In a flow, a basketball player takes instinctual actions. Decisions, and instructions that are decided before the conscious mind is even aware of what’s happening. A delay in awareness. The reality we see has already happened. By the time light reaches our eyes, and the signals are transformed in our brains, it’s already happened. This is nature. The only thing, I’ve ever done, is a futile attempt to get out of natures way, its a maneuver. A conscious act, a charade, a pantomime, to open to something beyond me, thoughts, concepts, and words. I adhere and submit to the instructions. Signals my mind transforms after nature, and reality have already occurred. Time and deliberate choices in material are medium. Rules are constructed in the moment as they come to me. The choice to limit the tools i have at my disposal, 6 chip paint brushes, and the resulting reach for cardboard scraps and tshirts to mark are a natural growth out of the necessity of the moment in time. I consciously obey the ritual of distraction, a spirit moves, the sun rises. Chemicals and hunger, the calming frequencies of the noise floor of a film, a playlist on random, the distraction of control in cleaning and arranging my studio space, my hunger growing, I meditate on everything but the act, recalling the memory of the banal, a walk, the light behind me casting my shadow, that whole day of memories replayed in my mind, my hand mixes the paint, I give in to it. I do not see when I paint, I do not consciously think about my actions, I meditate on my shadow on the sidewalk, the noise and voice of the film noir, the cacophony of the random playlist selection of the songs that move my soul. The chaos provokes the emotion, and makes it free. The actions and the marks controlled by something beyond me. This might be a sport, this might be nature, I don’t know what it is. But I’m driven by what these rituals reveal over time. The novelty of them, when I come to, the joy and surprise I feel.