The Gaze

The place we rest our eyes matters

Photo by Henry Gillis on Unsplash

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The Gaze

I started becoming really fascinated with the way our eyes’ gaze affects us and creates a story during my art history courses in college.

Prior to that, I thought about my vision in two ways especially. I started wearing glasses when I was ten and am pretty much non-functional without glasses or the contact lenses I soon started wearing to allow my to continue gymnastics without missing the beam (that pesky space from glasses to skin can be such a - literal - pain).

In gymnastics, we also learned to spot, that is, to look at a mark on the wall or at the end of the beam in order to keep our balance or not get dizzy/lost whilst spinning or upside down. A lot of dancers use this technique as well. It’s one I’ve taught my son on the tiny playground merry-go-rounds and amusement ride tea cups…he has a fairly weak stomach.

Sight, of course, gives us so much wisdom about our worlds. Using sight consciously can create meaning or allow ourselves to feel calmer.

Some wonderful painters have done this in the past. Every painter (and artist, including writers) express their own gaze, perspective, or vision whilst creating. What about using the eyes in composition? Fiction writers occasionally do this. Saying something simply by the clue of the character’s view. A Room with a View is not a bad place to start! Another interesting example is in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the gaze of the photographer character as well as what the photographs capture of the Prague Spring (1968). Arundhati Roy is also a master of this technique:

A film fell over her eyes. Her gaze was fixed unseeingly just above Chacko’s head. She swayed slightly as she spoke.
…
Latha’s eyes flicked towards him for permission to continue with the poem. It was granted.

The God of Small Things, p. 257-8

Sometimes the gaze is quite subtle. Francisco Goya’s Charles IV and his Family suggests a “satirical gaze” from the artist, who is recreated within the painting, looking out at the viewer. The royal family is looking all over the place as if they cannot concentrate on each other, the painting, or their country. It is homage to Las Meninas by Velázquez.

Paintings are constructed to lead our eyes around the image a certain way, carrying our eyes toward the periphery or center or, alternatively, in one direction. Occasionally, the subject stares right back at us, like Manet’s Olympia, which gives the ‘prostitute’ subject a lot of chutzpah. As Aline Damas writes in 2018:

More than 150 years after it was painted, Édouard Manet's "Olympia" continues to astonish viewers with its subject’s challenging gaze and overt sexuality. Countless features and papers have discussed it because it is quite simply one of the most controversial works of the 19th century, so much so that guards have been forced to protect the painting from irate viewers.

And what about when we can only see the subject’s head, like Gerhard Richter’s Betty or Casper David Freidrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog? If we imagine their vision, we can create our own utopia.

A couple other great reads:

• The Invention of “The Male Gaze” (The New Yorker, on Laura Mulvey’s film theories)

• Eye Movement in Art (techniques for painters)

The benefits of horizon gazing

Freidrich’s specifically looks at a mountain view — the horizon. Winslow Homer likewise has a beautiful Looking out to Sea painting. It doesn’t have to be one thing or another; the horizon itself is the benefit as the object of our gaze.

Homer, “Looking Out to Sea” (1881) WikiCommons

This sea-viewing is a typical painting in New England, though it is often simply of the sea horizon itself without people looking within the painting. Many old colonial-style houses have what’s called a Widow’s Walk, where women would look out to sea in vain for husbands lost at sea. Rarely would someone actually spot a loved one ‘coming home,’ but perhaps the view of the horizon itself brought calm even by simultaneously looking at the turbulent waters.

These house appendages are not only near the water. I’ve seen them far enough from the coast that they have just become a kind of decoration, or perhaps a place to view whatever horizon might be in view as a space of reflection.

My parents almost bought a house with one of these when I was nine. They explained to me the purpose of the little outdoor space and I was at first horrified. Then the idea of going somewhere just to look out at the horizon was both dreamy and wonderful. Unfortunately, the house was too expensive and on a busy road, but I had a taste of what one would be like.

When do you look at the horizon? At the beach? The top of a mountain? On long car or train trips? And how do you feel when you do it?

Horizon gazing not only allows us to see beautiful things; it can relax the whole body:

Dr Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford has been studying the impact of vision and breathing on stress and the body for over 20 years. His research has revealed that when we look at something stressful (or exciting) our field of vision narrows so that one thing is in laser sharp focus and the rest is blurrier. Our eyeballs actually rotate slightly inwards towards our nose. In contrast by expanding our visual field the body is able to switch off the stress response.

So, to take this one step further we can induce a state of calm and reduced stress by allowing our eyes to relax and take in a wider panorama or view. Forget focusing on one thing and instead broaden your horizon.

I like to remind myself to do this while in the middle of writing or doing anything on my computer. I can get so deeply concentrated on the screen and words coming out on the page that a kind of tunnel vision is created. It’s amazing how different I feel after just a few seconds of looking up, ideally out a window or even standing up to see farther. Sometimes I keep typing while I do it. Try this in the middle of your work, even if you don’t feel stressed, and consider the difference it creates for you.

Drishti

In yoga, we might consider closing our eyes to focus inward or opening our eyes toward a drishti, which simply means gaze or vision in Sanskrit. [You also might choose, and find it helpful, to look at an instructor or video!]

Drishti do several things. Quite practically, they can help us to balance and also position or alignment correctly, especially because the gaze often changes the position of the neck, part of the spine.

You can read a lot more about vision and balance here, but most of us have a basic understanding that finding something to look at can help us balance. Take tree pose, or just standing on one leg. Looking at a ‘spot’ - a point on the wall or a tree - in front of you makes it easier to balance. Looking up is harder…closing your eyes is very difficult! We start to feel all the little muscles in our feet working overtime.

In traditional yoga, there are nine drishti, summarized here as:

1. Angusthamadhyam — toward the middle of the thumb; i.e. in chair pose

2. Nasagra — toward the tip of the nose; i.e. upward facing dog

3. Hastagram — gently on the fingertips; i.e. extended side angle pose

4. Parsva — looking left or right; i.e. to extend a seated spinal twist

5. Urdhva — looking upward or outwards; i.e. warrior 2 (like the horizon gaze)

6. Nabhi chakra — toward the center / navel; i.e. downward facing dog

7. Padayoragram — toward feet or tips of toes; i.e. forward fold

8. Bhrumadhya — middle of the brow / ‘third eye’; i.e. for meditation

Drishti are filled with ideas about our bodies’ energy and the meaning of our place in the universe. Isabell Pikörn summarizes: “Drishti is both with and without form, and can be physical and visual, or may refer to the focus or point of view of the mind….Drishti’s relationship to the mind’s eye is related to its definition as knowledge or wisdom.In Mahayana Buddhism, dristhi is one’s world view.”

However, often in a modern yoga class, we might just consider: “Gaze at a drishti” (find something to spot) or “Look over your finger tips.” Some asana have specific drishti associated with them and others have choices, which can significantly change the pose.

Even if one is blind, the object of one’s focus in regards to the other senses creates a kind of gaze. And this may be a way for all of us to learn to create a multidimensional way of viewing the world: to consider the idea of seeing beyond the objects in our line of vision themselves.

One of the things we’re constantly doing as writers is trying create depth in the scenes we portray. It’s something we teach students when they are young: sensory language, show vs tell, see/think/wonder… Sight is typically viewed as an easy way to get kids to observe and start using language to be creative.

It’s not something we need to abandon. Both the simplicity of looking closely, perhaps in a new way or for a longer period of time can help us to find beauty and truth in the world. Additionally, the consideration of that gaze as a having more significance in our being and that of the world can help us go deeper with ideas.

How does the gaze affect your writing, your yoga practice? How might they enhance each other? I’d love to hear other thoughts you have on this.