Influences
Connections I recognised along the way.
These influences came into my life through correlations with what I was already doing, experiencing or trying to understand. Their work resonated with where I was at. Sometimes it gave language to a question; sometimes an image, an encouragement or a sense that the direction I was taking deserved attention.
In my late teens, a psychology book’s diagram of manic phases stayed with me. I saw connections with music, creative lives and struggles much closer to home. I wanted artists and everyday people to live to see their work, lives and possibilities come to fruition. That hope still runs through my writing and painting.
Here I bring examples of their work together with my own. Each connection belongs to a particular discipline and a particular point of recognition.
Portrait sources and image credits
These images come from historical photographs, published books and museum collections. The Aristotle bust and the painting of Jesus are artistic representations. Leonardo’s portrait is attributed to Francesco Melzi. The Tesla laboratory photograph is a double exposure.
Aristotle: Bust of Aristotle. Photograph by Ktrepas, 2019. CC0 public-domain dedication. Source record
Carl Jung: Carl Jung, 21 September 1911. Crop from a congress photograph by an unknown photographer, Library of Congress. Public-domain image via Wikimedia Commons. Source record
Thomas De Quincey: Portrait of Thomas De Quincey after James Archer, reproduced in Memorials, published by 1891. Public domain; digitised book image via Wikimedia Commons. Source record
Vincent van Gogh: Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5. Public domain / Open Access. Source record
Leonardo da Vinci: A portrait of Leonardo, c. 1515–18, attributed to Francesco Melzi. Royal Collection, RCIN 912726. Public-domain reproduction via Wikimedia Commons. Source record
Nikola Tesla: Dickenson V. Alley, Nikola Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory, December 1899. Wellcome Library image, restored by Lošmi, CC BY-SA 4.0; displayed at reduced size without alteration. A double exposure: the electrical discharges and Tesla seated beside the switched-off equipment were photographed separately. Source record · Licence
Jesus: Carl Bloch, The Sermon on the Mount, 1877. Public-domain painting via Wikimedia Commons. A later artistic interpretation of Jesus teaching, not a verified likeness. Source record
Aristotle
Authority, power and the life we can live
The deeper connection I find with Aristotle is in asking what power is for, whose interests it serves, and how it shapes the possibility of living well. These questions meet the ones already running through my own life and work: what gains authority over us, and what happens to our ability to choose?
A work to explore
Politics, Book III, parts VI–VII
Aristotle distinguishes government directed towards the common good from government serving the interests of those who rule. The number of people holding power is only part of the question. What they use it for matters.
“govern with a view to the common interest”
Politics, III.7, translated by Benjamin Jowett.
That distinction gives us a question to carry into our own circumstances: who benefits from a decision, and who lives with its consequences?
His account of practical wisdom in Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI adds another dimension: good judgement attends to the particulars of a situation and what action makes possible.
Aristotle also defended slavery and denied women equal political standing. Those limits matter when bringing his questions into the present. Read the historical context in Politics, Book I.
In my work
In When Meaning Becomes Sovereign, I ask how an interpretation comes to carry authority: how a voice, belief or explanation can begin to govern what feels possible. This is my own extension of the question into lived experience.
Crossing the Threshold examines the relationship between authority and agency. The Needs We Carry brings the question into support and systems: does a decision strengthen someone’s ability to participate in their life, and can the people making it be questioned?
In an ordinary conversation, this might mean asking whether someone can disagree, whether their account changes the decision, and whether support leaves them with more room to act. For me, balance requires humility here too: being willing to hear that our understanding may be incomplete.
Explore When Meaning Becomes Sovereign · Explore Crossing the Threshold · Explore The Needs We Carry
A question to take with you
When someone has authority in your life, can you question them—and does your voice change what happens next?
Carl Jung
Meaning and the unknown
I encountered Jung when I was already well into peer work. His ideas about meaning backed a direction I had been pursuing for years. The respect his work had gained, and the people drawing on it to support others through the unknown, gave me encouragement and a sense of legitimacy. These experiences and questions deserved serious attention.
A work to explore: The Red Book
Jung returned to notebooks of his inner experiences and developed them into a manuscript combining writing and painted images. This offers one example of giving experience a form that can be revisited and reflected upon.
Explore The Red Book at the Library of Congress
In my work
When Meaning Becomes Sovereign takes up the question of what happens when meaning gains authority in a life. The Storm Within gives the lived story behind that inquiry. Jung came into my reading later, when I was already well into peer work; I found recognition for questions I was already living with.
Explore When Meaning Becomes Sovereign · Explore The Storm Within
A question to take with you
What has helped you explore an unfamiliar experience while staying connected to other people?
Thomas De Quincey
Writing from within experience
The connection I find with De Quincey is through writing about altered experience from the inside. My own exploration included cannabis, other drugs and alcohol, and years of noticing changes, heights and lows. His work meets my interest in how we give an account of that territory, including what draws us towards it and what it can cost.
A work to explore: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)
“I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life”
Thomas De Quincey, “To the Reader”. Original text in the public domain.
That opening makes a personal account the starting point. For me, the connection is the effort to describe an experience honestly, including its consequences.
In my work
The Storm Within is my own attempt to write from within experience and to reflect on what followed. The connection is in the act of giving an account: the attraction, the changes, the costs, and the life that continues beyond them.
A question to take with you
What would an honest account of a difficult chapter in your life need to include?
Vincent van Gogh
Light from dark
The connection I find with Van Gogh appears in my painting through light emerging from darkness. His work resonated with where I was at. I also connect him with a hope I have carried for creative people and everyday people alike: that they might live to see their work, lives and possibilities come to fruition.
A work to explore
The Starry Night, 1889
The movement of the sky and its yellow light against deep blue offer a visual connection with my painting. View The Starry Night at MoMA.
In my painting
A star comes from the cave to join the night sky. For me, this is about finding the answers that help me reconnect from places of solitude and isolation, particularly when hearing voices and having visions that are extremely hard to share.
At the time, it can be difficult to know their value, or the growth that may stem from those experiences. The painting gives a form to that movement towards reconnection.
A question to take with you
What has helped you find a way to share something that once felt impossible to explain?
Leonardo da Vinci
Balance requires humility
Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man—the figure within a circle and a square—stayed with me as an image of balance. For me, balance requires humility. That connection also runs through the words “Be humble” in my own code.
A work to explore: Vitruvian Man
Leonardo’s drawing explores the proportions of the human body. The connection I draw from it is personal: an image of balance that brings me back to the importance of humility in how I live.
Explore Vitruvian Man at the Gallerie dell’Accademia
In my poetry
These poems give language to the balance I find in Leonardo’s image. In Zero, the movement between positive and negative returns to a place to begin again, with an acknowledgement of my own frailties.
I know my frailties and wish to celebrate what is good
So, I’ll try to stop at zero from time to time
And give thanks to all
From “Zero”, Justin McDermott.
Read “Zero” in full
Zero
For we argue so much on nothing
Journeys to war
Journeys to peace
Countless have been made for belief of our origin and destination
Probably, the most of humanities distance is this
For calculating the distance from beginning or to our end
or that of the very value of being human,
A starting and finishing point should exist
How far to and how far away are we from the meaning of it all
For this, I have had many values
At times I make for the highest of values
Not quite sure what that is
So, I set it at infinite or eternity
An understanding I have for the pursuit of perfection
It can be like a tiring tool though
So, I find myself down to lowest of values
I falter, and believe that any of my sins will bring a better day
And negate what grows or brings to corrupt me
Yet constantly, enough time in contortion,
I continue to make the roads back to love and salvation
Realising and feeling the difference
While the days are unsure
I find the evermore
The value of zero to be the greatest
Though not actually a value
A place between the positive and negative
Space found
Within everything
A blank canvas
A place to begin
A place for a view and hope for the unsolved problems of yesterday
Respect to peace and the gift there of
Forgiveness and compassion
Yet Zero, there it is or is not
Is Love not the same without possession?
From the beginning and to the end
Zero is there
Not a new idea
For what else can I give to a place that gives to everything?
For before everything there was nothing
For the evermore I will give this my most
A place of prayer for the religious
A place of Zen for the Monks
A place for the Shaman to weave out their magic to the tribe
A place where even ghosts may reside
I don’t know enough of these things
But there is much to wonder
I wish for no mentalities on this
And Earth, as I, are not perfect
And looking back I love the flow of all in all
Positive to negative and back
I know my frailties and wish to celebrate what is good
So, I’ll try to stop at zero from time to time
And give thanks to all
With the infinite possibilities of Zero
May I have vigilance for my tiring?
May I have a hierarchy to create and not destroy
And thus: giving the perpetuation there of
For we as humans argue so much of nothing
Everything breaks approaches the question through movement, love, impermanence and the pull between peace and chaos:
In Total Chaos there is no meaning
In Total peace there is no being
Is balance the key?
From “Everything breaks”, Justin McDermott.
Read “Everything breaks” in full
Everything breaks
I’ll walk the lands, to the seas
To find compensation for your smile my lady
I treasure these feelings I have for you
In wonder, I do see
A certain case of triviality
Everything breaks
In time we will die
In time we can build
You strike me, my lady, with a mere pose
Worth my movement
Yet in movement, time never froze.
And in time we’ll die
I start my movement for you
Maybe there will be some peace
Maybe they’ll be some Chaos
A place where many old theories do lye
What can I give thee?
In Total Chaos there is no meaning
In Total peace there is no being
Is balance the key?
Forwards and backwards I go,
Not to break
Valleys to mountains
Seas to shore,
All under the sun,
The glistening of the ocean,
Unto the land, from where I began
Will it be just messages left in the sand?
I wandered the forests
And the tree falls to the forest floor,
Yet does continue to bring new life,
For that which does not die, where is the door?
A smile can linger, yet can taunt,
For love, some flaunt,
The skies cry through the clouds,
And while the sun still burns,
The ocean smiles, yet often on to wrath
And the drain to rebirth of this land continues.
I glimpse at our sun and wonder,
As the stars go out in the night’s sky
Our world’s time might come
The world tries best
The universe is more
As far as we know for sure
Love it all
Flock to tomorrow and forget yesterday,
For what is strong carries on, at least for a while
Wait in patience, for the tides are due to return,
Yet things will break us my love
And what carries on is in mystery
It’s all my journey has shown to me
On why things break my love
A question to take with you
Where might humility help you find or restore balance in your own life?
Nikola Tesla
Imagery and invention
The connection I find with Tesla is his use of imagery in invention: his account of building, changing and running a device in his mind. That use of imagery interests me as a way of exploring what might become possible.
A work to explore
My Inventions: My Early Life, 1919
“I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind.”
Nikola Tesla, Electrical Experimenter, February 1919. Original text in the public domain.
Tesla describes developing a design mentally before making it in physical form. This is his own account of his working method.
Read Tesla’s account in My Inventions
A connection with my work
Imagery also has a place in my writing and painting. An image can offer a way to explore an experience or give a possibility a form that can be shared. My painting Dark Light / Light Knight is one example: a star leaving a cave gives form to my search for reconnection.
See the painting and its meaning · Vision
A question to take with you
What could you sketch, write or make to explore an idea that is still taking shape?
Jesus
A code for how I wanted to live
I had gone to church the day before the storm. At that point, I had not consciously drawn my code from Jesus’s teachings. On the night of the storm, the values that came to me were:
Love all. Be humble. Need nothing. Find others.
I recognised a connection between those words and his teachings and way of living. That connection belongs especially to the code I wanted to live by: how I would meet other people and what I would try to bring into the world.
A teaching to reflect on: Luke 6:31
“As you would like people to do to you, do exactly so to them.”
Luke 6:31, World English Bible. Public-domain translation.
This teaching offers one point of connection with how I wanted to meet other people. The four lines of the code above are my own words.
In my work and life
The code belongs to the lived story behind The Storm Within and to how I want to meet other people. “Be humble” also connects with the balance I see in Leonardo’s image and with the acknowledgement of frailty in Zero.
Explore The Storm Within · Read the connection with balance and humility
A question to take with you
What values would you want someone to experience through the way you treat them?
These are personal connections across distinct lives and disciplines. Artworks and passages are credited beside each example, with links to explore further.