I talk a lot about the aspects of being an artist. That's because I think a lot about the aspects of being an artist. I think that artists enjoy a special connection with the Creator whose image we bear, but that doesn't come without associated burdens. I think the urge to create new things is directly connected to a keen awareness that our souls have the capacity for a greater reality than that which we observe around us. In other words, we're always seeking something greater. Sometimes we are referred to as "The Dreamers" of society, and we're often told to get our heads out of the clouds. But we're just searching for what we believe exists. Sometimes we ache for it so badly that it physically hurts.
Unfortunately, many times this leads to harmful habits and lifestyles, often involving the proverbial sex, drugs and rock&roll. We spend a lot of time trying to find this greater reality in the very limited things this world has to offer us, and it seems that many of the most creative artists in history have ruined their lives in this pursuit.
Lately I've been feeling a greater awareness of this huge void, and feeling stronger urges to find something more. Much of that manifests itself in my music and art, and is ultimately a good thing as I strive to create better things for our current reality. But very often lately, this greater awareness simply leads to a greater disappointment in the reality around me, and I see the deficit in culture, relationships, integrity, and society. It just leaves me feeling angry and bitter, and trying to find or generate a joy to counter it. But I too am guilty of believing that it can be found in things around me. Even good things like music and relationships can't fill the need in my life. Only Jesus can do that.
I just wish I had a better understanding of how to truly pursue that.
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Jason, you have a blog and have never told me?! Yeesh...some people.
ReplyDeleteI will at some point take time to read through all your posts and see the archeology of your thoughts; until then, I offer you the following.
Artists (real ones - the truly creative, not the derivative or irrational) are indeed "always seeking something greater", which drives them to create and celebrate beauty. However, this is the very root of the problems you mention. So many SEEK something greater, and, not finding it, or finding only a shallow respite from their disappointment, fall into the various stereotypical pitfalls of the artistic persona. What we as creative individuals must recognize as our responsibility to ourselves is this: we must not SEEK something greater - we must offer it; to do otherwise is to invite despair.
We must be wary of and reject the idealist/dualist fallacy of thinking there is necessarily some "greater reality" existing in some form somewhere that we are striving towards. We seek to create and celebrate beauty right here, right now, not as a reflection or shadow of some higher plane but as a conscious projection into our world and its too often stale mediocrity of what we are capable of being. If we seek to create for any other reason than that we will almost certainly fall into despair, never being able to reconcile the glory of our creativity with the dreariness we too often see around us. Also, if our art does not flow from our own competency and self-esteem, consciously and completely purposefully, we inadvertently consign ourselves to a failure in some form - whether it be being ONLY a dreamer; falling into despair; buying into the senseless hedonism of "sex, drugs, and rock&roll"; becoming just another derivative sheep of mass culture; OR finding "Jesus" (whatever that is to the individual artist) and ceasing to create purposefully, choosing to believe we have found our gap-filler in that thing and evading the CREATIVE (original, new) impulse for the purpose of self-protective self-destruction.
We don't have to search for "what we believe exists" - we're doomed to frustration if we take that route, and that pursuit has been the cause of many of the ruined lives of creative artists you mentioned (John Lennon's demise and pain make a good example, from my perspective on the man). What we have to do is to create in this world our vision of "greater things". We will never find them if we don't make them first.
(continued)
I find it troubling that such a creative, competent, able fellow as yourself would see this world as offering us "very limited things". We have the opportunity to be informed by all the generations before us, by all their compiled knowledge and achievements, and yet routinely to create something new. We have unbounded opportunity to imagine, create, and act, as individuals and collaboratively. Besides, it is in this world that we have the opportunity both to create and to seek our good. If we bear the image of a creative God, in what other world would we be expected to live to our potential if not in this one? What kind of sadistic ass of a deity would give us a yearning to progress as individuals and as a species through purposeful and original action, yet expect us only to live that out fully in some (as far as we are currently concerned) immaterial other/future reality?
ReplyDeleteWhen you find yourself disappointed by the reality you see around you, don't try to GENERATE joy - simply let the joy of your person, your ability, your commitments and values exude from you in creative acts which will fill a hole in our increasingly insipid society. You can't generate joy, only know it and express it. And above all, do not let yourself become bitter - that turns us backward and inward, stifling the creative spirit and thereby destroying our ability to "cope".
Lastly, may I offer a perhaps unwelcome caution against trusting in an indefinable panacea such as "Jesus" to fill a quite definite (even if yet specifically unknown) need in your life. Don't set yourself (or Jesus, for that matter) up for failure when your conceptualizations and entreaties of this non-concrete unsuccessfully answer your yearnings and needs. Whose fault will it be then - yours or Jesus'? That's not a situation you want to be in. "Jesus" will not fill your needs in a concrete manner, even though you are capable of convincing yourself, as we all are, that the nebulous can provide certainty. Each of us can chant "Jesus" just as easily as "Hare Krishna", and with equal effect: self-delusion and reality-evasion. If you seek to invoke Jesus, remember that his life had nothing to do with filling needs, but everything to do with calling us to action; those who say differently are trying either to sell you something or to convince themselves of the statements they profess.
My friend, the uncertainty of this post hurt me for your sake more than I can say. Yes, reality is real, but our conceptions of it are not always true, and our ways of dealing with it are not always healthy. Do not launch yourself into the pitfalls awaiting you by having an inaccurate estimation of yourself, this world, the God whose image you bear, or your place in this very real reality. Tear things down to their necessities and absolutes, look at them squarely and fairly, and choose how to proceed. I don't care what Paul said, faith is not "evidence" - it is hope. Faith cannot give you rational certainty any more than a wish can land a million dollars in your lap this instant. And considering the fact that you are trying (rightly) to reason your way through this, rational certainty is what you need.
With you always in seeking to realize truth and beauty,
James