To create the (un)(re)Meaning drawings, I tear a page from a Nishida book purchased in Jimbocho. I enact the “death” of Nishida’s words. I am (un)meaning the written text by taking it out of it’s intended context. Life comes from death. Death is the beginning. 

I then glue the pages to the paper, and make note of the kanji I understand. I then meditate on the word I have recognized in Nishida’s text. 

As I meditate, I listen to a song from an album recorded by Ben Frost, my son and professional jazz trumpet performer. While I meditate, my body is motionless. I meditate until my body, in its stillness, feels the impulse for a particular motion. 

I then perform that motion, with paint, on the collage. I give Nishida's words (re)meaning, as an image. The painting process is purely intuitive, free from words or thinking, similar to drawing the Enso. 

This series begins with mu (無) and my engagement, as a Westerner, with mu through the writing of Kitaro Nishida (西田幾多郎). I know of Nishida by way of English translations about his work. Do I understand Nishida’s words? Do Japanese speakers understand Nishida words? Does Nishida understand Nishida’s words? To unlearn is to die to what we think we know, in order to be born into what we are about to learn.