Drawing a Picture of God: Or, Why I Hate the Radio

The world is so loud.

So loud.

I hate it sometimes.

As in TRULY hate. I mean, sometimes my stomach hurts with the mayhem of it all.

I have begun this habit of gallivanting about. It is quite enjoyable, and so easy. I simply get myself in my car and I drive to a town that has an interesting town center. Then I park the car somewhere and start wandering the streets, in and out of shops: antique stores, boutiques, bakeries, book stores, whatever the town/city has to offer that appeals to my aesthetic, and-- occasionally --my taste-buds. For the most part I merely window-shop, but every now and again I'll buy something that catches my eye.

Perhaps in the schema of good/better/best, there are other "better" and "best" things that I could do with my hours off in the afternoon.

Yet, that depends on how you look at it. I think that good/better/best varies greatly depending on what time of life you are in, and your circumstances. I think that considering my current short-term employment (that of a nanny, rocking a small child most of the day) getting outside is probably best for me. Well. Better. Best would probably be if I went outside and gave homeless people peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches.

I digress.

Let me set up a scene: Friday afternoon. Me: roaming about American Fork. Rain is falling, I have yet to purchase a $5 umbrella from Wal Mart. I have just left lunch with some dear friends and I wander into a new boutique. The store is quite pleasant, yet I can't help but notice how unpleasant it is that they are playing the radio, from which is emanating a... how shall I say this?.... HIDEOUS piece of cacophonous trash. Music? Annoyingly catchy. Lyrics? To translate from dumb to dumber "sex, sex, sex, you and me, sex, sex, stupid 1960's/70's music reference that we're using to pretend to be smart in some way, sex, sex.... that's all we care about... and if that's not carnal enough, we don't even have the decency to talk about it in some meritorious/adult/reverential way...."

I was incredibly annoyed, and by that I mean, it made my stomach hurt.

Why do we as human beings listen to stuff like that?! Why does that disgusting music video have five trillion hits on YouTube?! What do people see/hear in such heinosity? There is nothing of merit or interest there. Even worse is the pseudo-art craze in music, where people think that there is something of art in something just because it is weird. I mean, since when do diamond-studded-skimpery, meat dresses, and telephone hats NOT mean art? (sarcasm alert!). Lyric translation of 95% of such music: "sex, sex, sex, or, How Many Times Can a Girl Type that Word in One Middle-of-the-Night Rampage?"

Perhaps a better question is: why do images of the roman Colosseum and centuries upon centuries of prostitution come to mind when I rampage on this topic?

Entertainment in debauchery. Profit in the marketing of the otherwise sacred. What moments in life are more sacred than sex and death? Why do we think we can make mindless entertainment of them and call it art?

Have I mentioned I HATE the radio?

I hate it.

HATE.

This rampage brings to mind a beautiful bit of lyric from a true musical prodigy:

"You spend your whole life trying to fall behind. You're using your headphones to drown out your mind." -Regina Spektor "Eet"

Why do we listen to music that dulls our senses instead of enlivens them? Why do we treat it as a drug instead of an art? Oh yeah. Because it is about a million times easier to not think than it is to think. Forget trying to catch meaningful references to literature/other music/art in general/culture/politics/history, thereby joining the conversation about life/the human experience/what it means to be us/etc. that has been going on for centuries. Forget trying to improve the human condition and trying to better human life through uplifting the mind and elevating it to make connections/inferences/syntheses and find, well, for lack of less frequently used terms: Beauty and Truth.

Which, of course, leads to a usual quoting of one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite Romantics:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

-John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

So why do so many "artists" create such mindless, not to mention, degrading products? Perhaps some of them really don't have what it takes to create something that appeals to a higher aesthetic. Or, perhaps they simply don't want to. I think that in many cases, it is because the masses do not want it. People want "easy". People don't want to have to think. I have been there, I know how that feels. Sometimes you want to stick your favorite "Veggie Tales" jams in and just have a good time.

That leads me to an interesting point. Is "Veggie Tales" wholesome entertainment? Well, I don't know. It is a mildly morally uplifting show. It's probably a bad example. Ok, and AHA! The "Christmas Shoes" song. worst.song.ever. Do you want to argue it? Just show up at the next family Christmas party my brother will be throwing this December. We will undoubtedly argue about the merits/non-merits of that song, which will undoubtedly lead to someone pulling it up on their phone, which will undoubtedly lead to us haters deciding to make a cover.... next year. The cover is always going to happen next year.

Ok, forget about stupid examples. I had the opportunity to take an art philosophy course from a man I admire. Dr. Travis Anderson in the BYU Philosophy department. He wrote a paper some years back on the question of the word "wholesome" when it applies to entertainment. Is something really WHOLESOME if it is merely devoid of questionable material? Are rice cakes really wholesome? Ok, I said I was going to be done with examples.

When I think of "wholesome" (thanks to Dr. Anderson's pointing it out), I think of enriching. Full of good, not just devoid of "bad". So veggies are wholesome, but maybe "Veggie Tales" aren't necessarily that wholesome.... oh yeah. They do have their veiled way of teaching morals. Ok, we'll let them stand. Wholesome. Fine.

But creativity is so rarely encouraged anymore. The public has told our "artists" what we want. We have commissioned the hideous work that now blares over our radios. If consumers didn't consume, producers would not produce. They would catch on. Or they would sing their debauchery to themselves in the comfort of their own homes.

There is a story, I heard it told in a TED talk I found on YouTube. It is by Sir Ken Robinson and is entitled "Do Schools Kill Creativity?". So said story is about a girl in a drawing class, who is uncharacteristically paying very close attention one day. When the teacher lets the kids loose to make their art, she walks up to this little girl and asks, "What are you drawing?" to which the girl replies, "I am drawing a picture of God." The teacher, bewildered, responds, "But nobody knows what God looks like." Confidently, the girl rebuttals with, "They will in a minute." That is a true artist. It doesn't matter if one isn't "supposed" to "know what God looks like." This brave little soul was going to show us God as she saw him, and it didn't matter that an authority was telling her she wasn't doing it right.

That is what great art has always been about. That is why Jackson Pollock will always be a genius, even though it's not too terribly hard to replicate what he did (well, that's debatable. People actually say that it is harder to replicate than one would think, which I am inclined to believe). Unless you have a time machine and can go back in time to beat him to it, you can never really replicate what he did, because what he did was so far removed from that paint-splattered canvas. It was a comment on art at the time. It was a comment on his life (a sad one, we are to understand). Who knows, but that he was drawing a picture of God. Perhaps that is what all true artists are doing. They are playing mini-gods in their own way. Gods who can control the sphere that they create in their art. As they create a world, they simultaneously construct a sort of commentary on that world. Thus, they are drawing pictures of God (the higher forces they see at work in the world), gods (themselves, the way they perceive the world/their lives), and character (animate or inanimate, a view on the things around them, other human beings, human nature, etc.). Oh, and I will say as an aside that if Pollock was drawing a picture of God, God cannot have found it to be incredibly flattering. Not in a literal sense, anyway.

So what I mean is that the whole "be true to yourself and your art" cliche is cliche for a reason. When someone with talent and ability is brave enough to do what is not being asked for, they often show us glimpses of the God we would cut ourselves off from (I happen to believe in a very literal God, the father of our souls, but if to you God is nature, or some other-worldly force, or the human intellect, etc. then that still fits in here) with all of our bars, prostitutes, and Christians being devoured by hungry lions. Not that great artists don't take us through some difficult places in the meantime. It's not always sunshine and bubbles. Sometimes we are led to where we would rather not trod. It is difficult, sometimes painful, but rewarding.

I need to get off of my soap box, I know. Some people actually like to let loose and have a little dance party.

And some of us just like to think, and over-think, and blog until 3 am.

Oh, I left myself in the boutique. Excuse me. I'll get back to that. I take my leave of the shop keeper and walk back out into the rain, and back into my car.

Then to recover I listen to this little beauty: (Joanna reminds me very much of the little girl in the story.)


and feel much, much better.

Oh, and as referenced:



and (I HIGHLY recommend this):




Good night.