Views on Art

Tonight I’m heading later into the music studio. Art and imagination are on my mind. The weather is cool and windy in Clearwater. The wind is a presence but not strong enough to be a threat to anything that would best not uproot. This wind is blowing with a feeling of freedom and pleasure.

Remembering when I was three years old…at the start of recess, standing on the back porch landing of our spacious house-school building, about 6 feet up from what I ought to use steps to descend to, and a thought came to me. The wind blew in strong gusts, yanked at my little body. My coat could be like wings. I CAN fly! The wind seemed to support me as I threw myself expectantly into the air. For a moment, I was suspended and soaring before falling and landing, gently.

Or so it seemed.  Sheer exhilaration. I had flown.

There was no plan to make flying a vocation, but when Martha, a schoolmate, became my flying apprentice a few years later (I was 7), I had myself convinced. Almost. See, by then, the physical universe, which brings us too quickly to the ground like a stern, impatient schoolmaster, had begun to teach me. I was tainted with facts. Holding a bit too insistently to the concept that I could fly, I was partly faking my creed. Though we were wild with the fun of it, I felt deceitful since Martha believed that I could teach her to fly. Who knows, perhaps I might have…but a sensible approach to living had begun to permeate my viewpoint.

I have since become either more lax or more in adherence to my philosophy, depending upon how you view things. The way I prefer to see it now, imagination may deem itself or anything to be valid, to exist, for oneself or others, without further proof, agreement or reasons to justify its flights. It’s free to the degree that we can poof stuff into being without having to explain. When one is bonded to the reference points of the objective world and adheres only to previous logicians and authorities, breaking free to fly into the vast expanses of one’s own thought may seem brash, maybe a bit rude, egotistical or irresponsible. How so? How often have we either heard and perhaps ourselves at off-times been the stern voices of stern people chanting the foolishness of “impractical” things like musing or experimenting into the unknown.

The world, if you follow its harsh lessons, warns us not to reach too far, differ too much, sing too loud, create too spontaneously. One has to slip out of that mud to live.

If you do make something you’re pleased with and then peer around for approval, you may come up short of nods. Society, en masse and even in single devoted representatives, cannot be counted on to smile upon and encourage someone daring to see and speak as an individual (even if later people adore you for it). There’s no way to bring art or even your spiritual vitality to light without some feisty guts and the willingness to be alone and unapproved of.

Did Beethoven apply for okay before he released his works? That answer is an unequivocal “No!” You can hear that degree of integrity in the music. Who is it? It’s Beethoven, no one else.

Did Gauguin let his brushes dry in the heat of Tahiti or refuse to share his paintings with Europeans because his subjects were partly naked native girls (they dressed or didn’t, like that(and his colors were brashly vivid and lines so unshakily strong? Did Thoreau abandon his experiment in facing the basics of life in the woods around Walden Pond because his neighbors thought him a bizarre curiosity? Happily no.

I feel in his writings a warm concern for us. I cannot say it as well as he did, I won’t even try. He wrote, he just didn’t think all these things and then shut up. That was a great gift to us. He must have wished for each of us to experience life in its barest, without barriers to its boldness that false ease and artifice impose; life as an action rather than an object. He did not want to accept it on delicate plates with the proper forks and quite neglect to notice what it really is that he was eating. But he might have simply cultivated this awareness and not published. The great artist is generous, driven toward self-awareness through expression, driven to simply express but in it also, I believe, to help.

Though this world values its artists like no others, it makes them into commodities and beleaguers them; it tries to whip them into line with its own rigid measuring sticks. The artist who is made of strong stuff will skirt attempts to pummel him and change him into something more recognizable.

We’re taught to be good, to comply, to not step out of the already marked lines. Artists do just what good little boys and girls are not supposed to – to be oneself in this world requires that much independence or willingness to simply be and state who you are.

Yes, one thing an artist is, he is his own. He may not like that condition; he may revel in it; but he is his own. His connection to mankind may glow through a heartfelt recognition of shared life yet he is his own man. (By “man,” I mean a mind and spiritual being.)

Thank him. If no artist decided to cut loose from the approved and acceptable, nothing new would be offered in a grey, monotone, predictable world. And probably not much of living beauty would carry forward. The most worthy and lasting works may have been made with reference to acceptable modes and tastes; yet if those works move us powerfully, their creators worked from an impermeable core of honest and fresh vision. It is that alone, not style, that causes a work of art to be received powerfully, despite the passage of time and even despite strangeness of style. That communication was sent and received with fresh emotion. In this, I call art miraculous.

Public acclaim? That is not itself a ticket to enduring approval; it’s fickle. But don’t get me wrong, public favor is not bad, for goodness sakes. It is admiration, a beautiful thing! I’ll be wanting it, to be sure.
When an artist gets kudos, he has offered a wavelength that’s in some amount of harmony with current tastes. He’s spoken with a view to current conditions. That’s a good thing. Relevance and truth. When viewed with truly personal eyes, when beauty is in the perception and the hands have have the grip of confidence and mastery, you may get John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

To me, what makes fabulous art is more than just relevance. Only a thought actually FELT can reverberate in another and on through time. It can’t be borrowed and copied. Even if copied, it must be FELT. John’s honesty and passion singing Imagine. Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto and J.S. Bach who hit me as new every single time I hear them. Take Bach, a unique, unrestricted voice that is so fresh that there’s not any binding contract with what might be barriers, no time interposed, even if noticed at first…these drop away, the specifics of era and place. He enfolds me in his world. I always feel invited, transported and honored by Bach as I do by Beethoven and others in their most sublime, most alive moments. They communicated their awareness, wit and emotions, whether linked to their day and age or even if concocted out of nothing but spirit, with such vitality and lack of restraint, in my opinion, of course, that it is all there for us.

It takes fortitude to adhere to your own vision. This world does not meet such fellows with open arms. When you read their bios, it’s too often sad. In some cases, a petty or evil someone may have wormed his way into confidence and the results so often were deadly.

If I could remake the world or fashion a new one, one thing I’d do is insert appreciation and let-live attitudes where there’s resentfulness and competition. Outside of a World-Redo Laboratory, these are attitudes that can be taught and promoted.

What makes the greatest works of art?

To me, success in making the work lies in how closely one gets the form to bear the thought. Art in this respect is truth. How powerfully is it felt and grasped at its inception? How closely is that thought held to even as it evolves and as changes are entered in during the artistic process? As I understand it, to the degree that the thought is honestly felt, caught and given faithful form, that’s how powerful and immediate the response is likely to be. Delivery of a thought. If I may speak for other artists as well as myself, that’s the artist’s hope when his fingers place the bow against the strings.

Competence can greatly help transmission but if the emotion is pale, hesitant or feigned, I don’t think we’re talking art. Great art is transcendent as it communicates life impulses in the thought; and that itself is life, life given and received, and so it penetrates and transcends barriers.

There are other factors, of course. To whatever extent a person is competent, he’s equipped to accomplish his intentions. Competence without character and honesty is merely a wielded tool, though. It’s the tool that we may temporarily marvel at. It ought to be finely attained only so as to help deliver the artist’s intention.

Sure, I want great competence in a work or a performance – ah! Artur Rubenstein performing Chopin! but I am more sensitive, as I bet we all are, to the intentions of the artist – which, as I see it is why the great Rubenstein moves us so.

Intentions come forth from the core. It’s natural to be sensitive to the intentions of an artist just as to the intentions of anyone dealing with us. When I spot that someone means ill, I distance myself. In art, the same.
Is this artist concerned with things beyond his own nose and bank account? What’s his scope and wisdom? Does he, like E.M. Forster, the novelist who wrote, amongst others, Howard’s End and Room with a View, care to inspire us to get to know each other truly, despite social barriers of class and gender, to value each other and listen well to our natural inclinations? Is the artist telling his story so as to elevate or cause others to look newly or question outdated mores or share a sublime vision? What’s the intention

I hope always that the thought communicated by an artist is worth communicating…that it relates to us as spirits. Some people, referred to as artists, strike me as aiming to recruit companions to their degradation. Should we learn from an artist that life is only material and futile? No matter how well crafted, that’s cruelty and debasedness. Its competent expression is a horrible thing as it wins people over.

What’s the intention? George Orwell (1984) with the horror of his predicted future speaks so as to warn us and help us recognize what may be coming politically. That’s a good intention and we need to hear his message.

An artist earns his freedom. If an artist wants to up and make a total about-face, wants now to sculpt giraffes after a glorious career in a jazz band, who are you, who am I to make a peep about that? Go for it. He has most especially the right to live and do as he wishes. He’s given us a greater capacity for life! For goodness sakes, cut him all the slack he wants. And the giraffe sculptures may be radically life-changing…can we really predict their value?  Would we have predicted what he earlier did? Of course not or perhaps we’d have done it. Any of us, as per our own viewpoints and decisions, should be as free to change as the wind is to blow or settle, held on a grand path only by decency, foresight and ethics.

Art takes two, the originator plus the audience, the other end of that line, you and me, to receive it, to respond and contribute to it. Any response is better than none and enthusiastic applause and sales are better than rotten tomatoes and no further attention, to be sure. But I feel an artist should stick despite all to his own vision.

One’s own reality is supreme and can transcend. That feeling of flight when I believed it possible and the wind seemed to fall under my spell…lovely to feel that again.

Then there is this. Taste is an utterly personal thing. (That fact to me has strong beauty. Whew, we are individuals!) Something to be respected. And it means, let your fellows be. Observe differences – but retract the claws, lower your chin, appreciate the differences in the way the beauty that is life is expressed in its varieties.

Now this, in writing all these thoughts, floats to the surface. I have a sneaky suspicion that when an intention is broad and undisputed enough in the soul of the originator, then even taste may be cast aside as the gentle blast obliterates all barriers. When I had my little school, I had the kids close their eyes, relax and listen without distraction to what I admire as great music – stuff they might not be exposed to much otherwise. Though no one might have predicted so, they were enthralled. Deeply moved and inspired to become themselves artists. That’s the hugeness of those artists’ intentions. The magic of a living work of art that reaches through all potential barriers.

One last thing. When push has come to shove in my life, I’ve turned to creativity for relief, solutions and absolution. That has worked for me. It is thus that I hold art and creativity as sacred.

I always have a hope that everyone in the world will find his own artistic voice and sing it forth. You’ll hear that theme when my CD comes out. (Won’t be too long now, guys!)

Let’s not lose sight of what powers we are. Let’s not compare ourselves harshly – even when we correct ourselves or work so hard that we wonder how others can seem to do this so much better or more effortlessly. Honesty, sure – but harshness, no. Let’s pledge never to find ourselves less wondrous than we are. We are in the image of God and think me not vain or blasphemous, but in that respect, we are the seeds of godliness. We are God’s thoughts. If we are in the image of God, we can be the thought and we can be the being we love, a work of our own art.

Well, I’m spilling the beans on how I see art because all this was on my mind looking forward to time in the studio tonight.

I hope you get back to me with your thoughts.

Evan