Poetic Rapture

From the silence before the first breath, the field begins to stir.  An energy moves the brush, it dips into the ink….

Color rises through the paper’s skin—ochre, ash, copper—

the world whispering itself into being.

Creases in the handmade surface open like the memory of steely mountains with the summit in clouds

and a sun of molten grace hovering between birth and return.

This is not depiction but emergence.

Emptiness dreams, and in its dreaming, form awakens.

Each brushstroke is a threshold, each shimmer of ink, a pulse

where the invisible crosses into visibility.

Here dwells the Shekinah—

the indwelling radiance of light—the breath of the divine—

moving between imagination and implementation,

the liminal force that joins what is becoming to what has not yet been.

She is energy made visible: the tremor of light within matter,

the energy between pigment and hand,

the silent grammar through which the cosmos utters itself anew.

Ch’an Buddhism would name it emptiness as generativity—

the earth’s own consciousness folding and unfolding through breath.

Jung would see the psyche dreaming its symbols into matter.

And Adorno, standing in this stillness, would hear

the truth that refuses identity:

art as the reconciliation of world and spirit,

matter and meaning,

where we, too, are momentarily restored—

breathed into being by the same luminous silence

that moves through Shekinah’s infinite return.

This essay explores the possible mechanisms through which leaders mobilize popular support for domination and violence. It shares the insights of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt on fascism and the Nazi rise to power, while drawing on current analyses that reveal how similar patterns continue to emerge in modern political life.

Arendt: Mass Loyalty and Institutional Hollowing

Hannah Arendt emphasized that authoritarian leaders endure so long as they mobilize the loyalty of the masses, who allow them to dismantle institutions from within. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951/1973), she describes how the authoritarian movements subordinate law and institutions to the will of the leader. Institutions collapse when their authority is undermined: “Institutions are destroyed when the authority of the people who inhabit them is destroyed” (Arendt, 1963, p. 140). Norm-breaking by leaders is not punished but admired, since it demonstrates fidelity to the movement rather than to democratic procedure (Arendt, 1951/1973, p. 382).

Adorno: Authoritarian Dispositions and Cultural Conditioning

Theodor Adorno complements this picture by explaining why the masses support authoritarianism in the first place. In The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), he identified personality structures marked by submission to authority, hostility to out-groups, and rigid conventionalism. Such predispositions make citizens receptive to authoritarian appeals.

Further, in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1944/2002), Adorno argued that the culture industry conditions individuals to conformity and passivity, fostering acceptance of domination. As summarized above, Adorno identifies the psychological and cultural mechanisms that render mass complicity possible.

Levitsky & Ziblatt: Backsliding from Within

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die (2018) brings these insights into a contemporary analysis. They show how democracies most often erode not through coups, but through elected leaders incrementally undermining institutions. Leaders exploit polarization and mass loyalty to break democratic norms. They do this by:

• rejecting the legitimacy of opponents,

• tolerating violence,

• curtailing civil liberties, and

• weakening independent institutions (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018, pp. 106–115).

Like Arendt, they stress that institutions only endure if people respect and uphold them. Like Adorno, they note that citizens can be conditioned—through polarization, media, and culture—to accept domination as legitimate.

Convergence: A Multi-Level Theory of Authoritarian Endurance

Bringing these perspectives together highlights the possibility of three dimensions of authoritarian endurance:

• Political-institutional (Arendt): Leaders stay in power by hollowing out institutions and mobilizing mass loyalty.

• Psychological-cultural (Adorno): Masses support authoritarianism because authoritarian dispositions and cultural industries condition them to accept domination.

• Contemporary political movements (Levitsky & Ziblatt): Democratic erosion unfolds gradually, from within, as leaders exploit polarization and weaken guardrails.

Together, these frameworks underscore that authoritarianism persists not simply through coercion, but through the active complicity of citizens, enabled by psychological conditioning, cultural manipulation, and political mobilization. Democratic backsliding is therefore a multidimensional process, linking the inner lives of citizens (Adorno), the fragility of institutions (Arendt), and the strategies of contemporary autocrats (Levitsky & Ziblatt).

References

• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Harper & Row.

• Arendt, H. (1963). On revolution. Viking Press.

• Arendt, H. (1973). The origins of totalitarianism (New ed.). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. (Original work published 1951)

• Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1944)

• Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown.

Fragmented Swamp Pulse emerged from a quiet rhythm —an interplay of shadowed branches weaving through pools of warm light and cool depths. The textured, pebble-like forms gather and shift like scattered reflections on moving water, inviting the eye to linger within their subtle fractures. Dark lines trace a network both fragile and enduring, suggesting a forest’s pulse that is at once fractured and whole.

For Adorno, there is no such thing as a purely immediate experience of art (or of nature, for that matter).

He uses the word, Immediate, to mean something given in its raw, untouched form, as though we could encounter “the thing itself” without interpretation, history, or framing. Romantic aesthetics often longed for this kind of immediacy — a direct communion with beauty, nature, or G-d.

But Adorno insists this is an illusion as what we see, feel, and represent is always mediated by concepts, history, social structures, and the materials of the artwork. Even when art seems “natural,” it carries with it layers of technique, culture, and tradition.

In Aesthetic Theory, he puts it this way:

“Nothing in art is immediate; every aesthetic element is mediated through the totality of the work and through history.” (Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Hullot-Kentor, 1997, p. 120)

So, in Adorno’s thought—Nature itself is mediated: our view of a tree, for example, is shaped by cultural categories, memory, language (“tree”), and the history of landscape painting.

He claims, Art reveals this mediation because it is not simply a copy of the natural world but a constructed object that makes us aware of how representation itself works. Rosalind Krauss argues this point as well.

In these few paintings, there is not an attempt to deceive the eye into believing we are looking at literal trees (as, say, in hyper-realism). That would lean toward an illusion of immediacy. Instead, the visible brushstrokes, textured surface, and shimmering pigments constantly remind the viewer that this is a painting — a human construction. This is the artifice of the work.

Adorno claims the painting manifests as a mediation: it acknowledges that our experience of “trees” here is filtered through pigment, paper, and artistic decision.

Thus, the work resists collapsing into “pure nature.” It allows us to sense both the natural subject (trees, light, leaves) and the fact that it is always refracted through an artistic and cultural medium.

Notan Thicket: Dream in Lilac unfolds like a suspension bridge between form and color. Here, the skeletal branches and trunks weave among a delicate lattice, their gray tones tracing a network of subtle shadow leaves against a field of deep lilac. This purple expanse is not just background but a space that hovers on the edge of consciousness—where the familiar whispers of the wetlands become a fragile balance between structure and mystery, inviting a moment to linger within that shimmering boundary where the world feels both present and elusive.

The Japanese word for contrasting values in art is Notan (濃淡), which translates to “light-dark harmony” or “light-dark balance”.Notan is a design concept and practice that involves simplifying an image into its basic shapes of light and dark to study the compositional energy, balance, and the relationship between positive and negative space.  Here are a few of my pieces put into Notan to study this design feature.

(On exhibit at Jane’s Gallery, New Smyrna Beach, Fl. From September 6 through December 31, 2025)

A Rough Vessel of Heaven and Emptiness

This vessel refuses the tyranny of symmetry—

a spout that tilts, a body that leans,

a form that whispers: I am not for your perfection.

Adorno would hear in it a quiet revolt—

resisting the smooth violence of the culture industry,

its fractures and heaviness speaking truth in negativity.

Ch’an would smile at its suchness:

emptiness held by clay,

a hollow that makes the whole,

impermanent beauty flowing like rain.

Not an object to possess,

but a question:

Where does creating end and becoming begin?

Critique: Tension and Liberation

Adorno would admire this as an object that resists commodification and negates the logic of standardization, presenting a unique fractured piece that defies the smooth sameness of industrial design.

Ch’an Buddhism would cherish its non-striving beauty, its embodiment of emptiness, imperfection, and spontaneity—an invitation to direct experience without conceptual fixation.

Thus, the vessel is both a dialectical protest (Adorno) and a meditation on emptiness (Ch’an):

It does not resolve into an identity, nor does it cling to perfection.

It gestures toward freedom—from both capitalist totality and egoic attachment.

Buddhist Perspective

Ch’an aesthetics favor emptiness (空), spontaneity (自然 ziran), and non-attachment. Objects often reveal impermanence and the play of natural forces.

Emptiness and Function

The vessel exists as a field of emptiness—its value is not in what it is, but in how it negotiates in interdependence (water, user, gesture).

The hollow interior exemplifies the Daoist-Ch’an teaching:
“Clay is shaped into a vessel, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it useful.”

Its irregularity invites a mind free from clinging to perfection.

Spontaneity and Suchness

The glaze’s flowing drips and color transitions manifest suchness (tathatā)—the uncontrived nature of things.

Instead of rigid symmetry, the form appears arising from process, not imposed by egoic control. This reflects wu wei (effortless action).

Impermanence

The surface recalls eroded stone or weathered bark, subtly reminding the observer of time’s ceaseless change—a Ch’an sensibility.

ORGANIC FORMS The last two are Analogue (brush, ink, on rice paper) and the others are with digital manipulation

SAPPHO’S POETRY

Fragment 31B (or sometimes 147) – Fire Under the Skin: “…a thin flame runs under my skin.”

• Source: Ancient Sources of Sappho’s Poetry

Swamp Studies: Impermanence and Resistance

These small landscape studies emerge from repeated contemplative encounters with the swamp behind my home. Working with ink and watercolor on rice paper, the aim is to allow the process itself, the drips and runs of the ink and watercolor, to become visible.

The swamp is not presented here as a scenic object for consumption, but as an entanglement of presence and absence: an organic enigma, at times dark. It is a site where form momentarily coheres and slips away. I am interested in how gestures can suggest life without fixing it, how a mark can be both a disclosure and a veil.

My landscape painting practice is shaped primarily by two influences:

• Ch’an (Zen) approaches to landscape embrace emptiness and non-attachment. In these paintings, negative space and the dark contrasts are the ground of being, they represent the metaphor for the dark enigma, the mystery out of which appearances arise and to which they return.

• Critical theory espouses, especially Theodor Adorno’s insistence, that authentic art must resist commodification; to refuse to be an alienated object; and refuse to reconcile contradictions prematurely. If one finds dissonance and incompleteness in these works, they are intentional and are what I believe to be part of their aesthetics. They are no longer to be reconciled. A key quality that Adorno assesses is the extent to which art refuses the consoling fantasy of nature as a harmonious spectacle, especially as we are witnessing 21st century’s exploitation of the flora and fauna, to the point of many animal extinctions, including a trajectory of our own extinction.

Each study is an exercise in creating, with non-identity—allowing the swamp to be what it is: unstable, opaque, and indifferent to our desire for clarity. My hope is that this practice can offer a small space of resistance against reification and resistance to being an instrument for consumption, or resistance from “culinary beauty.” Rather I invite viewers to ponder the mysteries, and at the same time, be more open to understanding while we witness the 21st century’s industrial and technological exploitation of the Goddess, Mother Earth.

In the spirit of the Ch’an Buddhist poets and landscape artists, I present to you this collection of mixed media works which emerge from my contemplative practice.  Each piece begins with a meditation on the ever-changing vista of swamp and marsh visible from my backyard—a liminal space where water meets land, where ancient nature merges with organic reality.

The creative process unfolds in three distinct phases: initial meditation allows for deep absorption of the landscape’s shifting moods, colors, and textures. Traditional watercolor and ink techniques on rice paper capture the fluid, organic presence of the wetlands, embracing the unpredictable ways pigment from the brush moves across the delicate and textured surface of the rice paper. Finally, digital layering and filtering transform the initial studies into compositions that echo the depth and mystery of this Florida wetland ecosystem.

The art works transcend literal representation, instead, offer emotional and spiritual interpretations of the ever changing landscape.  The colors and compositions evoke the reflective quality of water and the rich sediment found in the marshland. 

These abstract landscapes invite viewers to experience the viewpoint, where the boundaries between inner and outer worlds dissolve into a unified field of color, texture, and light.