Heartbreak
A Novel of the 1980s
By Aly
(from the internet in a discussion with Bill Moyers)
Campbell described artists as individuals who "have in their late childhood and early youth... had an overwhelming psychological experience that turns them totally inward," likening this transformative experience to the shamanic initiation. He noted that such individuals often "fall into" the unconscious, experiencing what he termed a "schizophrenic-crackup-shaman experience," which mirrors the shaman's journey of death and resurrection
Heartbreak
"Samhadi"
Bo & Aly discuss "samhadi" ...
“Don’t you see, my friend? The people who populate this school in majority are students of art, the only link between modern-day society and the inward world,” Bo said, tilting his head slightly as the late afternoon sunlight filtered through the tall, narrow windows of the campus eatery. The golden rays fell across the worn wooden table where we sat, illuminating the scattered textbooks, the half-empty coffee cups, and the crumbs of bread that had refused to be brushed away.
I chewed on the end of my pen, trying to make sense of his statement. “I don’t understand. You mean there’s something spiritual about these people who get to paint and draw for four years and get high every night?”
Bo smiled faintly, a slow, enigmatic curve of his lips. “The truth is pathless, more or less.”
I leaned back, squinting through the dusty glass at students hurrying along the cobbled walkway outside. Some carried canvases under their arms; others balanced sketchbooks on their knees, lost in thought. A few laughed and jostled one another, spilling their energy into the courtyard like sunlight captured in motion. “I don’t know, Bo. Sometimes I look at some of the paintings in the student gallery and wonder what message the artist is trying to convey. I mean, I wonder if the person behind the work is as knowledgeable about this inner world you speak of—or if they just decided to intentionally make a mess of things.”
“I repeat,” Bo said, his voice dropping to a whisper as if the words themselves were sacred, “the truth is pathless. One need not experience samadhi to create art—or, in your case, design structures that will hold up to the forces applied to them.”
I frowned, feeling a little foolish. “What’s samadhi?”
Bo paused, staring at the half-empty cup of coffee in front of him, as though the answer lay within its dark, reflective surface. “Samadhi is the state where the self dissolves, and all that remains is consciousness. Some call it enlightenment. Others, simply being. It is a union with the infinite. In art, some reach this without knowing the name. Others chase the name without ever touching the state.”
I nodded slowly, though the explanation left me more curious than satisfied. Around us, the eatery hummed with chatter, clinking cutlery, and the faint aroma of fried vegetables. A student with bright blue hair and a paint-stained hoodie passed by, dropping a pamphlet on modern expressionism onto the table beside us. Bo picked it up and flipped through the pages without reading, letting his fingers trace the textures of the paper like they might reveal secrets.
“You see,” he continued, “these students—your neighbors, your classmates—live in a dimension of possibility. Every brushstroke is a question. Every line drawn is an attempt to touch the void without being swallowed by it. You, my friend, build the tangible, the measurable. They build the intangible, the unmeasurable.”
I tried to imagine it. The numbers, the loads, the shear forces of a steel beam—I understood. But the unmeasurable? That was a terrain I had never navigated, and Bo’s words made it sound perilous and enticing at once.
“Sometimes,” I said slowly, “I think they’re just hiding behind colors and textures. Pretending that the world is more profound than it really is.”
Bo shook his head. “Ah, that is the shadow of the mind speaking. You think you see the mask, but you have yet to see the face beneath. Do you not know that the same could be said of your buildings? That beneath the concrete and steel lies the mind of the engineer, afraid of chaos, afraid of collapse?”
I laughed, a hollow sound that surprised me. “So, what, you’re saying the painter and the engineer are the same, just with different fears?”
Bo leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Exactly. Except the painter’s fear is silent, embraced; the engineer’s fear is loud, denied. The painter welcomes uncertainty. The engineer fights it.”
I frowned, staring at my half-drunk cup. The coffee had gone cold, but I didn’t care. Outside, a cluster of students had gathered under the oak tree near the fountain, their laughter ringing through the courtyard. One of them held a large canvas aloft, turning it slowly for the others to see. The painting was chaotic—swirls of crimson and violet, streaks of gold and black—but there was a rhythm to it, a strange pulse that seemed to echo in my chest.
“What is he trying to say?” I muttered.
Bo smiled faintly, a knowing glint in his eye. “He does not know, and yet he does. That is the pathless truth.”
I rubbed my temples, trying to grasp what he meant. “So, in your view, art is… accidental wisdom?”
Bo shrugged. “Perhaps. Or deliberate foolishness. Or both. You see, every creation is a dialogue between the self and the unseen. Sometimes we speak, sometimes we listen, sometimes we scream.”
I took a deep breath, the words settling around me like a fog. “And you think I’ll ever understand that?”
“Not understand,” Bo said, his voice almost a whisper. “Only feel. You measure and calculate; they sense and abandon. Both are necessary. The world cannot function with one without the other.”
I stared at him, caught between admiration and exasperation. He had the strange habit of speaking in riddles, yet there was a magnetic pull in his words, a gravity that drew me closer despite my resistance.
Outside, the sun dipped lower, casting elongated shadows across the courtyard. Students packed up their paints and sketchbooks, leaving trails of color on the pavement like fragments of a dream. A gust of wind blew through, carrying the scent of autumn leaves and distant rain. I felt a shiver, though I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or the conversation itself.
Bo stood suddenly, sliding the pamphlet into his satchel. “Come. Walk with me.”
I followed, curious despite myself. We left the eatery and wandered past the library, through the central plaza, and finally into a quieter part of the campus—a secluded garden with a small fountain at its center. The water shimmered in the dimming light, reflecting fragments of the sky.
“Do you see it?” Bo asked, gesturing toward the fountain. “The way the water moves, yet remains contained? The way it reflects the world, yet is never the world?”
I nodded, feeling a strange resonance with his words. “It’s… peaceful.”
“Exactly,” he said. “And this is the inner world I speak of. It is not grandiose. It is not always understood. But it exists, and it waits for those willing to observe without interference.”
We sat on a stone bench, letting the sounds of the garden settle around us. My mind churned with questions, doubts, and fleeting insights. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel the need to analyze, to calculate, to control. I simply sat, listening to the water, to Bo’s quiet breathing, to the unseen rhythm of the campus.
“The truth is pathless,” Bo whispered again. “But sometimes, walking alongside another, even for a little while, is enough to glimpse it.”
I looked at him, this enigmatic guide, and felt a pang of both understanding and frustration. I did not fully grasp what he meant, yet somehow, in the gentle unfolding of the evening, I felt the stirrings of something larger, something I could not name.
A sudden breeze rustled the leaves overhead, and a lone student emerged from the shadows, carrying a sketchbook and a pencil. They sat across the fountain and began to draw, their pencil scratching softly against the paper. I watched the motion, hypnotized, as if the act of creation itself held a secret rhythm that I had never noticed before. Bo’s eyes followed mine, calm and knowing.
“You see,” he said softly, “everything that appears chaotic has a rhythm. Everything that seems random is, in its own way, deliberate. The painter does not merely capture; they reveal. And what is revealed is not the world as it is, but as it might be… and as it might be seen through a mind unafraid of its own shadows.”
I swallowed hard, feeling the weight of his words press gently against my thoughts. It was not a lesson I could memorize or a formula I could replicate. It was a moment, fragile and fleeting, yet infinitely expansive.
We rose and walked back toward the campus gates. The sky had deepened into shades of indigo, and the first stars blinked awake. The air smelled faintly of damp earth and distant fires from nearby residences. The sounds of the city mingled with the quieter hum of the campus night.
“You will return to your work,” Bo said, “and they will return to theirs. And yet, in the crossing of these paths, even for a brief moment, something has shifted. You will notice it not in calculations, but in perception. In the way a line is drawn, a beam is placed, a color is mixed.”
I nodded. Words failed me, but a subtle understanding had begun to bloom. Perhaps I would never fully comprehend Bo’s world of pathless truths, of samadhi glimpsed through paint and motion. Perhaps it was enough to know that it existed, that it called, and that in our separate ways, we could walk toward it.
And perhaps, in that walking, there was already a form of enlightenment.