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.
Showing posts with label C.S. Lewis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label C.S. Lewis. Show all posts
Philosophical Underpinnings of the Atonement
I feel like this post will be a hefty one, especially after only one post attempting to explain what I am trying to do here. But we all know that one of the best modes of defining what something is, is to see it in its context. This being the case, dear reader, take each post as a contextual piece of a definition. An ever-changing collection of what it means to be me, and to be in my mind... for better or worse...
One of the reasons I have come to love studying the Humanities is that it gives me the chance to see other people's viewpoints in a non-confrontational environment. That is to say, it is non-confrontational if I approach each work as it intends to be approached, and with the intent to learn something about another person and their ideas, taking every text for what is actually there. Granted, it is very difficult to do, and I am sure that I fail in that attempt at every turn. That being said, I recently was assigned to do my first reading of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. In the introduction (written by some well-meaning person, I'm sure) it sounded as though Nietzsche would have liked nothing better than for the whole idea of Christianity to vanish into thin air, or to have never existed all-together. While this may be the case, I was given a quote by him the day after I read some of his works that gave me a new perspective on his thinking.
Now, I am not trying to defend him, or put words in his mouth, or call him a Christian thinker when he did not want to be one, but please read with me the actual text.
The following excerpt is taken from The Gay Science
"This is actually one color of this new feeling: Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dreams of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit--an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility--the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this--the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling--this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fisherman is still rowing with golden oars! This godlike feeling would then be called--humaneness." (268-69)
I realized after reading this quote that Nietzsche probably had less of a problem with the basic, fundamental ideas of Christianity (which, perhaps, he did not understand on a profound level) and struggled more to grapple with the ways in which Christianity had exuded its power over the human race, and shaped the ideas that had led to wars and conflicts and hatred amongst the peoples of the world. Taking into account all of history and much of what goes on in the present-day world, it is really no surprise that people have rejected Christianity and have thought of it as a failed ideal. Reading this quote strengthened my testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ for the simple fact that even while rejecting the ideas of Christianity, a great thinker's mind still brought him to the same conclusion that pure Christian intent has brought many another man. The only way to reach perfection, a pinnacle of humanness (insert charity?) is to feel and understand deeply every experience and emotion that has ever passed through the human mind.
If I had not known who this quote was by before I read it, and had to guess at its author, I would have said C.S. Lewis wrote it in speaking of the Atonement. To say that it made me think would be a gross understatement. I have only begun to delve into the ramifications of this idea. It will undoubtedly prove to be a lifelong journey.
One of the reasons I have come to love studying the Humanities is that it gives me the chance to see other people's viewpoints in a non-confrontational environment. That is to say, it is non-confrontational if I approach each work as it intends to be approached, and with the intent to learn something about another person and their ideas, taking every text for what is actually there. Granted, it is very difficult to do, and I am sure that I fail in that attempt at every turn. That being said, I recently was assigned to do my first reading of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. In the introduction (written by some well-meaning person, I'm sure) it sounded as though Nietzsche would have liked nothing better than for the whole idea of Christianity to vanish into thin air, or to have never existed all-together. While this may be the case, I was given a quote by him the day after I read some of his works that gave me a new perspective on his thinking.
Now, I am not trying to defend him, or put words in his mouth, or call him a Christian thinker when he did not want to be one, but please read with me the actual text.
The following excerpt is taken from The Gay Science
"This is actually one color of this new feeling: Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dreams of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit--an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility--the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this--the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling--this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fisherman is still rowing with golden oars! This godlike feeling would then be called--humaneness." (268-69)
I realized after reading this quote that Nietzsche probably had less of a problem with the basic, fundamental ideas of Christianity (which, perhaps, he did not understand on a profound level) and struggled more to grapple with the ways in which Christianity had exuded its power over the human race, and shaped the ideas that had led to wars and conflicts and hatred amongst the peoples of the world. Taking into account all of history and much of what goes on in the present-day world, it is really no surprise that people have rejected Christianity and have thought of it as a failed ideal. Reading this quote strengthened my testimony of the Atonement of Jesus Christ for the simple fact that even while rejecting the ideas of Christianity, a great thinker's mind still brought him to the same conclusion that pure Christian intent has brought many another man. The only way to reach perfection, a pinnacle of humanness (insert charity?) is to feel and understand deeply every experience and emotion that has ever passed through the human mind.
If I had not known who this quote was by before I read it, and had to guess at its author, I would have said C.S. Lewis wrote it in speaking of the Atonement. To say that it made me think would be a gross understatement. I have only begun to delve into the ramifications of this idea. It will undoubtedly prove to be a lifelong journey.
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