Why

I got an itch to break open the I Ching and see what its guts look like. The I Ching was born three millennia ago, in a pictographic language. I was born in the sixties in Oakland. You can't get there from here.

I've never studied Chinese, the language or the history, so what I see in the I Ching is not cryptic or academic, religious or political. It's common and it's common in my life, anywhere I choose to look for it. For half my life I've consulted the same old paperback for old wisdom and strained to bring those distant symbols home.

I looked for what I found most compelling in the I Ching, that power that must be without context, cultural or temporal. I got out the beat-up book and I threw the coins. The I Ching gave me, again, a strong message. I came up with this image of what I thought it was trying to say in its awkward language of princes and wars, and it had nothing to do with princes and wars. It had to do with dancing. I wrote it down.

I did this to many of the hexagrams-- every one that I threw from then on. After ten or twelve, I gave one of them to two of my friends. The thoughts this provoked in them were extreme: rich, noble, and philosophic. Though this may say more about my friends than my insights, it gave me confidence and pushed me into a real, undeniable groove. I was onto something. I was into the guts of it. Here is what I saw.

--artwells 1995