography, but he also had a big influence on the spread of “modern” art to the U.S. and the development of very new modes of expression in the art of the U.S. The gallery he helped to found, 291, was a truly magical place. It was one of the very first galleries to introduce modern art to the U.S., through a series of rather scandalous shows. Although Stieglitz may have always viewed his work with the Photo Secession, 291, and Camera Work as part of the growth of art in general, he made a decision to transcend any paradigm that restricted these outlets to photography alone. As Shieb tells us, a young artist came to Stieglitz seeking advice. As he looked at her work, he felt that it “illustrated exactly what [he] was feeling at the time,” and so he “decided then and there to show her work.” Cherchez la femme. In a good way. In fact, in a very interesting way, because that artist was Pamela Colman Smith, the woman who went on to create the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck (Rider was the publisher, Waite was the esotericist who commissioned the work and presumably provided some sense of what he wanted––but the artist made all the images). Starting with that synchronistic decision to exhibit Colman’s art, Stieglitz became decisively involved in the avant-garde, not only in photography, but in painting, writing, and other areas of the leading edge of culture.
For instance, Picasso’s very first one-man show in the U.S. took place at 291. The critical reaction was––reactive. One critic wrote that, “Any sane criticism is entirely out of the question . . . the results suggest the most violent wards of an asylum for maniacs, the craziest emanations of a disordered mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!” Reactions to two earlier shows, of works by Rodin and then Matisse, were pretty much the same. The Picasso show had the artist’s drawings for sale at prices ranging from $20-40. Only one drawing sold. Picasso had done it when he was 12. Stieglitz felt so bad he bought an additional drawing himself. The entire collection could have been had for about $2000. Would have been quite an investment, eh? Stieglitz was vociferous in arguing for people’s support of living artists, but not as an “investment” of course. He felt that people should buy the work of living artists as a way to nurture the growth and development of those artists and thus of art itself. Dead artists don’t need support the way living artists do. Thankfully, Picasso managed to get by. Incidentally, an issue of Camera Work that came out several years later presented a comparative look at the development of the work of Picasso and Matisse. Stieglitz wanted a special text as literary accompaniment for this retrospective, but couldn’t find just the right thing. Then, with typical synchronistic timing, an unpublished author came to him with a manuscript she had submitted to every publisher in town without success. Stieglitz read it and decided it was perfect for this special issue. It was the first time anyone had published anything by that author. The author was Gertrude Stein.
Stieglitz also put together at 291 the first exhibition of African sculpture displayed as fine art rather than anthropological specimens. That was 1914. The following year he put together an exhibition that featured work by Picasso and Braque along with a wasp’s nest and a reliquary figure of the Kota, a Bantu ethnic group from Gabon. This juxtaposition provoked consciousness about relationships like art and nature, Western and African, naive and academic.
Importantly, Stieglitz let the power of 291 work on HIM. In 1907, Stieglitz was in Paris and went to a gallery that was showing Cezanne watercolors. In his words he saw, “what appeared to be pieces of blank paper with scattered blotches of color on them.” On being told the pieces were 1000 francs, Stieglitz replied, “You must mean for a dozen.” In 1911 Stieglitz welcomed many of these same watercolors to 291. His response was new:
The box of framed Cezanne’s was opened, and, lo and behold, I found the first one no more nor less realistic than a photograph. What had happened to me? I realized then what the years at 291 had done for me.
Clearly 291 was, as I said, a magical place. As such, it attracted a wide variety of artists from all fields, including such luminous figures as William Carlos Williams, Marcel Duchamp, Waldo Frank, Carl Sandburg, Isadora Duncan, and Theodore Dreiser. Some of these people merely passed through now and then, others were regular visitors, and a social circle developed around the place. Something about Stieglitz himself, his love of art, his desire to see art grow and to nurture in any way he could the art and the artists. One of those artists, John Marin, tried to explain Stieglitz and 291 this way:
The Man and the Place
Quite a few years ago . . .
there got to be—a place . . .
The place grew—the place shifted––for
when the door was closed the place was where this man was.
This statement will have to be altered––juggled––or built upon––
for the man is quite apt to say
“You don’t get it.”
Let’s see––This place shifted.
Shift is quite a word––a here––there––everywhere sort of word.
—Shift—is something that cannot be tied—cannot be pigeonholed.
It jumps—it bounds—it glides
—it SHIFTS—
it must have freedom.
. . . you have here an intangible word––a spirit word . . . .
It seems those who do that worth the doing
are possessed of good eyes—alive eyes—warm eyes—
it seems they radiate a fire within outward.
The places they inhabit have a light burning—
a light seen from near and far by those who need this light—
and this light sometimes dim—sometimes brilliant—never out—….
A place that is never locked for those who can produce a key.
A place that is never locked to anyone––
anyone can enter and walk about––
but if one got nothing then the Inner remained closed––
they hadn’t the key.
To realize such a place—
a very tangible place was and is this man’s dream.
I appreciate the poetic quality of Marin’s attempt to capture the spirit of Stieglitz’s work. I also like the way Georgia O’Keeffe put it:
“There wasn’t any other place where people were not doing just academic things, and the things that you saw at his place moved you off into the world, just like his conversation did.”
“It was the place, when you thought of something that would help you to take your own road, that was the only place you could go to find it.”
The bit by Marin and these two quotes from O’Keeffe fundamentally embody both what a good salon and what a good Alexander Technique “teacher” should be. This is why you go to an Alexander Technique “teacher”: to be in a place that will help you take your own road. Here, then, is one reason why “teacher” is best put in quotes. No one can really teach you to be you. A “teacher” of the Alexander Technique helps you to discover yourself, helps you awaken your eyes, helps you to move off into the world, helps you to answer your highest calling and follow your own way, and helps you release in your way of being a state of inspiration, a state of empowered receptivity, a beginner’s mind, a light touch, a fiery passion, a deep Love, and an abiding fearlessness. The “teacher” simply creates a space in which you can do this, and, hopefully, has these qualities in her hands, in her body-mind, as much as possible. This place you go to get help for following your own Way, it shifts, it has freedom, it IS freedom, never locked away from you, never completely dark. The Alexander Technique “teacher” must be this place. Soluna will be this place. YOU are this place.
I want to take a few moments to consider the power of the salon, which to me also indicates the power of the Alexander Work. One way to define the Work is to call it “the Art of being together.” We can look at it as an embodiment of Buber’s I-Thou relationship. There are many ties here to art, and I am thinking specifically of photography. Recall the opening quotes by Stieglitz. Or this one from him: “When I photograph, I make love.” Or consider John Daido Loori Roshi’s book of photographs, Making Love with Light. Or one of his photographic koans: Show me Love. Or Minor White’s commandment:
Be still with yourself
Until the object of your attention
Affirms your presence
In all of these gestures we can sense the I-Thou spirit, the spirit of being-with, the spirit of reverence and Relationship and Love. I am even thinking of sohbet. Soluna will embody this I-Thou sensibility. But all I am pointing out here is that the aesthetic and the mystical share a sense of intimacy and interbeing which might make it natural for someone like Stieglitz to find within himself the savoir faire for creating a salon. It also suggests why salon culture helps human beings get in touch with Life and with their deep connection to Life’s mystery. Salons can nurture remarkable things.
We might not see it that way at first. As Malcolm Gladwell points out, “We are inclined to think that genuine innovators are loners, that they do not need the social reinforcement the rest of us crave. But that's not how it works, whether it's television comedy or, for that matter, the more exalted realms of art and politics and ideas.” He cites the work of Randall Collins, author of The Sociology of Philosophies. Collins claims that the number of major thinkers in all of history who were true and genuine loners can be counted on one hand. As Gladwell puts it, “Everyone else who mattered was part of a movement, a school, a band of followers and disciples and mentors and rivals and friends who saw each other all the time and had long arguments over coffee and slept with one another's spouses.” Even in the case of someone who founded a movement, say Freud or Aristotle, the movement really begins to grow when the group dynamic starts to nourish it. Gladwell emphasizes that, “Collins's point is not that innovation attracts groups but that innovation is found in groups: that it tends to arise out of social interaction--conversation, validation, the intimacy of proximity, and the look in your listener's eye that tells you you're onto something.”
Gladwell uses the original cast of Saturday Night Live as a prime example of Group Think. But he also cites more intellectual and artistic examples. He discusses, for instance, a book by Jenny Uglow called, The Lunar Men. It details the original Lunar Society (to which Soluna gives a nod), a remarkable salon founded by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles. This network of friends included Mathew Boulton (big time industrialist), James Watt (of steam engine fame), Wedgwood (of pottery fame), and Joseph Priestley (of chemical fame). They met at every full moon, and in between meetings they corresponded heavily, offering advice, encouragement, insight, and excitement. “What were they doing?” asks Gladwell:
Darwin, in a lovely phrase, called it "philosophical laughing," which was his way of saying that those who depart from cultural or intellectual consensus need people to walk beside them and laugh with them to give them confidence. But there's more to it than that. One of the peculiar features of group dynamics is that clusters of people will come to decisions that are far more extreme than any individual member would have come to on his own. People compete with each other and egg each other on, showboat and grandstand; and along the way they often lose sight of what they truly believed when the meeting began. Typically, this is considered a bad thing, because it means that groups formed explicitly to find middle ground often end up someplace far away. But at times this quality turns out to be tremendously productive, because, after all, losing sight of what you truly believed when the meeting began is one way of defining innovation.
Uglow tells us, for instance, that the Lunar men were active in the campaign against slavery. Wedgwood, Watt, and Darwin pushed for the building of canals, to improve transportation. Priestley came up with soda water and the rubber eraser, and James Keir was the man who figured out how to mass-produce soap, eventually building a twenty-acre soapworks in Tipton that produced a million pounds of soap a year. Here, surely, are all the hallmarks of group distortion. Somebody comes up with an ambitious plan for canals, and someone else tries to top that by building a really big soap factory, and in that feverish atmosphere someone else decides to top them all with the idea that what they should really be doing is fighting slavery.
We can safely put aside the notion of one-upmanship. No need to think of people trying to outdo each other. Rather, there is simply a synergy and an excitement, a wonderful energy that feeds every member of the circle, and an opening to the forces that guide us from the outside. Human “thinking” is not exclusively accomplished from the inside of skulls. Our intelligence is not only embedded in the whole of the body-mind, but in the whole of the environment––the whole of the cosmos even. At any rate, this excerpt from Gladwell bears good news for Soluna, and not just about opening our minds to where our intelligence lies and what our potential is. There are at least two other key notions, related notions, that are important for Soluna. First, no one can be sure what it will actually be. Second, it may turn into something quite astounding, as long as we keep a beginner’s mind. In his essay, “The History and Meaning of Salons,” Benet Davetian echoes the same sentiments: “It does not take millions of people to change social reality. Salons of previous eras have shown that it takes only a handful of creative and concerned individuals to trigger large scale positive change.”
But I want to finish considering some of the historical dimension of salons. Salon.com has a wonderful nutshell history of salons by Gary Kamiya on its site. If we consider the spirit of the salon to be Gladwell’s Group Think, or, as Kamiya tries to capture it, “the search for knowledge through conversation with others,” then the roots of the salon are the roots of human culture. Kamiya goes back to ancient Athens, noting that Socrates might very loosely be considered the founder of a salon circle. Perhaps Plato would have written an ode to him similar to Marin’s ode to Stieglitz. Kamiya reminds us that, at about the same time Socrates was flapping his jaws in the Acropolis and in those wine-soaked symposiums, there was a remarkable woman who seems to have created one of the first true salons in the West. Cherchez la femme. Again. And in a really good way. Again. The woman in question was Aspasia, mistress to Pericles. She was a member of a class of Greek women known as hetaerae. Something like orians (predecessors of the geishas), these were usually ex-slaves or ex-pats set apart from ordinary women because they were educated, they were extremely talented, and they were not only allowed to voice their opinions at symposiums and elsewhere, but those opinions were respected. Yes, by men. Crazy as it may sound.
It turns out that feminine energy has consistently nurtured salon culture. The first “official” salon was founded by an amazing feminine presence, and it became the archetype for salons that sprang up all over Europe in subsequent years. Here’s how Kamiya tells it:
In the early 17th century, the behavior of male aristocrats still reflected the idea that physical strength and military prowess were a man's most important virtues. Around 1610 a young noblewoman, fed up with the prevailing loutishness, did something unprecedented: she abandoned Louis XIII's court and set up her own "alternative space." The Marquise de Rambouillet remodelled a mansion near the Louvre, creating a suite of adjoining Salons, or large reception rooms, culminating in her sanctum sanctorum, the so-called chambre bleu. In this room (also known "the sanctuary of the Temple of Athene"), the marquise received her visitors from her bed.
De Rambouillet's Salon was the first of what the historian Mary Beard calls the "feminine institutions of civility" that were, for two centuries, "the greatest single influence in developing civilized social behavior, promoting lucidity of written expression, and inciting talents to flower in arts and letters." Her Salon, and the famous ones led by the Marquise de Sé vigné , the daringly sensual Ninon de Lenclos, Madame de Staë l and others, were attended by the great writers and thinkers of their day.
Whew. Feminine energy as “the greatest single influence” on society and culture . . . hmmm . . . Instead of electing a President, maybe we should be electing a salon. We all know that Presidents are only as good as the group they choose to surround and support them. So why not let us elect a group, a salon, with a woman at the helm? If we had set this country up the right way, the NORM would be the election of a woman to head the White House Salon, and we would now perhaps be entertaining the question of whether or not a man could handle the job. We really botched things up. Proves that you DO need to know some history. And learn from it.
The importance of feminine energy in the history of salons specifically (and human culture in general of course) is honored in the name Soluna, and we are fortunate to enjoy the presence of feminine energy in many ways. Not only do we expect passionate women to attend, but we are blessed with a fabulous hostess, the lovely Nicola Skidmore, and we enjoy the Love and support, and hopefully the regular presence, of the marvelous Sera Beak.
I would like to briefly give a sense of Soluna’s structure and values. Well, the values have been made clear throughout this posting These values and the structural principles of the salon are derived not only from the history of salon culture, but also from the principles of the Alexander Technique. For one thing, Soluna will almost always involve Alexander Work. Participants will get a little touch of Alexander Work at the start of each meeting, and possibly at the end and in the middle as well. There are two major reasons for this. The first was already made clear above in the comparison between Stieglitz, great salons, and the role of Alexander Technique “teachers” and the Alexander Technique. Alexander Work helps us get in touch with an I-Thou orientation, it opens us to inspiration, it calms reactiveness, it helps us be free, it helps us be what we are. The second reason connects to the understanding of the Work I share with Aldous Huxley. I have often cited his 1941 article in The Saturday Review of Literature. There Huxley pointed out that in the entire history of humanity only two reliable solutions had been developed for the problem of bridging the practical and the ideal: mysticism and the Alexander Technique. Of Alexander’s principles, Huxley wrote that they made it,
possible to conceive of a totally new type of education affecting the entire range of human activity, from the physiological, through the intellectual, moral and practical, to the spiritual–an education which, by teaching them the proper use of the self, would preserve children and adults from most of the diseases and evil habits that now afflict them; an education whose training . . . would provide men and women with the psycho-physical means for behaving rationally and morally; an education which, in its upper reaches, would make possible the experience of ultimate reality . . .
This may sound rather effusive. But I think it’s quite a reasonable assessment. The crucial caveat lies in the current crop of “teachers” of the Alexander Technique. I don’t think we will enjoy the full extent of these promising benefits until more teachers submit themselves completely to the deeper and wider demands of the Work. I am not saying we have to be able to LIVE those demands just yet. I would never claim to be able to do that myself. But I would want to be able to say I have submitted to the demands, which I take to be an essential step on the pathless path to the fulfillment of the highest human ideals and the most intimate “experience of ultimate reality.”
I don’t mean that to sound as patriarchal as it might. This “submission” is a joyful surrender, something empowering and opening and freeing and humorous, something completely natural and human. It is not without risks and dangers and challenges, though. This pathless path does not “culminate” in a no-person. But for anyone to think they will be themselves plus wonderful strengths and insights and feelings of Love and Compassion is, I think, a bit misguided. The You on the other shore is not the you with which you are familiar. Some of the surrender ends up being a giving up, a letting go, a dropping away; other parts of the surrender end up being a flourishing, an awakening, a growing strong. This holds for anyone, not just Alexander “teachers.” In conjunction with whatever your Path is, if you take up the Alexander Work with a sincere willingness to let it help you as you follow YOUR Way, you will indeed find yourself venturing into the unknown.
There is another connection to Alexander Technique principles that may seem odd in light of this discussion of fulfilling our ideals. Alexander felt that one of the main problems in trying to fulfill our ideals is the attempt to fulfill our ideals. In other words, we try to DO it. The doing way of being is the central problem. Even if we seem to have “good ideas,” these are as nothing compared to a simple and direct connection to our lives, an intimacy with Life from moment to moment. Alexander had a word for doing our ideas. He called it end-gaining. End-gaining is his term for the critical human problem discussed by Krishna in the Gita, Buddha in his sermons, and Rumi in his poetry. It appears again and again in countless religious and mythological images, stories, and parables. It is Buber’s I-It orientation. It is what Lao-tzu would call acting in ignorance of Tao. Soluna eschews end-gaining. It is conversation for the sake of conversation. The lead question in Davetian’s essay on salons is, "Why Bother Talking With One Another?" Why bother starting a salon? Why bother coming? Davetian ponders the issue and offers some insights:
We are perhaps one of the most informed civilizations in history. It is a wonder that our minds and nervous systems have managed to handle all the information coming at us from a myriad of sources. The invention of trains, airplanes, radios, telephones, televisions, computers, and the internet have literally transformed the meaning of being 'in tune with the times.'
Yet, this feast of 'facts' and 'data' has exacted its toll. While it has increased our mobility, personal autonomy and privacy, it has greatly diminished our sense of community and the means available to us for 'making sense' of our world with the help of similarly-interested individuals. More importantly, it has tarnished our ability to appreciate inspiring conversation for its own sake. Pressured by a scarcity of time, the need to continually update skills, and a life very often overpopulated by hundreds of 'convenience' and 'entertainment' products, we find ourselves evaluating human relations based on 'bottom-line' goals. Will this meeting with so-and-so be 'useful'? Will we arrive at a 'conclusion' if we talk things over...If not, then why bother? What are the 'opportunity costs' of conversing just for the sake of it?
Winning back our ability to talk with one another (as opposed to talking 'at' one another) is the ultimate and most precious goal of a salon.
It is in such environments that great ideas are born . . . and where people find the energy to have a positive influence on the world.
Any salon can foster good ideas. But we have had enough good ideas. Good ideas won’t save us. We have all the ideas we need it seems. What Life demands now is our ability to LIVE our ideals, to embody them, to body them forth moment to moment in our way of being. This is the real Work of Soluna. “Winning back our ability to talk with one another” means “practicing the Art of being together.” It means “cultivating a state of inspiration.” It means “following our own Way.” It means, to quote Trungpa Rinpoche, “the essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery,” which in turn means:
refusing to give up on anyone or anything. We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either. Within our lifetime there will be great problems in the world, but let us make sure that within our lifetime no disasters happen. We can prevent them. It is up to us. We can save the world from destruction, to begin with.
To begin with. To me that implies it must enter our way of being, from moment to moment. If it’s in our way of being, it’s there to begin with, and we don’t have to try to DO the solutions. We will BE the solutions. This does NOT mean “doing nothing.” This does NOT mean we have no style to our character. It means touching Life with OUR hands, with OUR particular gestures, with OUR way of moving. But, to begin with. Not the added stuff. Not the reactions. Not our idea of what we are or what is right and wrong, no matter how well grounded it seems. Experiences that become “knowledge” are just ideas we have awarded a pedigree. Experience that IS, as knowing (not knowledge), as connection, as in-the-moment-activity without the traces, alive in the unknown, that is a beginner’s mind in an expert body. Those are the bodies that will sit in Soluna’s loving circle. Even if they don’t see it. Nonetheless, that is how they are seen, by Life and by those open to clear vision.
The best way to understand what Soluna will be is to participate in its emergence. It will be what the members are. It will accomplish the mysterious things that are most needed right now. It will begin in conversation, juicy conversation, challenging yet compassionate conversation, conversation that touches Life, including the suffering we see in every direction. From our being together, what needs to be done will get done. We start with that article of faith, and doubt it with every fiber of our being so we can see if it’s true or not. We invite you to come and see if Soluna can inspire, invigorate, embolden, and empower you as you discover and do the things you know (or sense, or suspect) that you are meant to do. See if Soluna can help you on your way, and if it can help you to do the same for others.
There will be two Soluna salons: the Red and the Gold. Soluna Red will start with an evening dedicated to Rumi. Soluna Red will usually be oriented toward poetry, literature, mythology, and religion. Our favorite goddesses there include Sophia, Isis, Kali, Kwan Yin, Lakshmi, and Aphrodite (the list could go on). It will be a bit like sohbet, but different. Soluna Gold will always be performance and exhibition oriented. Our favorite goddesses there include Sarasvati, Athena, Terpsichore, Erato, Kwan Yin, and Benzaiten (the list could go on). Soluna Gold is a place for artists, musicians, and dancers to take part in salon culture in a way that is anchored in performance and exhibition . . . a bit like 291, but different. We'll invite a few gods to both salons too, like Hermes, Dionysus, and Shiva. Apollo, if he promises to behave. Eros, if he promises not to.
For more information or to R.S.V.P. email nickolasknightly at comcast.net
References for this posting:
Perry Miller Adato, Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye
Benet Davetian, “The History and Meaning of Salons”
Malcolm Gladwell, “Group Think”
Gary Kamiya, “A brief history of Salons”
Dorothy Norman (ed), The Selected Writings of John Marin
Brooke Schieb, “Alfred Stieglitz and Gallery 291: A Modern Art Revolution Before the Armory Show”
And, of course, Wikipedia.