That day I made a promise to myself, a personal vow: From that moment on I would never again consciously initiate a violent act against another human being and, furthermore, that I would rechannel any destructive or self-destructive tendencies through creative self-expression in aesthetic endeavor.
On its face such a vow is almost childlike in its simplicity. At the time all I was looking for was a way forward, and in that regard it served well enough. Over time, as I matured and became gradually more grounded in a spiritual identity and philosophy, I would learn that the first part of my vow is a very old tradition called ahimsa, the yoga of non-violence. It is one of the eight limbs of the yoga system. In this context non-violence does not mean passivity. Active non-violence is implacable, and that makes it quite a powerful practice. Essentially the practice of ahimsa is conscious reverence for the Divine Light who abides within all beings. The other part of my vow, to devote my life to creative expression in the arts, has roots in the precept of dharma, or purpose in life. Dharma implies that every person is endowed with a gift (or set of gifts) at birth, and that every person has a responsibility to share their gift with the world. Clearly, since I was innately gifted with some artistic talents, my vow to devote my life to expressing them is the path I was meant to be on.
Finding one's way to redemption in the modern world is no easy task. The greater the wrongs one has done the more difficult that task becomes. Back in the early 1970s when I was so very much in need of a pathway to redemption, I felt lost in some dark wilderness, and I couldn't find anyone who could show me the way back to where there was light. People would use words like 'rehabilitation' but no one in the place where I was could describe what that might actually look like. I was on my own. In a place where every direction I looked appeared hopeless I turned to the only remaining possibility: I looked inside myself. There I found one little ray of light, and so I nursed it until it flared up enough to carry me forward.
The role of every artist is to bring some light to the world. To be sure, I've done an imperfect job of it. Being human is all about trial and error, stumbling and falling and getting back up, and figuring out what works. Because I had deprived the world of what gifts Gary Hinman may have brought to it in the fullness of his life, I felt the need to redouble my efforts and to try to do more than I might have otherwise, in the hope that I might make up for that a little bit. In the end, I am not the one to say how successful I may have been in this mission I've been on these past 40-plus years. That must be left to the judgements of social pundits and art historians, I suppose. Or maybe Twitter.
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