A DEEP DIVE INTO LAUREL HOLLOMAN'S MEMORY AND MOVEMENT
By Lynn Marie Ramjass
May 29, 2024
I've only recently within the past three years become acquainted with, the abstract art of American artist Laurel Holloman. One look at a recent photograph of Laurel Holloman's past 2019 Paris art exhibit painting aptly titled Memory and Movement, and my thoughts were immediately catapulted back through spheres of time and space.
To my childhood, to a dark time where friends were either imaginary or found in books or works of art.
As a child, I found a golf ball one day and I took a sharp knife and carefully cut the top half away. I did this because I wanted to know what made this hard coated white dimpled tiny ball bounce.
In so doing, I watched as bands of tiny colored rubber spilled forth across my palm.
Laurel’s painting somehow reminded me of this, and all those tiny elastic strands stretched out against a pale blue sky.
Now at 67 years old and suffering severe writer’s block and anxiety for several months. I felt something shift and my abnormal mind immediately equated it with the wiring in my brain.
This painting had such a profound effect upon me. It was as though I’d been asleep, and something deep within suddenly awakened. The electrical impulses deep within my brain were fully charged and operating on full circuit.
Before I continue, I’d like to share another incident from childhood that left a lasting impression upon my teachers and fellow classmates alike.
If memory serves, I believe it was in grade five or perhaps later in elementary school. I was ten or eleven years old by then. We were given an assignment in school to write about the topic “Lost.”
Whilst other children wrote about inanimate objects. I wrote about a black man being lost in a white society.
My favorite book “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, clearly left a lasting impression upon me.
I knew then, I was not like the other children. The topic of being lost would always follow me like my shadow, and remain permanently embedded in memory.
As I followed the natural progression of movement through the various phases of my life. Many years later, as an adult, married with two young sons aged nine and ten (born a year and a half apart) and for reasons I couldn’t then explain.
I lost my mind periodically over the next eight years. This experience was the most terrifying, mind bending, heartrending, and life altering period of my life.
During four separate psychoses from ages 32 in 1989 to 38 in 1997 my brain periodically felt touched by fire.
It was as though my thoughts and memories flitted furiously through my mind as a tape recorder on fast forward. Every single word, thought, action and every chapter of my life's book, I knew with certainty whilst confined to a psychiatric ward were embedded in my memory. I knew that others experienced this too.
My thoughts, words, and actions though they made sense to me, were like Theodore Roethke’s “heat maddened summer fly buzzing against the sill.”
His poem, In a Dark Time described the experience perfectly. It became my favorite poem.
These memories are stored in our lives’ memory bank like a computer’s hard drive. Memories and movement from birth to present followed a steady flow and natural progression through cycles and circles of time and space. From past, to present to future.
Memories were either seared in my mind, would begin to fade, recalled fragmented like shards of broken glass, or were forgotten entirely as I aged.
How do I describe the sensation and experience of mania in terms you the reader would understand?
If you’ve ever been seated in an aircraft, the sensation, that instantaneous rush between your ears, the twinge in the pit of your stomach, as the plane lifts off the runway and ascends into the heavens.
For me, it is the exact sensation when I felt my mind take flight. Only those who experience mania and or psychosis would understand those troubled in mind like me.
The mind is bountiful, brilliant, and beautifully complex. When fully opened, however, it extends to strata strophic proportions.
l was always a deep thinker. At times I experience a steady stream of consciousness. I began university in my forties and studied various topics. Therefore, it came as no surprise I fell in love with philosophy, and philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
“The unexamined life was not worth living.” Socrates
“The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible but there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.” Plato
NOTE: It didn’t escape my notice that Plato referred to the soul as feminine. Did this phrase refer to the Divine Feminine? The feminine aspect of the divine power that connects the earth. The energy that exists within all of us. Many ancient cultures maintained this divine feminine concept.
My experiences of mania-bliss. Where my mind, heart, and soul flew towards a bright, brilliant, blinding light was a state of altered consciousness.
Some cultures refer to as “enlightenment” or “Nirvana.” Therein, the soul finds peace. A peace that passes human understanding. A state of euphoria-mania- where one feels a oneness, an intense connection to the Creator, the Universe, and the Divine. It is a divine eternal energy that defies the speed of light and sound and physical matter.
A mystical experience a universal connection to all living things. An innate knowledge that all living things are connected and interdependent upon each other.
Some experience it through meditation and or intense prayer. The latter is merely communion or communicating/talking aloud or contemplatively with a higher power, a divine presence. Meditation is merely listening for the response.
Some people take hallucinogens to achieve this altered state of consciousness. Still others like me, required medications for the opposite reason, to keep us tethered to the earth. But as the mind/soul flies too closely to the sun, like Icarus whose father Daedalus built him wings so that he may fly. Icarus, however, flew too close to the sun. His wings singed and burned, and he plummeted to the ground, once again, at a terrifying speed. Down, down, down to a subterranean depth. To inevitably experience a level of dark, dank, debilitating, depression. In essence, Dante’s Inferno.
It isn’t a place but rather a state of mind. There where there is no light deep within the bowels of the earth, the corridors of the mind, the sanctuary of the human spirit. The soul lies stagnant betwixt heaven and hell and there must decide to either rise or fall.
Here deep within the human psyche one feels as though they’d been buried alive. It is a conscious choice to give in or get up.
Many famous and ordinary human beings suffered such unimaginable psychological, emotional, and spiritual soul sucking grief. Like fingers of a hand either balled into a fist, or wrapped around the mind, heart, body, and soul in a vice like grip. Each a misery to carry within the body.
Yet through the mania, anxiety, fear, and the debilitating depression. Many famous and ordinary human beings continuously left and continue to leave extraordinary magical, majestic impressions, imprints on Terah=earth=heart. Indelible marks on the minds, hearts, and souls of other human beings. These men, women, and children who lived, loved, and led throughout the ages. Their movements with such tender hearts, open minds, and courageous spirits. They left paths for others brave enough to follow.
There are countless creatives: artists, writers, poets, composers, musicians, politicians, astronauts, scientists, and ordinary people. Who lived in such unimaginable pain and suffering. Those who lived, loved, and led with their hearts and their souls.
I've stood in the depths of hell and atop the tips of mountains. In complete darkness and in brilliant light. I've leaned into the fiercest wind, crawled through mud, mire and excrement. I've sobbed until every tear was spent; every promise broken. I've been alone with traumas I never shared with a soul as it was happening.
In leaning into those life experiences, as much as it pains me at times, and I want off this wild ride, riding that wave, the roller coaster of intense thoughts and emotions. I’d rather feel them, the full weight of them than to feel nothing at all.
I was fortunate to have found myself and my sense of purpose while most lost, frightened, and seemingly alone.
I never allowed my pilot light to extinguish. As imperfect as I may be, my authenticity, vulnerability, and capacity to love with every fibre of my being. Some deem me a freak and others a force of nature. Love me or leave me. If you choose to not to stay, I’ll hold the door for you and wish you well. And pray you learn as I had, that through all the triggers, the darkness, chaos, and confusion. There were always, always, these incredible glimmers of light.
The warmth of genuine love that often, I felt the flutter of butterflies and the wisp of angels’ wings close by.
At times I heard my children's laughter; or the sound of the voices of those whom I loved most. I see, feel, smell, and tasted fear, joy, and hope. For hope as American poet Emily Dickinson wrote was a thing with feathers.”
I walked in the darkness, and I basked in the light. I can honestly confirm that I respect and appreciate both. Because despite all the heartbreak, suffering, and disappointment. There was hope and eventually a spark of overwhelming exuberance for life. My own, and all whom I encounter on this pathway of pain.
All life and all lives matter. Human, animal, trees, rocks, minerals. All connected. We can rail, rant, rave, proclaim otherwise. It won't change the fact we all rely on one another.
Lynn Marie Ramjass
May 19, 2024
Yesterday, May 8, 2024 the day before Laurel’s New York art exhibit, I was reminded why I am here. My sense of purpose beyond being a wife, mother, grandmother, and whatever role life has assigned me.
No one knows better than I do, where I have failed in many of those roles. I am estranged from many people in my life and not always by choice. In several cases, by necessity, to protect myself, my mental health and my peace of mind.
You can slam the door in my face, refuse to talk to me, or never see me again. I will still love you and wish you well. Though we may never again share the same space. I honestly hope you find whatever it is you are looking for and need with someone else.
There are times I've felt as though my heart was literally ripped from my body. I can visualize it still beating in the palm of your hand. It is the same physical sensation as when the chest tube was yanked from my chest following my open-heart surgery at 38. After doctors discovered I’d been born with a hole in my heart. Atrial septal defect they said. By 42 I’d drown in my own blood.
The memory of that first sensation, my first broken heart, I recall vividly. The memory of awakening in ICU with tubes everywhere and an exhaustion that accompanied my healing. I am hard-pressed to compare the exhaustion and pain of natural childbirth, losing my mind four consecutive times, and open-heart surgery were all equally painful. A dear friend once told me “Often the healing hurts more than the original wound.” My body and heart healed far quicker than my mind. That took several decades
I'm aware of my imperfections. Of the many who have either severed ties with me, or there were none to begin with.
Many don't see, hear, or know me. They only think they do! Even more don't want to. Some cannot stand me. If you think I'm cold, selfish. Unkind, uncaring you seriously don't know me and grossly misjudged me.
I can't remember a time when I wasn't taking care of others, concerned with their needs and ignored my own.
People didn't like it when I found my voice. They didn't approve of what I had to say or share. I didn't ask for any of this. It was thrust upon me.
Relationships are supposed to work both ways. One person alone should not be doing all the giving and the work.
I'm too exhausted to fight for anyone's love, respect, understanding or approval. I started holding doors for people when they decided to leave. For reasons some never had the courtesy to explain.
So, Laurel's painting Memory and Movement means a great deal to me. It's even more personal than my other favourite from her recent art exhibit in NYC May, 9th 2024 Hibernation.
Memory and Movement is roots, connections, arteries, and veins. It's pathways, and synapses. It’s particles of stardust in sunlit skies. It's human connections, unconditional love, divine ties. The everpresent, everlasting, kind that bind. In short. It’s the intricate workings of the Universal Mind!
~Lynn Marie Ramjass
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