Shall we get down to the actual techniques to design intention?

No intention can be created out of context. You always have to work with the medium at hand, but does that necessarily confine what pattern you create? If I only have sepia ink, can I draw a fish? What about if I only have sepia ink and my fingers?

Whatever you are experiencing right now is a colour, a feeling. Remembering this experiencing is “drawing.” You draw it out into future moments.

Limitations just make an artist have to be more creative. Indeed, we all draw, all the time, can’t help it. We remember stuff. Can we make a picture if we only draw a single straight line? What will it look like?

Perhaps a wall? Sort of sterile, no? How do we usually remember our lives?

It is a starting point from which to expand. Ah, indeed a fine starting point, but really bad end. How many people end here? Reality itself is a pointillist work, little single points or particles of presence all around us. If we only choose to remember a single thing, well, these single elements behave according to their own natures. Blue doesn’t change its mind and start looking green. These things are pretty reliable, no?

Unless your view changes. Ah, but if life is black and white then there is no basis for change in point of view. You are stuck between here and there, here and the horizon, which you never reach. But let’s say you choose to remember baseball. You add just that point of ink, because baseball is alive. It has its own character, its own nature. It will spread across the canvas, creating a web work of baseball coloured memories, but still, does that look like much?

I have very few baseball-coloured memories. I have a baseball coloured blotch that I painted over some while ago.

WAIT! Some are coming back to mind! Some really, really good ones!

This is how designing intention works friends. Start with one thing, but let’s add another colour. Can you make any decisions if there is only one colour?

To add another colour. That’s not a decision. It’s a natural necessity, or else we die, or rather we dye. When every cell looks like the same mess, they call that cancer. So add another colour and you can start making some basic decisions, ratio of one colour to another, territory taken up by one colour in respect to another. Do people actually make these decisions?

We’ll die anyway, so let’s get on with our painting! Indeed.

Without thinking consciously. Do people consciously choose proportion or colour ratio in their memories?

Not at all. Why not?

We’re remembering wholes, not tiny parts? You are believing in wholes, holes, same thing. Your memory remains unaltered, but your sense of self is thrown out.

Yet wholes are the sum of the parts. They are greater than the sum of their parts. They only look like the sum of their parts when you stick with two colours. With only two colours can the picture have meaning? Perhaps you only have cooking and baseball, is that a meaningful life? Something gets lost when you work with only two colours, depth.

Cooking and baseball have a lot of variations. They do, but they remain two dimensional. Life looks like a tile floor when it’s only black and white.

Ok, so let’s add a third colour. Guess what very popular form of art are three colours?

The original method for colourizing movies was three colour, and comic books still are, but something strange happens. We start thinking there are more than three colours. How is that?

The first colour TV’s had just three colours. Yes, but those TVs gave pictures that people swore looked like real life, had all the colours. They didn’t, but people thought they did.

When you have two colours, your hands are full, but you have all the things. You are still in control. Add the third colour and you have space, and the first chance to actually see other people.

With two colours, there are no people, only objects. With three you have one variable too many to predict anything. Getting a bit exciting, no? This is why people play rock paper scissors. A good many video games are based on this.

The coin toss is pretty dull. But a dice roll has held people fascinated for a very long time. Well, we haven’t gotten to the point where we can roll the dice yet. Things are still pretty simple even with three colours, three memories, though you could see a six sided dice as just a set of three coins. But yes, three memories, cooking baseball and music. What does our picture look like with these?

Dull. Realistic huh? How many people describe their lives as a list of three things? Home, work and family? God, King and country? Truth, justice and the American way? This is the real life picture. Is that all there is? How many people ask themselves that?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~