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Bill once said that upon coming to Taos he had humbled himself when confronted with adversity--not sure where to turn.
It was that first winter with no money, no partner and no support. He did not believe in the God, or Gods, of the past
but he did believe in "something". He could not put his finger on this "thing" however, and finally he decided
that he would just pray, pray, pray not with uncertainty, but certain and sure, and yet to a God somehow
"unknown". He felt later in reflection on that time that this prayer held profound power and efficacy
in that moment, saving him from his certain doom.
Along the way from that cold winter to better times there were odd stances of seeming "coincidence" as making a
sale for the amount of the rent on the due date--and the sale was for the exact amount, down to fifty-two cents, that had
become owing. He learned, it seemed, that he would rely on his "God" without any doctrine or understanding at all
but only that "it" [sic: not capitalized] was certain, sure and unabiding
but yet unknown and unknownable.
Later in his life he said that he was not sure if there had been
a God in the "beginning" but he was quite certain that there would be one in the "end". Bill was preoccupied,
once again, with a unique view of matters. He, apparently, came to the view that not only did God create Man but that, since
of the same image, Man also created God. This, of course, is gravest of sacrilege to each of mankind's present major
religions--the single thing that all such religions can make agreement upon. That was of no concern to Bill. He believed
in freedom of thought beyond all other freedoms and believed that humans were responsible for not just the food they put in
their mouth but also the thoughts they allowed into their consciousness. These were weighty matters for him of utmost importance.
For Bill a God Unknowable was far more significant and far more powerful than anything that could be defined. As with
those of Jewish faith, his God was too big for not only a single word but any word at all. For him, it was the presentation
of symbols through his work that most connected him to the universal. All of this is interesting to us; but, for
Bill, he wondered why anyone would ever want a God definite and fully known. And, since no word could adequately express,
he would never say that he "believed" in "God". Perhaps Bill took his sacrilege even further figuring it was up
to "God" to "believe" in him.
Once again, his view of the possibilty of "bilateral" creation places Bill squarely in the camp of Post Modern Philosophy,
Theology and Science and it is a view echoed in man's evolving knowledge of Quantum Reality.
That Quantum theory more and more demonstrates that reality is not local and not confined in, or by, time and
space. Indeed, Quantum theory shows, today, more and more, that a quantum, split to the two furthest quarters of
the universe is still defined by the local observation at one end but that at the same instant of observation it
is mirrored, in reflected "opposite", in its other half, without time or space--no matter the vast light years between those
most remote of the universe's quadrants.
All of this is something that the scientists will have to continue to contemplate--the notion that consciousness creates
reality and that the reality created is not merely local or confined to time or space. Bill simply lived these apparently
impossible contradictions and did so not without thought but certainly without angst.
| 'Five Graces' |
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| Bill Rane, The Early Taos Period, Circa 1983-1985, Courtesy RANE Gallery, Taos, NM |
A
saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it
has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the
chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that
a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the
universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress
of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in
him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces
with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but
he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to
have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.
Leonard Cohen, "Beautiful Losers" (1966), copyright Leonard Cohen, All World Wide
Rights Strictly Reserved
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