And then a slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision
While somewhere with your pliers and glue
You make your first incision
And in a moment of almost unbearable vision
Doubled over with the hunger of lions
'Hold me close', cooed the dove
Who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds
I am taking on more than I can handle in this post, and will not attempt to deny that such is the case. How is one supposed to say all that art is and means to them in a random blog post composed at a kitchen table in Provo, UT on a random Sunday afternoon?
Well, one isn't; and that is all just as well.
One year ago this coming weekend I graduated from the University with a degree that alleges an interest and a sort of proficiency (if you count taking a dice-sized cube off of the tip of an iceberg and sucking on it a while as proficiency) in the study of The Arts. I could row down a tributary here and go on for ages about how Universities started out with the study of Humanities and precious little else, but I shan't do so. There are many fields of study with a great deal of merit to them. Do I feel that what I did is more important than the feats being accomplished by those who aspire to be doctors or nurses? I do not. But perhaps right next to the importance and merits of living we find that only the importance of Living runs a close second.
Stay with me here, I am attempting philosophy (and preparing myself to fail miserably, I assure you.)
If one is merely living, what does that entail? Breathing, heart beating, neurons firing in the brain. One does not even need to be conscious to be alive. Horrific thought.
Now, if one is Living what does that entail? Much of the same, I suppose--breathing, heart beating, neurons firing in the brain--all still important. Perhaps the only real difference between living and Living is a little thing called purpose. It is breathing and knowing why. Everyone needs at least once in their life to experience the supernal transcendence of listening to the beat of someone else's heart. I mean the kind of experience that draws one to wordless, boundless weeping. Living is the brain firing neurons with some idea, with some inference, some connection and realization. Still higher, Living is the acknowledgment of deaf, dumb, stupefaction that accompanies transcendence, brought about for purposes of this paragraph, by pure artistic expression; almost a short-circuit of the understanding; of throwing one's hands up in the air and saying "I know not what it means, but in this moment I am moved beyond comprehension." Attempt to interpret is futile, if only for a moment, as that thrill starts somewhere inside of you and bursts out through every avenue and... I get carried away. The Mystic? I know. There she is again.
Let me re-group. My sister was a nanny for some months this summer and last. As is customary in her car, as well as in my own, the sounds of the singer/songwriter/harpist Joanna Newsom can often be heard floating out the open windows. I wish now that I could remember how old this child was, but one of the little girls asked her to play a song on the ipod one day. My sister decided to play a favorite of ours from the archives of great Newsom compositions, "Cosmia". Not the original, but the version with the Y's Street Band. She told the inquisitive child that the song was about a butterfly. Though this explanation is not true (the song is about Cosmia--moths) the little one was satisfied, and has long-since asked for the "flutterby" song to be played in the car at every opportunity. If you care to look up this song (though I don't believe that this actual version is on the internet anywhere, even in live form) or any other song of Newsom's you will likely feel slightly jarred by her style and poetry. You will not be alone in this sentiment, many people refuse to engage at all, which is, of course, their privileged.
Yet, that is my point. Perhaps it is unfair of me to draw conclusions from this child-like appreciation of the music. Yet, I do not feel it too far off to consider her reaction to be a typical reaction for a child. We are ever-ready to appreciate pure artistic expression as young children, before we have been taught what is "good" and "acceptable"; before we have been taught that we need to understand in order to appreciate. I mean that with both our own expression and that of others. I had a professor once who pointed out how children dance in public and hang their drawings on the fridge in a most uninhibited manner. At what point do we decide we are no good? At what point to do we begin to snub the expression of others? Isn't that a tragedy of the acutest nature?
Tributaries.
Back to Newsom. Some months ago, I found the following quote of hers in which she comments on the song "Cosmia". To say that this quote "changed my life" is trite and inconsequential in relation to the actual effect it had on me. I will let the reader decide for his or herself the merits of this quote:
"Like the whole record, 'Cosmia' affirms life without offering a wisp of false consolation. The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again, but there's also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It's what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there's a God is that there's so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that's his only proof. There's so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There's no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about; unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things."
I cannot even begin to unpack this in a single post. Perhaps I should only be quoting a portion here, but I genuinely feel the whole is necessary to appreciate the sentiment. I will focus in here on only a single thought: the idea what there are things in life that move you so far into the mode of Living that they almost interfere with living. Transcendence--(wishfully) getting above the banal and the inconsequential of eating, breathing, sleeping-- to a place that is, by description, indescribable.
That is what art is for. It is not to spark semi-interesting conversations in parlor rooms. It is not for acquiring and selling and trading on the black market. Such practices border and parallel prostitution. Yet, I am as guilty as being pretentious as the next on occasion. It is such a fine line. I want to get back to that child-like love of pure expression. Transcendent in that we do not care what others think of us or our expression--transcendent in that we are so inexplicably connected to something so inexplicably fixed outside of ourselves
C.S. Lewis, in his book "An Experiment in Criticism" mentions the relation of this "transcendence" in art to the transcendence we experience in other modes of life. In the last paragraph of this poignant, and hyper-insightful book he states, "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." (emphasis added)
Thus Lewis puts the experience and interaction we have with literature and other art in the same realm as love and religious worship. They are all things that require getting outside of ourselves, and outside of merely living into a higher state of Living.
I was never as interested as some in how people live, but rather in why they Live. That is why I studied what I studied. A year later, even working a job that I dislike as much as I do, I do not regret that decision. I have learned a great deal about living/Living in the last year. Life has taken me places I never thought to go, into the hearts of people I never thought to enter. I have not come out unscathed; the last year has not been easy on me, but I will continue to seek transcendence in all that life has to offer. Like the Negative Capability Keats rejoiced in, I will not try to make sense of everything, and always remember that sometimes Truth is something we experience and sense rather than understand.
I'm sure it all has a great deal to do with being mortal. For the time being, I pray that the simplicity and sincerity I find in art, in love, in moral action, and in religious worship will continue to propel me ever higher outside of myself, and into the inter-connectedness of all that is God's marvelous gift called Living.
1 comment :
Genius.
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