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- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [00:25]
Chris Duffy
This episode is sponsored by Blue Apron. If you are trying to eat healthy, if trying to make delicious homemade things, it can feel like it's an sustainable for maybe a week or two and then it gets overwhelming. There's all of the shopping and the figuring out of what the meal is going to be and the prep and it's just overwhelming. So Blue Apron is a great solution to that problem. And here's an incredible extra twist that is new. You don't even need a subscription to Blue Apron anymore. For the first time ever, you can shop Blue Apron with no subscription and get delicious and nutritious ingredients delivered to your door. For chef designed meals that take 3:30 minutes or less to prepare, it's an easy way to eat better without the hassle of extensive meal prep or a monthly subscription fee. Personally, one of the things I like most about Blue Apron is that you get to try all these new recipes that you wouldn't have come up with on your own. You have all the ingredients, you know that it's gonna be easy and delicious. And then afterwards, the recipes that I love the most, I keep the really nicely printed recipe cards they have and it kind of builds like this customized cookbook where now I have all these recipes that I know are easy to make, I know are delicious and healthy.
- [01:29]
And I have like a file now.
- [01:32]
Of recipes from Blue Apron that I.
- [01:33]
Love and I can go to whenever I need them.
- [01:35]
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- [01:54]
I'm your host, Chris Duffy.
- [01:56]
One thing that people have been asking me a lot these days when they find out that I wrote a book about humor is how do you find things to laugh at when the world is so dark and so ominous? Where is the funny when we live in such unfunny times? And I think that is actually a very good question. It's one that I have been asking myself a lot. What's the role of art or beauty or joy right now? Today's guest, Kevin Townley is a person who I think gives a very compelling answer. Kevin is one of the funniest and cleverest people I know, but he is also a longtime meditation teacher, and he is the author of the book Look, Look, Look, Look, Look. Buddhist wisdom reflected in 26 artists today. Kevin is going to talk to us about some of the deep lessons about life and suffering and survival that we can find in art. He's going to share how looking closely and carefully at works of art and the world around us can allow us to get into some of the deepest existential questions that humans wrestle with in religion. But as you'll see, he's also going to make us laugh along the way. To get us started, here's a clip of Kevin reading an excerpt from his book about why he believes creativity and spiritual discovery are parallel paths after falling.
- [03:11]
Kevin Townley
In love with art, I obviously developed an abiding soft spot for tortured artists. You know, the poor individuals for whom the protective membrane that buffers the nervous system from the beauty and abrasion visions of life is frustratingly, gloriously absent. They appear saturated by the vibrancy of the world, causing them to overflow into poetry, painting, needlepoint pursuits which are largely met with derision by a callous, unsophisticated public. This then leads to any number of tragic ends, from suicide Sylvia Plath to customs inspector Herman Melville. We've all heard stories like that before. Aside from devoting my own free time to feeling misunderstood and a strong predilection for emotional aggrandizement, what is most beguiling to me about this trope is the notion that the very energy which, in one iteration can lead to creation in another form can lead to self destruction. How can the same energy lead to such drastically different results, even in the same person? For many artists, what's most tortuous is to begin meeting space without any idea of what will happen next. We yearn to honor the creative impulse by expressing ourselves, and yet many of us, when met with the imagined edge of our own inner abyss, slink backward and, adding insult to injury, feel ashamed by our cringing. We cannot bear the intimacy of our own brilliant minds, and so we look away. Looking away can show up in behaviors as myriad as diverting our creative energy into gossip, house cleaning, manicures, masturbation, and volunteer work. Mythologists might grandly refer to this as the refusal of the call, but it is also a completely understandable response to meeting the charnel ground of one's own psyche. There are instances when approaching a blank page or canvas feels more like visiting a crime scene where a dab of vapor rub under the nose would be more appropriate than a daub of paint on the canvas. In his brilliant book from where youe Dream, Robert Olin Butler describes the creative process as entering one's white hot center. This radioactive unconscious realm feels like hell, because for most of us it is hell. Like scaffolding erected around treacherous architecture, our entire personalities are deliberately crafted to avoid descending into the underworld of missed opportunities, traumas and gears from obsolete machinery. And yet this is precisely what we must do, whether we are on the creative or spiritual path. And I would hazard that they're the same thing. By keeping that portal open through constant visitation, we may not only find our endurance for entering that zone strengthened, but also come to be quite adept at navigating its sinkholes in topiary. But you don't get to choose what you discover.
- [06:13]
Chris Duffy
We are going to discover so much.
- [06:15]
Over the course of this episode with.
- [06:16]
Kevin Townley and we are going to get right into discovering things after this quick break. This episode is sponsored by Quints It's a new year and colder weather means your winter wardrobe really has to deliver if you are craving a seasonal reset. Quince brings together high quality materials, thoughtful design and pieces made to last season after season so you can stay warm and look your best all winter long. I've been wearing the double brushed stretch.
- [06:52]
Overshirt jacket I got from Quint's all.
- [06:53]
The time over the holidays. It's got this incredible softness on both sides and I was genuinely shocked when.
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- [07:46]
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- [08:15]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
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- [08:41]
Chris Duffy
And we are back. We are talking about looking closely about the power of noticing and about the connection between spirituality and art with Kevin Townley.
- [08:50]
Kevin Townley
Hi everybody. My name's Kevin Townley. I'm a writer, an actor, a comedy dabbler. I'm a meditation teacher and a filmmaker and I wrote a book called look, look, look, look, look again. Buddhist wisdom reflected in 26 artists.
- [09:09]
Chris Duffy
So Kevin, you and I have known each other for years and I've always really admired the way that you blend all the different things that you do. Right. You're such a funny on stage presence, you're a really brilliant writer, you make really amazing films, but you also are a very serious practitioner of meditation. You teach Buddhist meditation and you have brought it into some unexpected places, which is kind of the core of what the book that you wrote is about. So can you. For people who aren't familiar with look, look, look, look, look again, what is the like premise of the book?
- [09:45]
Kevin Townley
So this book is based on a collection of 9th century Tibetan Buddhist teachings that are called the Five Buddha Families or the Five Wisdom Energies. And they're kind of like a 9th century personality test that show how human beings are swayed and formed by you could say like five main difficult emotions. And those are called ignorance, anger, pride, craving and jealousy. So to some degree every person experiences these things sometimes several times in a minute. But in the, in kind of like Western culture, those five things are like to be avoided and gotten rid of with all possible alacrity and are considered like bad personality traits and embarrassing, particularly jealousy. And so the Buddhist view, being a philosophical tradition that is based on what's called non duality, is saying actually those, those things that we experience as negative emotions are, have real intelligence in them. There's actually wisdom in them. If you take the time to investigate them, they have something to tell you about where you are and what might be next. And so that's the kind of like philosophy behind the book. But what I've done is I've, I was thinking about how that's basically like what all artists do all the time anyway, even, you know, comedians. You are looking at the difficulty in your life as A. Not just as a something to overcome, but actually as your creative inheritance. Quite. Quite Some of the greatest stuff that we ever experience as consumers of art, whatever the form, comes from real pain and confusion and difficulty. Even my cat, who's screaming in the background has some notes like, there are some things that could be better in the cat world and in the human world. So artists are always transforming this energy of negativity into something else. That doesn't mean necessarily, they become wonderful people in the process. The list of not wonderful, great artists is a long one. But what they've made kind of transcends both their personality and their emotion into some other new thing that the viewer or the listener or the taster experiences in an intimate and direct way on their own. And then in a way, it transforms again, becomes about that relationship between the art and the person who's perceiving it. So that's kind of what the book's about.
- [12:36]
Chris Duffy
You know, even before I knew that you were writing this book and trying to figure out a way to connect these deep philosophical ideas with art, you were leading tours in museums, and you've led tours. You've led hundreds of tours in museums all across the United States.
- [12:52]
Kevin Townley
Yeah.
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Chris Duffy
And I think the idea just.
- [12:54]
Even the idea that there would be, like, a comedic tour in a museum is such a different and exciting idea. Right. Like, no one else is doing comedy in the Metropolitan Museum of Art while also engaging with the artwork.
- [13:06]
Kevin Townley
Yeah, I mean, Dave Hill did, but he also just made stuff up.
- [13:10]
Chris Duffy
So this is actually facts about the art.
- [13:12]
Kevin Townley
Yeah, it was actually facts about the artist. And, like, I think it's always a good way in, of course, because, you know, people are scared, I think, to go to museums. I still work in museums, and people are entering in feeling like they don't belong there and that they should know something that they don't, and that they're gonna be made fools of somehow if they don't have the right kind of experience. And so my tours were kind of predicated on the notion that, like, the people who made this stuff didn't know anything either. I mean, they may have been skilled craftspeople, but they had their heads up their cans and didn't. Couldn't make their relationships work and were just a wreck, you know? And so by kind of infusing factual biographical details into the strange stories of how these things got made, it kind of breaks open the stuffiness and creates an inroad for people to, like, see art as a human inheritance and that the people who made it were really just like them, more or less. So it gives a sense of permission and accessibility, which is what good comedy does in the best of times.
- [14:21]
Chris Duffy
As I was doing research and thinking about humor and laughter, I came across in Boston, the Museum of Bad Art. And they are a museum that deliberately exhibits only the worst works of art, things that are either donated or found on the street. And they have something so glaringly awful about them that they are really genuinely hilarious. Often when you go and they have these quite serious, like, exactly in the style of a regular art museum, they say, like, the dates, the materials, the artist, if it's known. And then, like, they. In their description, they'll say something like, you know, when you look at this, at first it looks just like a regular hand. And then you notice there are an extra set of knuckles on every finger. And also, like, why is it that color? And the artworks are hilarious.
- [15:06]
But the thing that I thought was.
- [15:07]
Really fascinating is I talked to the woman who runs the museum, Louise Sacco is her name, and she told me that one of the things they really recommend is they try and get school groups to come, and they really recommend that school groups pair the Museum of Bad Art with a traditional art museum. Because what happens is when you go to the Museum of Bad Art, you're of course allowed to have an opinion. You're allowed to say, that's terrible, or, here's how they could have done it better. And she feels like it lets people engage with the excellent art in a different way that isn't so, like, well, they obviously know, and I don't know, and what could I possibly. I couldn't have an opinion about their art. So I think this is exactly in line with what you're saying.
- [15:45]
Kevin Townley
Totally. And, like, statistically, they did a study, I think, in 2001, and the average person spends 17 seconds looking at an artwork, and in that moment, there might be, like, a flash judgment. You like. You don't like it, which is totally legitimate. It's totally fine to have opinions. And there are some clunky, you know, Van Goghs out there. There's a ridiculous, if I may say, Degas painting at the Frick Collection, which looks like a Cabbage Patch doll doing a pirouette. And I like to look at it because it's so silly. But quite often, I think, like, what's interesting about looking at art in particular is that if you're only looking at something for 17 seconds, then all you're really gonna see is your opinion anyway. And if you spend more time looking at something Kind of to the point, maybe of even, like, boredom you start to actually see is there. And even though, like, at the Museum of Bad Art, I mean, the composition might be a little sluggish, or the. The skill level is somewhat, you know, pedestrian or whatever someone might say about it. But if you actually start to really, really, really look at it, you might find something that's actually quite delightful or pleasing about it, or you might not. But just the notion that. One of the fascinating things for me in this whole process of looking at art and writing about it is seeing the degree to which we actually don't ever see anything. We can look at something, but we're not really seeing it. What we're seeing is our idea about what we're looking at, and then we are moving on. And so if you can give it a little bit of extra time, you start to see what the thing actually is. And an indication that that is occurring is you cease to know what you're looking at, interestingly.
- [17:39]
Chris Duffy
Tell me more about that.
- [17:41]
Kevin Townley
When we go to a museum, we might, like, spend time looking at something that we find aesthetically pleasing, or we've heard of Matisse or we've heard of, you know, Joan Mitchell or something. And so we'll go and look at the hits, and we'll feel like we're somehow checking off a box in our mind, like, that we have to cx. Or you have a personal association with, like, a Monet painting because it was on her journal that you had when you were in middle school. And so you kind of like. Like that. And you know that it's telling you something about you. But if you actually start to look at something for a long time, the story about your journal or having seen, like, the art that you're supposed to have seen at the museum starts to fall away. And you even stop thinking about maybe, like, who the artist was or what the narrative of the image is, if indeed it's even, like, figurative. And then you start to just sort of see, like, color and form and structure, and you realize that you're not actually looking at a woman in a park at all. You're actually looking at gestures that were created by somebody long dead. In some cases, sometimes they're alive. And they're essentially assembled, colorful shapes that are also kind of abstract in a way, even if they're depicting something. And sometimes when there's an abstract, you start to see images in it that aren't maybe there in, like, a. What were they called? The Magic Eye Post?
- [19:19]
Chris Duffy
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those magic Eye images when you were.
- [19:21]
Kevin Townley
Little kid, you edit them all. So I think that we start to, like, not really know what we're looking at in the sense that, like, the structure of our narrative can start to, like, break down or recede somewhat from what's primary in the mind, which is just visual. The sense faculties don't know what anything is. You know, the eyeball doesn't know what a lady in a dress in the park is. It's just perceiving color and light and texture and so on. And then a friend of mine once said, as an experiment, it's good to go to the museum and spend time looking at stuff that you think is horrible because it's actually showing you something about your mind. It's actually showing something about you. Your preferences, your discomfort, your aversion. That feeling inside of you, like anyone could do. That's a light bulb on a rope. What the hell? That's not art. But that voice isn't contained in the artwork. It's actually in your mind. And somehow some person put a light bulb on a rope and put it in a corner at a museum, and it called forward this voice in you. It's something about you that you're giving. Being given the opportunity to see by the artist who you may never meet.
- [20:39]
Chris Duffy
I'm so happy. I'm getting touched. I'm, like, stumbling on my words because I'm so excited about all of this stuff that is part of just observing. Art is so exciting to me because I think it's also something that is accessible to almost everyone. We can engage with art. Whether you have an incredible museum in your city or town, you still can find art and engage with art wherever you are.
- [21:01]
Kevin Townley
Yeah. Interesting. One of the tenets of Buddhism, there's said to be three marks of existence, and that is suffering. So, like, if you're born, you have nerve endings, and at some point you're going to get bursitis or close your hand in the door and worse, and eventually you're going to die. And there you're going to lose the things that you love and you're going to get crap you don't want. Another one is impermanence. So things just don't last. And then the third one is said to be no self, which doesn't mean that you don't have a body and don't pay the rent and that you don't have a personality, but that what that self is is constantly in flux and in negotiation and open to refinement and complete detonation and reassembly. And I think another aspect of the Buddha families is it's showing you, like, okay, there are these five emotions that we have, these five main ones, and they are intense. They're no joke. Stultifying ignorance, the heat of being completely enraged, feeling completely full of yourself and arrogant, or the flip side of that is feeling like a complete doormat and pathetic and nobody likes me. Both of them are said to be reflections of self centeredness. Interestingly, feeling that whatever you have isn't the right thing and you need to innovate just for the sake of innovating or, you know, you're in a relationship and it's. You start thinking you're in the wrong one or you live going to the wrong school. It's always something else, something else that you could be grasping at, craving for, and then competitiveness and jealousy and all of that. So all of those are, like, intense, and people, like, kill each other over them. And so if you start to, like, slightly shift your perspective a little bit, which is the same kind of art appreciation experience, if you take a kind of curatorial or aesthetic approach to what you're feeling, then suddenly they're like, not necessarily like hallmarks of your eternal live or die self, but they are aspects of a shifting ground of selfhood that we experience. And if we can take a kind of more curious, interested point of view or experience them with a little more distance, then, like, the intensity with which we felt, like, shut down or our feelings were hurt or we got dumped or whatever, it does kind of become hilarious. There's a kind of, like, funniness to it. In fact, like the Dalai Lama, I think, said a real sign of spiritual growth is a sense of humor. Not that you're like, slapping your knee at the atrocities of the world going, ho, ho, ho, he, he, he. But there's a sense of, like, spaciousness and possibility. I mean, humor. You know, in the Middle Ages, there were said to be four humors that were, you know, blood and black bile and yellow bile and something. I don't remember. Something else that phlegm. Oh, yeah, phlegm. And these were, like, the four elements that made up the human being. But basically, what they're talking about, I think, is, like, that there's a fluidity. Like, humor literally means like a fluidity. So in contemporary parlance, when we see a great comedian, what they're doing is showing us something that we take for granted, pulling the rug out from under us and showing us that what we thought was one thing or that we'd been trained to look at something in a particular solid way, can be seen from another point of view. And what's opening up is a sudden, like, big wow of space. And it's that kind of spaciousness which makes us laugh.
- [24:58]
Chris Duffy
I think that what I see in it is, and this goes back to what you were talking about, about some, like, profound Buddhist wisdom and truths, is the desire to be at the center, to make it so that it is you are the self at the center. And I think that, like, art and humor and that knowledge, right, all of these things have.
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Have real power, and they have a real social power.
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And you can get people to pay attention to you and to respect you and in some cases, to pay you money or whatever.
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But I think that when you use them, in my view, correctly, it builds.
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Connections, it makes you closer to other people. It makes you less sure of yourself.
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In a good way.
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Like, a good way of not being. Like, I'm this perfect person, not like I'm insecure.
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And I think that when you use.
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Them the other way, it's about, like, you shut up and you pay attention to me. I think there's such a misguided idea that, like, to have a good sense of humor means you're the person in the center and everyone is laughing at you, as opposed to you're the person laughing really hard and making people feel good. And that, to me, is the good sense of humor, not the attention person.
- [26:02]
Kevin Townley
Totally. And you bring up an interesting image which in Buddhism is called a mandala. This is an ancient image that shows up in every culture since time immemorial. And it's a circle, but that there's a center to this circle and everyone is the center of their own mandala, so to speak. But. But given the reminders, these three reminders, okay, like, okay, so there's suffering in the world. Am I going to make more of it? Am I going to try to alleviate it in some way? Am I going to, like, shill in some way to trick people out of remembering that things are fleeting and impermanent, that we only have some, maybe only moments left in this particular arrangement of cells? And are you really going to spend it, like, crapping on people? And thirdly, that there isn't a solid identity here and that the attempt to codify and maintain a branded identity is an act of violence. It requires a kind of aggressiveness that is detrimental to you and, I would venture to say, others as well. And it makes me always wonder, like the artist Laurie Anderson says, like, why does art have to be self expression. Like if I want to understand what a bird is doing when it makes a particular sound and I start to make a sound or write a poem based on the birds. What?
- [27:34]
Wise App Announcer
What?
- [27:34]
Kevin Townley
The bird song. In my mind, that's not expressing me, it's expressing some third thing that arises between the perception of the bird song and my curiosity about it and wanting to engage with that. So there's nothing wrong obviously with like stand ups who create funny points of view and a personality and whatever. It's great but it's not necessary. So certainly there's like a resource of like personal experience and emotion and whatever that comes into any act of expression in the arts. But there's an imagination. It's a liberation from the self. Art is a liberation from being a self. You can do anything.
- [28:21]
Chris Duffy
Speaking of doing things, we are going to take a quick ad break and then we will be right back.
- [28:25]
Don't go anywhere.
- [28:37]
Verizon Announcer
In a world where January is supposed to be boring, one staple of the holidays refuses to end the great deals of At Verizon, the joy just keeps on coming. Right now you can save on four new phones and four lines. Critics agree it's the deal that keeps on giving. Come into Verizon and save on four new phones in four lines on unlimited. Welcome. Additional terms apply@seeverizon.com for details.
- [29:06]
Progressive Insurance Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [29:25]
Wise App Announcer
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- [30:04]
Chris Duffy
And we are back.
- [30:06]
You are saying such profound things and you are saying really like important things that I'm gonna think about for years. And also you are a person who played a role in Men in Black 3.
- [30:16]
Kevin Townley
And also you have been wearing a flashy brooch that my grandma won on the Price is Right Wow.
- [30:23]
Chris Duffy
A Price Is Right brooch and wisdom.
- [30:25]
I guess what I'm saying to say is part of why I love the idea of, like, laughing at yourself is that it is a way of acknowledging the impermanence of who you are, but also it's a way of getting out of the. Like, I'm so. And instead, like, I have contained all sorts of contradictions and imperfections, and that isn't something that I have to feel ashamed of. It's instead, like, that's part of being human, and that's why we can laugh about it.
- [30:48]
Kevin Townley
Yeah. It's not about being, like, meek and just wearing, you know, earth tones and hiding behind a paper bag every once in a while.
- [30:58]
Chris Duffy
You got to put the brooch on, of course.
- [31:00]
Kevin Townley
Well, that's one of. Another interesting Buddhist teaching is it's called emptiness and luminosity. So one of the core tenets of Buddhism is that everything that. That you think about something is empty of that. Like, you might not like eggplant Parmesan, but the eggplant doesn't contain your loathing. You just don't like it, which is fine. Or you might have been culturally brainwashed into disliking a particular type of person, but that person doesn't contain your ignorance. The ignorance is in your mind, and the juxtaposition of you and that person is calling forward your own ignor. Everything is empty of what you think of it. Everything is empty of some solid, inherent thing, like, it's constantly in flux. So that's one side of it, but the other side of it is called luminosity. So everything is empty, but it is luminous as it is. So the eggplant doesn't contain your loathing or your approbation, but it's. It has its own, you know, funny shape that's got some traction in texting circles, but it's. The eggplant itself doesn't, you know, contain your prurient jokes. It's just a plant, you know, that's purple and whatever. So it is what it is. It has its qualities, but it's also empty of what you think about it, which is, to me, fascinating because, like, you can still be a person with no essential solid self and still wear a ridiculous outfit or hop around on a pogo stick and juggle devil sticks on the high school lawn. If you're in high school. Don't do that.
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Chris Duffy
I have a couple of just practical questions for you, I guess, which is, if someone's listening and they're really moved to try and do this, how should you start like observing art and thinking about things in these deeper ways? What's an exercise that you can do that will actually get you to step forward in this?
- [33:09]
Kevin Townley
So fundamentally, whether you're doing like a simple meditation practice like mindfulness of breath, or just kind of like an open awareness practice where you hold the body still and notice what shows up during the interval of your practice time, what's being strengthened is your awareness. And in a museum setting or in an art appreciation setting, what's being strengthened is awareness. So awareness is really the queen of the whole project. Not to bring the monarchy into it, but you know, it's like the apex of why we do this. Because when we're not aware, when we're not aware that our opinions are just our opinions or that our particular upbringing gave us some maybe not nice thoughts about different kinds of people, then we start to believe what we think about crap, and then start to be led by the nose through the impulses associated with our thoughts. But if in meditation practice we can just follow the breath for a little while, doesn't have to be long, or just keep kind of an open panoramic awareness, then we become aware of all of that stuff and we aren't compelled into activity by those thoughts anymore. Like if you do have a museum nearby or an art gallery, or you could even like go to the TJ Maxx and look at the pre framed photos that they have on sale or weird art piece. It could be anything. You could even do it with a bit of tree bark if you wanted to. But the most helpful tools are a little bit of time and somewhere to sit, which is what my favorite art nun Sister Wendy used to say on pbs. Just, you just need some time and a place to sit. So if you can find an artwork that has a bench in front of it, that's a good way to choose one. And what you can do is sit in front of it. You can stand too. And you could kind of imagine like a big X going through the canvas and try to find a central point. More or less could be like a little shape or something that you can rest the eyeball on and you just kind of look at that central point in the canvas, but see if you can't actually move your visual awareness, which is separate from the moving eyeball, and see if you can't, for example, just decide, okay, I'm going to pull all the triangle shapes in this vast canvas forward in my visual awareness without moving my eye and just see what happens. It might be all circles, you know, it might be looking at a Kandinsky and laughs on you, but then just do the circles or just say pull forward, all of the black shapes or all of the red shapes. And you alternate through. You know, just don't make a big deal out of it, but you just like alternate triangle shapes, blues, greens. Place your attention on the back of your neck as you're looking at this image and see what happens. And then you can take a break and then just like sort of move your eye around the image, looking at stuff as you normally would. And then like, plant the eye and not move it. And then try to move a visual awareness in some way around the canvas. Because what starts to happen is we start to actually see what's there. You're stepping into the mind stream of the person who made this thing. You're mixing minds with another person. In the same way as when you read a novel, you're mixing minds. This person has put strangely colored black shapes on a page that you've assembled into a mental image. You're co creating this. And so the same stands for when you're looking at a painting, like a great painter, like Philip Guston, who I love, you would just stand and look at this. And at first it looks like some idiot painted it. It's like clunky shapes and cartoony and dumb. But if you leave the eye still, but allow the image to come toward you, suddenly you start to see, like, the brush strokes, the composition, the color choices, and these things can start to have emotional resonances which are liberated from, like, narrative. And then you can step back and be like, what, what story is this? Read the placard next to it. Which is sometimes helpful and sometimes trying to protect us from having our own personal experience of the art. So I think that's a way of doing it. Find an object, plant your eye in the middle of it, and then just call different shapes and colors forward in visual awareness and see how that starts to transform your relationship to what you're looking at, how it makes you become what you're looking at.
- [37:54]
Chris Duffy
I have a question about this exercise that's also a question about meditation in general, which is, is this an exercise that builds the muscle so that we can then use this skill in other places?
- [38:09]
Are we at the gym training for.
- [38:12]
The performance, the athletic competition, or is this the athletic competition?
- [38:17]
Kevin Townley
It's training you to be able to apply this in your life. And what's interesting in the gym metaphor, like, obviously you want to have, like, good form, and if you keep throwing your back out and you strengthen your core. You know, like when you're picking up the, you know, cat food box to lift from your knees, there might be a little like positioning going on, but like the reminder of good positioning isn't giving you the stronger muscles. The stronger muscles have been gained from having done the exercise. So parallel to this in like the art experience, an art image is like a simulacrum of the world, but it's frozen. It's like still, unless it's like a film, but that's another matter. But anyway, like if it's a painting or a sculpture or something, it's like a simulacrum of some aspect of the world, but it's still. And yet as you look at it, the awareness finds a kind of like dynamism and movement in the work and you just begin to be able to perceive that more clearly. So that when you go into your life, if it's in the office, if it's at home with your partner. We're partners, Chris. I'm not here to judge anybody. It's a new age. Then what starts to lead naturally is awareness. It is not going to expunge jealousy. It's not going to make you not mad. It's not going to make you not, you know, a lustful person or self important or whatever. It's not going to make you not have like knee jerk, ignorant, prejudiced thoughts. But if we're playing whack a mole with all of that, we're just completely into the weeds here. We're believing these echoes of past actions that show up as thoughts as somehow problems to solve rather than moving through our experience led by the awareness itself. And we don't have to think about it. It happens naturally, it's natural to human beings. But. But it does take practice because our entire world seems to be structured in such a way to like congratulate us and monetize hot takes and mean spiritedness and other unpleasant qualities.
- [40:39]
Chris Duffy
Is there something different about engaging with a masterpiece or, you know, a quote unquote timeless work of art versus, you know, the thing that your aunt painted in her spare time. And she's even she doesn't think it's her best work.
- [40:53]
Kevin Townley
Sure, I think there is. And obviously masterpiece is relative and whatever, but I do think there is some other aspect at play here. When an art maker, and this is something that a lot of artists now are talking about. In contrast to AI the writer Robert Olin Butler talks about how creativity is hard. It's really hard to do. And quite often we Avoid doing it because to delve down into the unconscious realm where the creative impulse seems to simmer is literally hell for a lot of people. For most people, it's hellish. Even if you're trying to write a joke, it's torture. So the idea is like, if you're looking at a masterpiece, then you are engaging with a work made by somebody who is doing this all the time. And it's not necessarily a self improvement technique. I mean, all reports seem to indicate that Picasso was an asshat. But like, there's some interesting shapes and good work he did, you know, he made some good things. So like, if you are looking at something that went through this kind of rigorous practice, it's a practice of not knowing, of transforming negativity into something colorful, something with shape, something with tone. Somebody who is able to handle the heat, the white hot heat of the creative process and bend it or tap dance it into some other medium. And there's a certain skill that's involved that seems to like be honed when you keep at it. There's a book I was reading by this writer called Brenda Uland, who wrote this book in the 30s called if you want to write, I think it's called she said. I would tell my students, just write 10 really bad stories. Just write the 10 worst stories you can possibly write. Eventually they start to kind of improve just because you keep doing it. So when we engage with a masterpiece, we're looking at a form or experiencing sound or some kind of thing that went through this human process, this human process of investigating the inner world, the collective unconscious, whatever you want to call it, and then transmuted it into something else. A painting, a song, a sculpture, a dance, a novel. And. And somebody who is like doing that as a path. David lynch called it the art life. He made like what, 11 films, but he was working every single day of his life. He was, he was like, if no one wants to give me the money for a film, I'm gonna make a painting. And if that doesn't work, I'm gonna make an album. And maybe no one wants to listen to crazy clown time, but I'm gonna do it. So anyway, so I think there is something to that. And it's nourishing. It's nourishing to look at something that was given such consideration. That person who brought the full force of their emotional life, their training, their experience, their neurosis, their wisdom to this particular thing. And now you're getting to like share in that and if nothing else, maybe be inspired. To do that yourself as well.
- [44:36]
Chris Duffy
You know, you select 26 artists in here who mean something to you and you're talking about Buddhist wisdom as reflected through their work. Is there one of these 26 artists who feels like they're particularly speaking to you right now and who and why?
- [44:52]
Kevin Townley
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about Agnes Martin recently. The five wisdom energies all have names. So like the ignorance one is called Buddha. The anger one is called Vajra, which is like a diamond thunderbolt. The prideful one is called Ratna, which means like jewel. So it kind of has like a bling quality. The lusty, grabby, greedy one is called Padma, which is like a lotus that looks like it's on fire. But the fifth one is called Karma, which is the competitive activity one. So as somebody who's like trying to make work, I've just made like two films. I've like shot two films. Let's not get carried away because apparently you also have to edit them. Chris.
- [45:41]
Chris Duffy
Well, some would disagree.
- [45:43]
Kevin Townley
That's true. That is true. So I'm in a stage now where I'm like, I don't know how to move forward with this. And my nervousness at not knowing is like, well, I'm gonna force it. I'm gonna bully somebody, I'm gonna sweet talk somebody. I'm just gonna give up. I. No, I'm the best. You know, like, you just ping pong through all of these like crazy things. But what Agnes Martin did, she said you just sit down and wait for the inspiration. If you don't know what to do, don't fill the space with a lot of flailing and splashing around. If it's, if the mind is like a surface of a pond that is maybe going to give you some sense of depth, splashing on the surface is not going to help you get clarity. So she said she would just sit in a chair and say, okay, well what are we going to do next? And she would sit there until the inspiration came in her mind, and then she would say, okay, that's the inspiration. I'm going to do that. And so she would try as best she could to extrapolate the image that came to her, which she said was like the size of a postage stamp out into a six by six foot canvas. And if she started like riffing or futzing around too much, she would just destroy the canvas and start again. This is the central problem of the human being. It seems that whatever we want to say about it, whatever our faith or our philosophy or our Schemes or our morning routine happens to be. We don't know what the F is going to happen next. We just don't know. And when we panic and try to like double down on what we think we know based on what has happened before and blah, blah, blah, that space becomes concrete. It becomes completely immovable. What Agnes Martin reminds me of is we don't have to fill the space just because we don't know. Because ignorance is the self centered, fearful, encumbered interpretation of space. But the open space is called all accommodating awareness. And then the other thing she said, which I love, she was babysitting her gallerist's granddaughter and she had a rose on her table. And the granddaughter loved this flower. And Agnes Martin said, do you think the rose is beautiful? And the girl said, yes, it is beautiful. And she took the rose and hid it behind her back and she said, do you still think the rose is beautiful? And the girl said, yes, the rose is still beautiful. She said, that's because the beauty is not in the rose. It's in your own mind. So if I can like just hang with being uncomfortable with not knowing how this film is gonna get finished, with not knowing what my next creative endeavor is gonna be, not knowing if anyone, if we're going to watch it or care, then what does arise, I will be able to see clearly and I can take that inspiration and work with that rather than having to rely on all of my fusty old defense mechanisms to seem like I'm not scared of dying or something.
- [49:07]
Chris Duffy
We've talked about being willing to laugh at yourself and to see some of the absurdity of your own existence and what you cling to. What is something in yourself that you're laughing about right now or able to find some absurdity in?
- [49:20]
Kevin Townley
Well, the first thing that comes to mind is I work at a museum right now and I work in the visitor services department and some of my coworkers are 17 years old and some of them are 82 years old. And so like whenever I'm like, why am I doing this sort of work? It just makes me laugh so hard. I was like, well, you always wanted to be a retiree and now you're doing it. So like just catching my self importance and then like being like, what other. What other job could I have where I would actually get to like talk to such a wide age range of people? It's kind of like amazing. So that's a big lol.
- [50:06]
Chris Duffy
Kevin, I cannot thank you enough for making time to be on the show. You are such a delight. It was such an interesting conversation. This was truly it has given me so much to think about and it was a perfect fit for this month of thinking about the self and humor and paying attention and laughing.
- [50:23]
Kevin Townley
Oh, it's so beautiful to see you and I'm so happy that we got to connect again. And congratulations on your book, which I cannot wait.
- [50:30]
Chris Duffy
Thank you.
- [50:30]
Kevin Townley
Wait to read and kiss your baby and high five your wife. And you can kiss her too. No pressure.
- [50:39]
Chris Duffy
High fives of kisses all around.
- [50:42]
That is it for today's episode of how to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Kevin Townley. You can find more about his films, his writing and his book. Look, look, look, look, look again. Buddhist wisdom reflected in 26 artists on his website, KevinTownley NYC. I'm your host Chris Duffy and this episode is part of a month long series on how to Laugh More that is inspired by my new nonfiction book Humor Me, which just came out. You can find the book wherever you get books or@chrisduffycomedy.com thank you to Apple for featuring how to Be a Better Human in their Living well collection for 2026. Go check it out on Apple Podcasts. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team of monks working with a team of expert artisans. On the TED side we've got the fully enlightened Daniela Ballorezzo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quinn, Chloe Cha, Sha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tanzika, Sung Manivong, Antonia Ley, and Joseph de Bruyne. This episode was fact checked by Matthias Salas who transcends falsehoods to arrive at pure and noble truth. On the PRX side we've got the Picassos of podcasts and I mean that in the excellent art way and not.
- [51:46]
The terrible person way.
- [51:47]
I am talking about Morgan Flannery, nor Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. We may never know what is going to happen next, but I'm pretty sure that you can count on another episode of how to Be a Better Human coming out next Monday. In the meantime, share this episode with someone who you want to go to a museum with or just someone who you like. Thanks again for listening and take care.
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