For me, a very interesting question: What is an artist? Is there one particular answer to that? Maybe not, but I can think of one. An artist is someone who kept the child-eyes, or child-senses, open even as they grew older, even after they were hit square in the face by physical/material reality as if they'd fallen flat on a cement sidewalk. At least, that's how I remember it. You pick yourself up and you're "in." If you attempt to return to the child state, look out, you will be run over, mocked, beaten, labeled with a number of epithets such as stupid, lazy, blind, clumsy, daydreamer, useless and the list goes on. Pity the one who insists on remaining an artist after that experience! Get real, get a life, work, make you own way and get out of everyone else's. Get a job; buy a car, a truck; get married, buy a house. Have kids. That was how it was then.
I see it's quite different now, but those who today would call themselves 'artists' while living at their parent's (or husband/wife's) expense, or society's as in, welfare or collecting government grants, are a different breed. They are either truly lazy, or good con artists. All that does is exacerbate the downfall of society, for how many parasites can the working segment of society carry on its sagging shoulders before the proverbial straw breaks that camel's back? Note: excluded from this are those who are truly sick, or disabled in some way and still want to make their contribution through some form of art. That's a given, right?
The true (I might say 'inspired) artist senses the world as no one else does. My friend "M" says that an artist is a creator. I'd say they are co-creators. They are not, strictly speaking, creating anything new. They 'interpret' existing conditions in unconventional ways. Somehow they can move beyond the reality-interpreting mechanism of the collective mind, of the soul programming. Not only that, but they train themselves, either with colors, sounds or words, to skillfully bring their personal interpretation, their personal viewpoint, into the collective awareness. Sometimes these non-conforming inputs strike a positive chord upon the collective and their works are accepted, sometimes even become famous long after they served their purpose. Yes, I am uttering that blasphemy: all art has a shelf life; comes with a due date stamped on. After that it is no longer art, not in the actively moving sense. To see it as such is to plunge into atavism--yes, what a blasphemy indeed.
Why are some artists works accepted and some not? I think the process of societal evolution is spasmodic. "Suddenly" something changes, then for a long time very little happens, or things tend to regress, then something else changes again, quite rapidly, only to level off once more. I think that truly "inspired" artists can sense these coming changes and they become precursors of that change, prophets, if you will. Sometimes, as we know, their offerings are not accepted. They die relatively unknown and then, when the time is ripe, these works appear and become a guide to change.
Those whose works are not accepted could fall in a few obvious categories. First, of course, are the copy-cats, the jonnies-come-lately, who mimic a previously successful author, painter, speaker, producer. There are those who are too turned-in on their own past, or their own personal problems and have nothing concrete to contribute to the polis; their reach limited to the few similarly walled in their micro-issues. Then there are those who are simply too far ahead of the times and when these times appear their works have not survived, at least not in ways that could put them back into play.
Artists as prophets? Always. Especially with the written word, and more recently, with movies. People who allow themselves to see beyond this limited, finite world to worlds beyond; times beyond. Particularly science fiction and fantasy writers. It is now trite to say, look at how many science fiction ideas have come to pass in one century! These people sensed the coming times. Let's go further: how many fantasies have been espoused by a world-wide 'movement' loosely called New Age? Most New Agers are, of course, people with more money than brains, surely, and most of their writers and lecturers are opportunists, of course. But what is the force behind it all? A desperate need for change. The old institutions are bankrupt in every possible way. All they can do is foist on the world more of what has brought it to these troubled times. People sense this. Talk to anyone: who trusts a banker now? A corporate exec or politician? A judge or lawyer? Even a doctor or professor or preacher? Hardly anyone. And why? Because these predators and parasites have exposed themselves to the world for the crooks, perverts and ignorant charlatans they really are. Bottom line, they're in it for the mortgage, not for the position they are using.
We have these mounting problems; we can sense them, even if we're not sure what they are, or how they are going to push the world, if over the brink, and if so, how far over; or if something will pull it back into the old muck and mire of past mistakes. In the previous email I spoke of sin, and the fear of God. I purosely put in much to be misunderstood in that piece; makes people think when they get confused. Now imagine if that "fear of God" as expressed there were to resurface. Imagine a new wave of religious wars; of inquisitions, banishments, genocide—you know, all the things the Church is known to love imposing upon the world, gorging itself on the spoils, the blood and the power. Or, as goes the current underground rumble, the Soviet Union with a new and improved brand of Stalinist totalitarian terror rises again? How about Neo-Nazism taking over the European Union and America? These places, paranoid of "terrorism" linked to Islam are ripe for a totalitarian Fascist takeover. Whatever is regurgitated from the past, we can be sure of this: it will be exponentially worse than ever before experienced.
So, what shall it be? Whose voices shall we hear calling us to the future? I already 'know' that what we now have is doomed. Computer technology has been a lot of fun, but has given rise to more pain and bloodshed than pleasure by being married to the military-industrial complex and the necromancer's science of bio-engineering and genetics. The costs of this relationship have been hidden in inflated share value by pushing numbers across computer terminals and by raising taxes while lowering real income for workers. It should be no surprise to anyone that the billionaire CEO's are running to whatever government they previously bought in order to get their lion's share of State welfare before some of it gets back into the hands of those who contributed to it; no surprise at all. Their greed has caught up with them, though they still manage to hide their glorious corruption and crimes against humanity behind smiling faces and handshakes. Not for much longer. Each time they throw a wild party as they are doing right here with their Winter Olymfix, they fall faster and farther. Eventually, as the song goes, all the King's men and all the King's horses won't put Humpty together again.
Whose voice is now crying in your wilderness? Can you hear your artist-prophets at all? Can you turn down your TV, your radio, your Internet or boom-box… and listen?
From 1 Kings, Chapter 19, the Bible: (for context)
The Lord said (to the prophet Elijah),
“Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord,
but the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake,
but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire,
but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
And that would be the next question: Once we hear, and we go out into the wilderness to listen, will we know why we are there at all? For a hand out? Redemption? Salvation?
Or will we have learned that there can be only one answer:
"Speak, for one ready to serve is listening."
In other words, I've thought about it, and I'm willing to put my own hand to the plow.
I haven't thought much of art, or artists, in the last decades. All I've seen is people splattering paint on canvas that would be better used picking up droppings in a chicken coop—and providing better 'art' in the process, or hell-bent brain dead noise makers who somehow end up on Radio or TV. The rest, well, it's basically commercial art.
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