A Broken Thread: Long Live the Gate Keeper

David  W. Ecker, Artist,  Philosopher,  Educator

The last day of 2013 was the passing of an era, almost unnoticed, as all the players have moved on in spite of our indebtedness to our mentor and pioneer in the quality of life: David W. Ecker. And yet this quiet giant of phenomenological inquiry who taught us all how to see, how to listen, how to write, how to teach, how to be... has passed from this earth, a true broken thread  to the past.  Even though I had a doctoral degree and was newly arrived at New York University, my colleague David Ecker began my real education about art as experience and the basis for understanding our experience of life. He has always been my mentor and my catalyst.

I was mystified that since his passing on December 31, more than two weeks ago, almost no one was honoring his presence and his passing through any public sharing. PLEXUS, an International community-based art experience over which Ecker had significant influence and experience, appeared not to have noticed he's missing among us. I was hoping to read some tribute from PLEXUS since Dr. Sandro Dernini, who is the heart and spirit of PLEXUS, was one of Dr. Ecker's greatest allies and collaborators. I am delighted that now the PLEXUS FaceBook site is posting images and celebrating the work of this man who was both an elegant scholar and an articulate maker of art and events.

And the website ISALTA that sprung from the genius of his ideas and conception has become so dormant that there is no memorial tribute... as though everyone believed the dream died long ago. In fact, the web address ISALTA has become the index page to the activity and interests of Dr. Carleton Palmer who was David Ecker's protégé . Admittedly, ISALTA as a website exists only through the efforts and perseverance of Dr. Palmer. But it has been a source of concern that when I give the ISALTA web address to friends and colleagues who have been excited about the philosophy underlying ISALTA, there is nothing of ISALTA at that address.

I am encouraged by some communication from Dr. Dernini in which there are plans to dedicate future projects to David Ecker, and I anticipate his passing becomes the opportunity to honor him in the process of text, and the creation of works that his leadership has encouraged and inspired.

I call David Ecker the Gate Keeper because it was the vigilance of his vivid consciousness that kept our efforts true and honest to the integrity of pure inquiry as the nature of experience. He was such a splendid advocate for phenomenology, because it was central to all that guided his actions and interactions. When people first met David, they expected him to explain "Phenomenology".  He always refused, but not directly. He would just smile and proceed to have us learn through engaging in inquiry and description of specific encounters with works of art. He taught by example much more than by lecture. Sitting in on his "experiments" was always such a revealing process because he helped us uncover our direct perceptions, edit out the garbage, and emerge with a deeper sense of our experience.

Breaching the Abyss

You broke your long silence just as I  found myself in the trenches of the Abyss. The Abyss is fundamental to human experience. In some ways the Abyss exists as our terror of nothingness.

I have passed through an autumn of despair always on the brink of the Abyss ... celebrated the full moon at Autumn Solstice, and I did look at that beautiful moon and thought of all my friends around the world... I thought of you and wondered how your transition to a new life was going. I thought of those beautiful souls that brought this celebration into my life...and how this solstice moon changed my perception of the world,

My Abyss is filled with the cacophony of silence...  a troubling rift  in the soundscape, filled with the energy of the sounding presence about to happen... a silence that spins sound into being....

I have passed through a really difficult time that I will never understand and now find myself in a world that somehow seems strangely alien. 

What sense can I make of this stage of my experience... everything that had started four years ago suddenly tumbled down and out of my life...

So I am in a new place...  now going through radical changes in my consciousness... I step into new terrain where I don't recognize things that should be familiar...

I know there are intense energies changing the universe and penetrating my reality, and I am watching with a certain wonder and hoping that somehow I will find the language that will reveal some meaning of the riddle of the Abyss that has always haunted me...

The opera I had started for Second Avenue broke apart like brittle clay, but there were lovely clusters of music resonating as though somehow they might assemble into something even more poignant and compelling...  for it has always been the music that has sustained and inspired me, no matter what the faces and the spirits that surround me and invade my soul...

And the occasion of breaking your silence has reached across the world and awakened a moment in me, igniting a passion that clings to life and living, to beauty, truth, and wonder... you are such a splendid catalyst...

I suddenly wish I could bring us all together to celebrate the magnificent splendor of who we are... connected, but unconnected, in a universe that shimmers like the solstice moon disappearing over the rim of a hill... breaching the Abyss in the recognition that what we have created together endures and continues to resonate.

Tales from the Abyss

It's difficult to pinpoint this process of awareness that comes in like ocean tides, waves sweeping in and covering me and then receding and leaving me exposed and raw as I understand that for a moment I couldn't breathe, and I was gasping for air. Then suddenly there is a flash of consciousness, and I become aware of thoughts and ideas that were uncovered as though the sand of the beach was swept away and what was left was a kernel of truth.

It is even harder to understand that this is a fundamental flashback to points of discovery and to moments when I committed myself to believing in impossible dreams. I was also embedded in despair of a world I thought was dissolving out from under me, and there was no more reason to continue in any direction because everything was quicksand.

So into this abyss came the Trio, or perhaps my invention of the Trio was my hope that such vision for beauty and truth could be shared and become the reality of its potential. So when I asked my friends if we might adventure together for a time, it was an innocent and naive assumption that such a fusion of purpose was possible and desirable.

What followed was indeed adventure and deception.