"2012" and the Poet's Dilemma
I receive many queries from readers via email, and seek to answer most of them (though not the ones from writers who want my help in finding psychedelics). Sometimes the questions stimulate me to develop my own thinking, such as this recent one from a reader in Portland, on the relation of the ideas in “2012” to contemporary literature. I have put his original email and then my response below.
Question from a reader:
Daniel--
I recently caught your reading here in Portland, OR, and I have read both of your books twice. Not only have I enjoyed your books, but they have really spoken to me powerfully in a personal way.
I am a poet, and I understand your frustration and disappointment with most Western intellectuals. I have always felt that myself, and I feel it now more acutely than ever. I see the value in your critique of Modernism (in Breaking Open the Head), and I too feel that poets and artists need to move into a new real realm beyond alienation and pessimism.
However, I also have some questions about your position. I read somewhere your criticism of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. I just read this novel, and I think it is amazing. I think that you criticized it because you feel that he is imagining a bleak, ruined future, and that he might be in some way contributing to the manifestation of that future by imagining it. Okay, I see your point, just as I see your point in your "fight" with Whitley Streiber.
Here's the problem I have: what is an artist supposed to do? You can only write the visions that come to you. You can't consciously "steer" the material into positive attitudes unless you want your poem or novel to be some sort of propaganda piece, or some sort of fake smile on the face of a suffering man. I do think that an artist is also a person, a spirit, so he or she should be doing inner work to release that pain or hopelessness--to break down the walls that cause alienation. But in the mean time should artists censor their "negative" thoughts?
Also, I have been to Burning Man, and I must say that I was not as impressed as you were. I saw no one there who was anything like the artist that Cormac McCarthy is. I am open to the possibility that I missed something, that there is something unique to be found there. However, I don't know how you can hold that festival up as some sort of ideal and knock down an artist like McCarthy. Granted, I hope a new Henry Miller better than Henry Miller will emerge. I hope epic poems of joy and celebration can be born out of the shadow of Allen Ginsberg, but I guess I wonder what your thoughts are on this subject. And I wonder if you have reservations about your criticisms of Artaud and Michaux and other brave pioneers. I offer these thoughts with all due respect to the important work you have done and are doing.
My Response:
This is a great question, and one that I think about all the time.
I believe that literature and art are crucial in evolving/intensifying consciousness, creating new forms of complex awareness and adding subtle dimensions to human experience. The struggle for women's liberation for instance was voiced in hundreds of years of fiction - Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, etc - which laid the groundwork for a social transformation in the status of women. Etc for Dickens and Blake and the awareness of industrialism as a destructive force. I agree that artists can be "the antennae of the race" and the conscience of the species.
However, it is in the nature of art to keep changing, as human consciousness changes. "What is art" is different for each generation - if you reduplicate the style or form of past art, it is not really art in my view but more like craft or self-expression, which is not bad but not transformational in the same way art is.
So we are now responding to radically different conditions than people were before, and the nature and potential for transformative work has also changed. We seem to be in a transition between the bourgeois culture of the last few hundred years - with the novel and lyric poem as its expressive forms - and some other form of social existence that would naturally create different expressive forms.
When I look at the function of contemporary lit and art, mostly it seems to be having a regressive effect, reinforcing the old forms of bourgeois identity with sentimental identifications with the ego. I am very concerned, right now, with the seeming incapacity of most people in our culture to awaken to the dire urgency of our present situation, and to move from passive contemplation to active engagement. I feel that not just individual works but the entire construct of the contemporary art and literary worlds are functioning as another pacifying and distracting mechanism - someone may read a novel about war and cry, but that doesn't translate into organizing to stop the wars we are now waging. It sometimes seems to me that forces have conspired to depolitize culture and make it socially irrelevant.
As for The Road, I agree that McCarthy is a terrific writer - I loved Blood Meridian - who is literally "spellbinding" and "entrancing". But what kind of spell does he cast?
I don't know that I agree with you that you can "only write the visions that come to you. You can't consciously "steer" the material into positive attitudes..." I would just propose to you that this perspective needs to be questioned and examined. There may be a kind of romanticizing of inspiration implicit here. This idea might apply to that romantic/lyrical mode of bourgeois consciousness, less than to whatever new form of consciousness and attitude is now emerging.
I think we can retain the richness and complexity of the Western psyche and sensibility while integrating not only the nondual, non-egoic Eastern perspective but also a sense of creative participation in reality-making that leads to art that illuminates, and helps create a foundation for, the most visionary possibilities of what a human future can be, on the Earth and in the wider cosmos.
At the same time, in this immediate period, I personally would like to see some artists sacrifice their desire for expressing themselves to utilize their gifts for the purpose of planetary (r)evolution. I myself would love to go back to a novel that would take me 3 - 6 months to revise, then would come out a year after that, at the earliest. Unfortunately I cannot spare the time as from my perspective there needs to be an alternative infrastructure in place ASAP, including media and network, that allows for an alternative exchange system, resource sharing, and community organization. Studying works like The End of America by Naomi Wolf (on parallels btw our time and early Nazi Germany), With Speed and Violence (on abrupt climate change), and Chris Hedges' American Fascists which looks at the Fundamentalist ambition to instate a fascist theocracy in the US, I think we have no time to waste to work together to create a new social system that supports the evolution and elevation of human consciousness, in the near term. It may be that certain types of individual artistic ambitions (which I have as well) could be put on hold until we have transmuted the gathering darkness into light.
Anyway, this is my short answer!
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Comments
Awesome
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This may be one of the strongest calls to arms I have seen in a long time.
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Reader from Oregon, thank you so much for asking this question.
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Daniel, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on this topic.
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Part of the new paradigm, in my opinion, is artists working these issues out in the public space, not in the back of some bourgeois cafe. Really a fantastic excachange with a lot to think about...Specifically, the role of the writer in our society--a question I will never get tired of--but asking it in the form of "what kind of spell does he cast?" really brings it to life for me.
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I am undecided on the Road; the fact that someone can make sentences that beautiful clearly has value, the ability to hammer a plot nexus into a blade that sharp is an amazing human achievement, and the fact that our society appreciates it during the authors life time is awesome.
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I find it interesting that asking the question ("what kind of spell does he cast?") of Dickens and or of Blake results in very very different answers. In fact, I do not think I could imagine two more dissimilar incanters. However, the awareness that they create is the same. Perhaps the uniqueness of the invocation is not as important as the result?
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What I really wanted to comment on was "some other form of social existence that would naturally create different expressive forms." One of the many things I find unique about this time is that the "social existence" that I have seems to be created by the "expressive form" I am in, not the other way around. The creation appears to move from the technology or space to the social group that uses it, not the other way.
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The speed with which new expressive forms are emerging seems to have surpassed memes ability to adapt, and the ideas to fill the forms often take a long time to mature.
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I think that encouraging their maturity is tricky business. Important obviously. But something that would require a lot of the skills McCarthy clearly has to do well. Trying to force this may have very unpredictable results--which I think what the reader from Oregon is pointing to.
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Question romantic notions is great advice. Focus on current causes and conditions is obviously a great idea. But the real goal is to add authenticity to the act of "creat(ing) new forms of complex awareness and adding subtle dimensions to human experience"
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Thanks for this Daniel!
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As Ever, David S
a healthy balance?
I think this is similar to what Emerson wrote when he talked about the poet being the true doctor.
But I have to question the idea that there is ever anything necessary about a state of alarm or that one form of inspired, healing art is truly better than another.
For example, Chris Hedges, while brilliant, is also incredibly heady. In this sense his "art" can only reach a very limited audience. I think if we took every single person capable of comprehending and being moved by people like Gurdjev (sp), Steiner, Hedges, and other intelligensia-spiritu-politicians, and gathered them together, we would have perhaps enough people on the entire planet to fill a few football stadiums.
The truth is that only 30 percent of Americans have a college education. What I think poetry, the novel, film, theatre, music, and other variations of performing arts have going for them is that they are interactive.
While I think we need our Intelligensia-politica of spirit, I also think that we need people who are blasting energy primarily out of their chest, not head. I don't think one is better than the other; I just think we need both.
So while Daniel feels like writing the intellectual spirit manifesto for the golden age, I feel like writing something more like poetry or creative non-fiction or fiction, etc. The implication I hear from Daniel's suggestion is that this implies some sort of selfishness, but I think that it's only a matter of personal preference.
Some people need a yoga class or a good dance in the rain to lift consciousness towards the "reality" of our situation---far more than an intellectual manifesto or political speech. I think we have to ask ourselves, "what is planetary consciousness?" What can it ever be aside from specific instances of interpersonal relationship?
I mean, for the Beat poets we also had the New York School of poetry and painters---a kind of romanticism of the interior landscape, driven by joy and not politics.
I think there is a reason that the Beats had substance abuse problems, had serious women problems, etc. When we make a call to arms, we have to ask ourselves where the anger and alarm is coming from. While I totally agree with Daniel about a sense of urgency, I also think that this has to be balanced with a sense of play and also a descending out of the head and into the Heart.
I say that, globally, more people would be moved to see change in the world through beautiful poetry, song and dance than they would yet another intellectual manifesto or critique of the ages. The global language of spirit comes from the heart, working in unity with the head.
Intellectualism is awesome, but it's a refined product, like coke. That's why it's not a global language. Because it's an expensive product, and it's an elite product.
People generally resent intellectualism not because they don't understand it or are lazy, but because it truly doesn't say anything that unique in comparison to the intuition, the heart, and the senses. And intellectuals usually, because of dependency on intellect as a defense mechanism, think that it is an entirely unique and independent language.
So, while I fully support this idea of Daniel's about not writing a novel because he's writing something intellectual or feels like being political, I have to see the benefit of novel writing still, in the midst. There's plenty of resources in vision to address all sorts of needs.
Expressing ourselves is awesome! We don't need a political revolution without a revolution of interpersonal relationships. I think personal expression in art, guided by this vision, is just as valid as anything else. And the suppression of that, to me, would be a kind of intellectual-spiritu fascism. "We're responding to radically different conditions,"-----maybe they're not radically different, maybe they're just what they are, and there is nothing at stake at all in the infinite.
Maybe we should learn an urgency that fears less of death and pain. I see a healthy balance in your books so far, Daniel---a personal and literary exploration and political commentary synthesis. Adam Elenbaas
music is different
Hi Adam,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
I understand that my concept can feel a bit "fascist," as we have been so conditioned now to accept personal expression as an ultimate good - as something good in and of itself. Once again, there is that question of a perhaps necessary but painful transition from "independence" to "interdependence." What does an interdependent art and literature look like? One that doesn't see itself as separate from society in some sense, standing outside of it?
In traditional civilizations, the artist was not seen as separate from the society - in fact, his or her work was an essential aspect of its mystical/spiritual expression and consciousness. If you visit an exhibit of ancient Buddhist art, for instance, it is immediately apparent that there was a canon of form that is highly particular, and the artist's job was to bring the culture's vision to its highest state of realization.
I am not saying I have the answers here, by the way, but I do think it is an important dialogue to have. I hope more people will chime in.
I do think that music is different than contemporary poetry, as it does provide an unmediated experience that somehow reaches beyond mental categories and framings. When Bob Dylan picked up the guitar, he reached a hundred thousand times more people than Allen Ginsberg ever could. There is something amazing about that. The same holds true for film and video in relation to literature.
I do feel that the urgency of this time is real - we happen to live in a time that is different than previous epochs, as the future of our species is literally threatened if there is not a massive course correction in the next decade or so.
In all seriousness, I ask you this: What will it say about human culture, in all of its myriad expressive forms, if we do not manage to save our species from imminent eco-cide?
I do think the movement in the future could be toward conscious reintegration of the roles of artist and shaman.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
response to your question
"What will it say about human culture, in all of its myriad expressive forms, if we do not manage to save our species from imminent eco-cide?"
Yea, good question?!
I often wonder about the death of Christ. Was it chosen, was it fully accepted, was it necessary? I wonder if we're not asking a similar question when we ask about "saving" our planet from this disaster.
Was Christ dying in order to "save" us, and save us from what? I grew up a fundamentalist Christian, so I feel very close to this idea of salvation and all of the ways it has terrorized me.
Lately, maybe as a part of my own personal healing, I've just been asking the question "From what?"
I mean, just entertain me for a moment, even if I'm being totally blasphemous.
What if it the eco-cide of our planet is really no big deal, even my own personal death included? And what if our job is to try and raise a consciousness that promotes the idea that nothing, at all, is ever at stake, even the physical death of a body or eco-system.
In this vision, death and pain are only a part of a process. Flowers die, species die, etc, etc. What if we're just not capable of imagining a world like this because it means letting go fully, and what if learning to see a world where nothing is at stake is just as much a part of the urgent work as is the infrastructure shaping or anything else?
I mean---I don't want to die. I want our world to live on. I want our ecosystems to live on. I want a green planet again. I want all of these things because I love it here, and I love being alive, and I wish there could be less pain and more harmony.
But I wonder if a part of creating this means, really radically, seeing nothing at all at stake, just as much as fast and swift societal change? What about a centeredness and a peace that passes the understandings of urgency? In balance?
I submit all of this humbly because I realize how radical, maybe even fascist, some of THIS may sound! haha
But this feels like it's a part of your vision from Daime ceremonies? I mean, do you think we can do both?
Thanks for taking the time to respond to me, Daniel.
Adam Elenbaas
adam and daniel
Adam...I feel compelled to comment on this, mostly because I feel a similar tension between the urgent need for solutions, and the impending destruction/creation that we're faced with.
On one side, we hear so much apocalyptic rhetoric associated with 2012; on the other hand, I feel like others like Daniel and Cruttenden do an excellent job of balancing the doom with the bigger picture of
time beyond our measures and consciousness beyond what we can fathom. We need to reach toward that, and realize that everything we experience is temporary.
The key issue, I think, is to balance all these things. Yes, we're faced with impending doom...does that mean we should necessarily play into the sense of urgency/panic that is sweeping the globe? I think that the point at which we play into this, we render control to the wrong individuals, and we generate a lot of frequencies that those in power feed on. We have to face it---right now, this planet is a fear factory, and the only way to move on is to stop emitting those frequencies.
Additionally, I believe that in our roles as creators (i'm a music producer and poet) we need to be able to tap into all these different exigencies/tensions but still focus on painting a landscape of the psyche of both late humyns and Earth...that way, our art serves as a hub for consciousness. We celebrate and worship the realness, right?
wanderlust
www.myspace.com/wanderlustdream
Portrait of an Artist in the 21st century
This debate is very timely, I think, for many of us here who are searching for ways to effect change, amidst a gnawing sense of urgency and unease.
I have been having this discussion with myself for the past couple of months. Falling into the circumstance of working on Reality Sandwich has been a godsend for that part of me that needs to feel engaged with the crisis we face. I have never felt drawn to "activism" in the sense of joining an organization, as these groups often seem mired in their own bureaucracies and myopic perspectives. Coming to an understanding of a Big Picture seems most important for humanity at this stage.
At the same time, I have a dilemma. I've been a musician all my life, and over the past year I've had more opportunities than ever before to turn my longtime hobby into a more serious aspiration. Yet, there is something in my heart that cautions me not to go forth with all my energy into the glory quest for rock stardom. (That's not to say I'm aiming for vapid commercial success -- I actually envision my activism taking center stage if I were to "make it.") The industry, for one thing, is in upheaval: Digital downloads and label meltdowns have very recently thrown the traditional model of musicianship into nebulous uncertainty. Recorded music has almost no monetary value any longer, which despite all the cheers from the anti-corporate set means equally hard times for independent labels and their artists. Sustainability is a huge concern for musicians in this emerging paradigm.
In a way, what is currently going down in the music industry is a microcosm of the rest of our civilization's once orderly systems, both natural and contrived. If I'd been born two decades earlier, I'd be reaching for that gold microphone without a care in the world. But as a socially conscious artist living in 2007, awakened to the situation at hand, I can't shake the sense that art and entertainment are becoming outmoded, frivolous distractions and guilty pleasures. I've stopped reading fiction for these same reasons. The music that I write is fun, humorous and dancey; it is from the heart and resonates with meaning, but it's hardly protest music. I am finding it difficult to reconcile my artistic passion (that which connects me most directly with the sublime) with my sober awareness of this profound moment in time.
Any thoughts?
-st
Planetary Expression
It's important to have one foot in the practical reality of the situation we face and the other in a wonderland of visionary creation. This is the stance of the shaman, a mediator between worlds.
It's scary to posit a world where destructive forces direct positive forces to such a degree as to eliminate them. Engaging art and expression of all kinds is often a way of refuelling or updating perspective. For example I sometimes share your aversion to simply sitting and reading a novel, having recently read William Gibson's 'Spook Country', I'm glad that feeling dispersed. The book is part fiction, part non-fiction, part meta-history, part commentary, part cultural observation, part wonderland and part dream. It blends the cultural-thriller and planetary changes with the supernatural (in the form of the Orisha, multi-dimensional beings who represent the forces of nature.)
If not dipping into forms of expression such as books or cinema, where does one's attention go? Is it overwhelmed by crisis? Swept away into a perceived futility?
Change is happening and old structures are falling in the form of a "Death of a Thousand Cuts." In other words one grand act is not occuring but a multitude of small expressions on the part of individuals, both slowly and swiftly taking the place of heirarchy and history.
The planet itself is expressing. It is and always has been remixing the landscape. Humankind is responding, in ways vague or profound, dissociative or cooperative.
If the planet is holding an elaborate concert, there are choices - does one simply hold a lighter up, hide in a corner, get drunk or wasted or - dance in the tone and sing along?
How you dance is up to you.
I don't feel as though protest or simply calling attention to the problem ever solves the problem. It often helps to perpetuate the problem. Creative expression creates things! Right now there is so much energy in the world. Energy from which to draw and transform. I feel it is important to draw into being new forms (which may sometimes be connected to old instruments), in order to avoid potentially tragic feedback loops.
Lots of thoughts... mildly conjubled...
I have also been pondering the same question... what is an artist to do in a world where art is being perverted to distract the masses from the buzzing of the alarm clock on the corner night stand. A dear wise one nudged me just to ART. Just to create without bounds or thought to who will embrace it. I hear/read all these catchphrases of the year, "evolving conciousness, technosphere, manifest, etc" where now they are nearly loosing all meaning... so what do we artists do?We simply create. We reweave the world using our tools. Some off us sing, others write, draw, build, many speak... we take the picture of the world, tear it up and reglue it... we use places like RS to recharge ourselves and to remind each other that we are not alone and we take it to the masses. We go into the world, rather then sit in our groups of friends that have like minded thoughts. We find those who don't think these thoughts, and we share them. We plant seeds. We are Jonny Appleseed.As much as I love Bman, and RS itself, and other "tribes" who proclaim enlightened knowledge, sometimes I worry that we close ourselves within that bubble and only talk about the change of the world with each other. We're already changed... our brothers and sisters are not. Jesus was a great teacher... he said go out into the world and tell the others... Krsna was also pretty cool, he told us that we could fight or not fight, but to join on the battlefield we'd have more fun. I suppose my thought, as drawn out and muttled in other thoughts, is this: We need to use our gifts, we cannot wait for one person to lead us or tell us what to do, we speak to the sleepy souls, kiss the sleep from thier eyes, and tell them of a sunny morning that has been waiting for them.
Saul Williams
What do you guys think of Saul Williams?
Coded Language
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jzY2-GRDiPM
It seems like he is onto something.
Saul Williams
I think he is awesome.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Release the pain body
Cheers :)
Limited Lifespans
Thanks Adam, that was great.
Daniel - well said, the point about eco-cide is important.
Art is maleable and evolving. Often it turns repetitous. Both scenarios can be used to the planet's advantage. Art and creative expression can be great fun, important, vital and so on, but it's worth vastly expanding upon what is generally considered art or expression. Solar panels for example are a great expression of humankind's relationship with the sun and with sustaining life.
Like the species, it may be assumed that art has a limited lifespan.
"I believe that a picture, a work of art, lives and dies just as we do... That is, it lives from the time it's conceived and created, for some fifty or sixty years, it varies, and then the work dies... Art history begins only after the death of the work... In that sense, I believe that the history of art is extremely random... I am convinced that the works on view in museums and those we consider to be exceptional, do not represent the finest achievements in the world... Basically, only the mediocre works created in the past have survived." -Marcel Duchamp
However, yes, music is different. It lives and dies simultaneously, forever. It is in Steiner's words "pure etheric experience". Of course, shamans heal with song and sing worlds into existence. With the arts, new worlds can be sung into view and into inter-action.
When expressions are celebrating and bringing into being new and healthy ways of living, people get excited, they want to help, contribute, build, take part.
"The more abstract the truth you wish to teach, the more you must seduce the senses to it". -Nietzsche
Now, many are sensing crisis on the planet. On one hand it is not particulaly abstract. It is obvious what is to be done to remedy the situation. Yet, to the intertia and whirlpool of time and history - a sustainable planet is an abstract notion. In other words, to the 'we' of 2007, the picture is clear. But to the concretized ideologies of the ever-present-past, solutions are blurred or obscured.
What may be considered art, now, is that which makes things clear and alive.
"...what we need to do is push the art pedal to the floor." -Terence McKenna
Regarding this I've come to feel that it is not about making tons and tons of 'artifacts' but more about turning every act, every expression into art. Where everything is malleable and evolving. Where absurdity and profundity or laughter and fear or life and death exist simultanesouly and harmoniously.
What if it is not so much an "eco-cide" or planetary suicide, but simply time for the planet to die, to regenerate, to shed its skin. What if it is therefore an era to celebrate, to literally call into being, through art and magic, imagery and song, technology and expression, an evolved environment.
In the beginning there was the word. In the end there began the image (the more perfect logos).
The art of now is in imagining, and bringing into being, a clarity and joy able to stretch across and beyond limited lifespans.
How do you see time?
This topic is so dense I don’t even know were to begin… First of all, everything we know about art is based in a world that includes time as a factor, but what exactly IS time?
In a recent Ayahuasca trip I was presented with what I perceived to be the world without time. Everything was still here and functional but my internal relationship to it all had changed drastically; there was no feeling of loss or gain. All art relies on these emotions inherent in time. In a world without time there are no opposites, everything becomes one functional organism on an emotional level, and I think this might be where we are headed (who knows).
If time ceases then the raping of the planet will also slow down to a crawl because all of the “pseudo needs” inherent in Western Culture become meaningless and unnecessary. It's almost as if time is the current set of emotions we are given to cope with life. Clocks just provide us with a numbering system that allows us to organizer ourselves, but I don’t think they would become obsolete in a world without time. After this trip a lot of art I used to like lost its meaning. This was both a curse and a blessing, but in the end life goes on and I am having a richer experience with what I now see as art.
What do you think? Is time just a set of emotions? If so then we will need a new word that describes what we are actually measuring when we look at our watch to see how far away lunch is. Does this even make sense?
EDIT:
So I guess to answer the question posed by this article: "What is the mission of art and poetry in a time of accelerating planetary transformation?"
Nothing. There is no mission; art is just what happens naturally when humans have free time. It only means what you make it mean.
An Eastern viewpoint
In reference to Eastern Philosophies (versus Western Philosophy), Campbell writes: "But to Enjoy this world requires something more than mere good health and good spirits; for this world, as we surely know, is horrendous. "All life", said the Buddha, "Is sorrowful"; and so, indeed, it is. Life consuming life: that is the essence of its being, which is forever a becoming. "The world", said the Buddha, "is an ever-burning fire". And so it is. And that is what one has to affirm, with a yea! a dance!, a knowing, solemn, stately dance of the mystic bliss beyond pain that is at the heart of every mythic rite.
And so, to conclude, let me recount now a really marvelous Hindu legend to this point, from the infinitely rich mythology of the god Shiva and his glorious world-goddess Parvati. The occasion was of a time when there came before this great divinity an audacious demon who had just overthrown the ruling gods of the world and now came to confront the highest of all with a non-negotioable demand, namely, that the god should hand over his goddess to the demon.
Well, what Shiva did in reply was simply to open that mystic third eye in the middle of his forehead, and paff! a lightning bolt hit the earth and there was suddenly a second demon, even larger than the first. He was a great lean thing with a lionlike head, hair waving to the quarters of the world, and his nature was sheer hunger. He had been brought into being to eat up the first, and was clearly fit to do so. The first thought: "So what should I do now?" and with a very fortunate decision threw himself upon Shiva's mercy. Now it is a well-known theological rule that when you throw yourself on a god's mercy, the god cannot refuse to protect you; and so Shiva had now to guard and protect the first demon from the second. Which left the second, however, without meat to quell his hunger and in anguish he asked Shiva, "Whom, then, do I eat?" to which the god replied, "Well, let's see: why not eat yourself?" And with that, no sooner said than begun. Commencing with his feet, teeth chopping away, that grim phenomenon came right on up the line, through his own belly, on up through the chest and neck, until all that remained was a face. And the god, thereupon, was enchanted. For here at last was a perfect image of the monsterous thing that is life, which lives on itself. And to that sunlike mask, which was now all that was left of that lionlike vision of hunger, Shiva said, exalting, "I shall call you 'Face of Glory,' Krittimukha, and you shall shine above the doors to all my temples. No one who refuses to honor and worship you will come ever to the knowledge of me."
The obvious lesson of all of which is that the first step to the knowledge of the highest divine symbol of the wonder and mystery of life is in the recognition of the monstrous nature of life and the glory of that character: the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think - and their name is legion - that they know how the universe could have been better that it is, how it would have been had the created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without life, are unfit for illumination. Or those who think - as do many - "Let me first correct society, then get around to myself" are barred from even the outer gate of the mansion of God's peace. All societies are evil, sorroeful, inequitable; and so they will always be. So if you really want to help this world, what you will have to teach is how to live in it. And that no one can do who as not himself learned how to live in it in the joyful sorrow and sorrowful joy of the knowledge of life as it is. That is the meaning of the monsterous Kirttimukha, "Face of Glory," over the entrances to the sanctuaries of the god of yoga, whose bride is the goddess of life. No one can know this god and goddess who will not bow to that mask in reverence and pass humbly through."
Good luck to all in your artistic journeys.
Joseph Campbell's "Myths to Live By"
I believe that the best "myths to live by" that we can choose are new myths to be created, or old myths rewritten for our times. While messages of the ancients are sometimes good to remind us where we came from, I personally find new myths more enticing and enlightening.
Who better to learn from than our peers? When praying to the ancients, with whom do you plea for the train you're on to go faster? How much can Hermes really know about computers when Trinity and Neo can live and breathe inside one? The new myths we create can have as much power as we choose.
I myself have created new myths about past lives that have now ascended to deity status to watch over me. My former Self, Anousha, keeps me in check with the ancestors and yet has control over subtle and electrical energy the likes of which I dream humanity will one day awaken to. Hir countenance is not unlike Kali, but Anousha speaks to me from a contemporary standpoint, more clearly than Kali ever could.
Customize your religion. Custom build a new one if none of the ancient templates please you. You can do this "open source" or create the code from scratch. The true source is within and all around you.
No big.
hey friends!
uhsentchaknees
(superarbitrary) ore (metarelevant)
A tower (owhatowear?) (to where!?)
ov phallusea
o-man, (o-men), o-these
(S)centuries ov s(cent)ries
ov this, sans 3 l-and-e
in-dust, tree-us
in dust, (d)ries us
in-hair-ent t(o) te.ase (eh, a sea?)
we delease (are)RR(our) weedy lease
co(e)llective [co]mp[la{p}se]n.(sie.ze)!
(metarelevant) gon (superarbitrary)
oh this love! nykolas [nicolas] nykolad..
Art is all we have
Throughout history artists of every ilk have strived to bring forth an expression of life's experience into matter.
Along the way, whether by intention or not, artists have been teaching the world's people to realize the "artist" within each living soul.
Technology, if its potential is even approached, will soon eliminate the necessity of human function. If we are to perpetuate, it seems humans will have no other role than artist. In one sense this might fulfill an historical quest, but it will also undoubtedly render artistic expression to the mundane.
New, or novel approaches to something resembling what we once knew as "Art" will only be revealed once humans have transitioned into a "non-functional" paradigm.
SMILE!!
Shamanic Surge
making waves
Hello Don,
I'm so glad that you have found your wave. I'm sure that you will place your mark exactly where it was and has always meant to be.
the only way is the impossible way
purpose of poetry?
There Once was a Tibetan Monk,
Who Simpered on his Toes,
But whence the change would come about,
His Body did not know.
His chant it pealed in honest quest,
Of Nature as his kin,
But lack lustre remained his life,
'til his chakras drew him in....
Focus is Resonance...
Total Integration is a Standing Wave Pattern
You choose.
First, thanks to Adam Elenbaas for a very eloquently written letter to Daniel. As I understand it, most well known authors do not always get such thoughtful and well-written correspondence with love and respect emanating from it, while still voicing concerns about things the author has said or written. Thanks Adam!
On Thu, 11/08/2007 - 16:43, Morgan Maher said: "How you dance is up to you."
This is what I believe is truly missing right now in our world: You. Yes you, the person reading this right now.
First, let me say to those who are not missing from the world (i.e. Daniel, Adam, and others), who contribute often to the world's cultural, social, and political communities: thank you. I appreciate when you voice something I believe. I also appreciate when you voice something that I do not believe, therefore causing me to question why. This is a challenge that brings about consciousness of my choices and why I choose to believe what I believe.
For those of you who restrain your contributions to the world's cultural, social, and political communities, the rest of this text is for you. Many of you are looking for leaders and guidance, waiting to see/experience/hear the next article, book, artwork, or song from people you look up to for inspiration. I think it is wonderful should you find someone who inspires you so.
However I suggest that right now, our society, politics, and culture all could use more individual creative voices that you (the person reading this right now) can fill by expressing yourself.
I agree with Adam about Burning Man, and how (as a newbie to Burning Man) I found little inspiration from others outside of my own camp. The problem is not a lack of creativity or inspiration to be found. The problem is a lack of creativity or inspiration to be created.
If you see a deficit of creativity and voice in your community, fill that gap. If you are seeking inspiration and find none, share who you are with others. They will either give back inspiration, or you will find that you yourself can create inspiration for others.
Giving back to the community is what made my experience at Burning Man so amazing. Even amid so many people who rather than inspiring me, were inspired by me, I found an eternal gratitude for the appreciation people had for my creativity and impact on their lives. I am flattered that so much as one person thought my artwork (a DNA helix hanging from a dome) was worth taking a picture of. I am moved beyond words that people would choose to use sacred space I helped create to be the site of their wedding. Wow!
As for the question of whether to create negative or positive, don't look for answers from anyone but within. I'm not going to tell anyone they should be negative or positive. Deep down, I know I want to see this world raise into a positive force that cleanses the world in light. But at the same time, beings of light do not tell you where to go. They simply open the door, and show you where they've been.
I believe in creating negativity in the world for caution, catharsis, or connection. I do not believe in creating negativity for greed, power, domination, ego, alarmism, fear, or terror. These are two completely different worlds for me.
But even still, I support a fully conscious choice to choose one world or the other. When someone makes a conscious choice about the energy they are creating in the world (whether negative or positive, for healing or greed), it raises the collective awareness of the world so we may know our collective Self and where we stand. Knowing how we will die is the first step to cheating death.
I personally censor my negativity. Often I realize that my "caution" is really ego. Or perhaps my "connection" is really greed. Consciously analyzing one's actions and expressions creates a clearing for authentic communication. The only time I share negativity is for caution, catharsis, and connection, and even then I censor myself so I need only share something that is not being shared already. Those whom I share with I believe need to hear it (for caution or connection) or I believe are able to sustain themselves throughout my venting (for catharsis).
So the moral of my story is simply this: choose consciously. When there is no guidance to be found, choose yourself. Be guidance yourself if you see fit. When someone says, "Be positive," choose yourself to be positive or negative. When you find yourself having negative thoughts, question why and if it is something you wish to continue. Know that you are making a conscious choice. Choose the how, the what, the who, and the consequences of your actions and expressions based on what you know.
Unlike so many of my friends, I am not out to make the world a happier or healthier place. I am simply out to make you a little more conscientious of your actions (or lack thereof) and, more importantly, how you express yourself. Choose consciously.
Even if I have never met you or don't even know of your existence, know that I am a stand for your most authentic expression. Express yourself consciously.
Absolutely, we must activate.
my muse, my monk, my warrior
I agree with Daniel. Our artistic medium, our spiritual path, our actions - we must enjoy all of them. But also, we must carry them out with a circumspective understanding of their probable effect. Hedonism defers to altruism; artistic joy defers to compassionate intention.
I wanted to be a philosopher. I have some good ideas. I strung them together like beads along an unrefined, but well-connected mental narrative. I've always wanted to make those ideas the basis for a philosophy masters degree. As I age, the ideas of those unborn essays make more and more sense and seem increasingly worthwhile.
Despite all that, the ideas become irrelevant when juxtaposed with the desperate circumstances incurred by our changing climate and the accompanying deadly political brinkmanship. Now I want to become a better speaker, and I want to know more and more about the truth: that hard-to-swallow, non-mainstream, but nonetheless well-documented and ultimately irrefutable truth. I want to use my ability to organize ideas to help me speak loudly and incisively about the formidable obstacles to collective awakening - and how to remove those obstacles.
My toastmasters club is going to shit their pants next time I stand in front of them and talk.
I am frustrated at how long its taking me to become the person I need to become to take the kind of action I want to take. But I'm growing. Now when I make choices my id and ego take a backseat to my super-ego.
Daniel, I think any conscious steering of our will has to be carefully considered. I cannot act if I don't know the right action; so the pondering and reflecting part of this awakening is important and may take time. Furthermore, to some extent, an artist must relinquish control to a divine will. Would Quetzalcoatl have spoken to you if you had never set foot in Gabon because you judged your motives to be selfish when set against the big picture? Be patient with the sluggish pace of social change and keep positive. I think people will find their calling, and formulate plans that suit their skills. Sound ideas presented calmly and powerfully are the clappers in the bells of social change.
I must learn my art, I must clean my soul, and I must learn to face adversity courageously. I might be a retail salesman, I might only write because I need money, but I am finding my muse, my monk, my warrior. And with perserverance, humility, and self-mastery goddammit I will make my difference - large or small.
Great thread
- bhj
poet's dillemna
jungian jargon
Trust
Maybe it's just a question of keeping Faith in the face of such seemingly hopeless circumstances? Which is not to say complacency is an option. Darwinian natural selection is famously cruel when it comes to eliminating passivity. The message I take away from McCarthy's "The Road" is exactly compassion, at all cost, against all odds, in the face of utter devastation.
I have faith that such extensive ruin is utterly unnecessary. But only if we seize every opportunity for compassion possible. This is the stand I'm taking.
I am a photographer. Although I question the legitimacy of what I'm doing constantly, and keep my mind as open as I can to more effective, sustainable ways of being in the world, nothing else -as of yet- offers me such a potent means of discovering and bearing witness to the wonder and beauty of life as it is. Faced with amazement, I am inspired to love and care for life and to try to communicate that sustaining sense of wonder.
www.philipheying.com
The community of RealitySandwich is an enjoyable inspiring place to share these concerns. Cheers and luck to all.
bellybutton window
Your photography is amazing Philip.
Yes, excellent work
Cheers,
Thanks. Daily NM pictures
The Invisible Reality
Here's my idea of trying to change the world through poetry....
"The Invisible Reality"
We are gods in amnesia
after so many aeons (in different forms)
we have forgotten ourselves.
We have forgotten our power, our vitality, our divine source.
The forests and streams are unfamiliar territory
and the wild creatures do not recognize us.
We have lost our sisters and brothers,
forgotten their true names,
so we cannot call them to us.
When did emotion become a crime?
When did we stop feeling connected to each other?
When did we choose repression instead of expression?
In this life-play we are characters
who have forgotten our real identities.
When we put on our costumes the roles became real.
The mask became our face.
This Kingdom is frozen, in perpetual stasis, nawaiting the return of the Queen, the Trickster, the Magi, the lovely Spring. (Where is she?)
We are like a dreamer who seeks restlessly for a missing lover, who is in fact sleeping right beside us.
Searching for something that is always present: bliss, peace, communion (at the periphery of our vision, buried in the subconscious).
Yet even in this desolate winter of our collective consciousness when our compassion and joy are frozen (imprisoned) there is a seed growing underneath the snow...
You are the jeweled eye of reality, the starlight!
You are divine inspiration, the seedling!
You are the beating heart!
I want to reveal the infinity energy
that radiates inside and outside of everything.
I want to embrace what I am afraid of.
I want my love to burn so brightly
hat it thaws the whole world!
~ tristan gulliford
Thanks
typo
just noticed my typo there at the end...
OOPS =)
Great post! You only left out one thing...
I'd put the whole damn "progressive blogosphere" in that category, ya know. All the effort involved in trying to get useless Democrats elected, etc. completely misses the point. As to where you're coming from, I'm completely on board, especially with regard to the need for "an alternative infrastructure in place ASAP."
art and social responsibility
I enjoy Daniel's writing, and I agree with him on many points, but on the above point I have to disagree, at least in part. I do not believe that we should focus on what content to express. It's a noble sentiment to say that art should be made in service of the greaater good... but honestly, I have seen and listened to such "conscious" art and I often find it unexcusably tedious and uninteresting. It also makes me nervous because, like any other form of propaganda, I get the subtle sense that someone is trying to "sell" me their point of view. The true artistic vision does not work in such a linear fashion. Attempts to control or manage it can lead to work that falls prey to the prosaic and the pedantic.
I also get really uncomfortable when people talk about "censoring" expression... Let's see, if the individual voice were not such a threat to the establishment, then why is America one of only very few places in the world where freedom of expression has been part of our citizen's rights? Do we really want to participate in Eastern Europe's example on how we treat writers and artists? It's beginning to happen right now in this country. This is why we are seeing a lack of authentic voices and a glut of "bougie" art and craft.
Additionally, as an art therapist I can testify that the individual's creative expression is in fact an incredibly healing and transformative power. It is just as valid a route as taking psychedelics, or any other form of shamanic exploration. There is power in listening to the words and seeing the images of those who are disposessed and oppressed, power in expressing those parts of ourselves that have been labeled "taboo" and "alien". Art is the means by which we give voice to all that cannot be expressed in any other way.
I do, however, believe that we should be concerned with how we are expressing. Do we make objects that go into galleries to be bought and sold? Do we take our show on the road like Alex Grey? Do we make environmental, transitory art like Andy Goldsworthy? Let's use our creativity to move with the times. I personally believe that art should come down out of the ivory tower and be reintroduced into our communities. There is a shameful dearth of useful creative education and intelligence in this country. I believe that if we train as many people as possible to think and act creatively, our collective expression will point the way to better solutions all on its own. We must trust our own voices.
A note on 'self'-expression
I don't think that what he's saying has anything whatsoever to do with censoring, linearity or propaganda. Rather, I suspect that as a student of the evolution of consciousness, Daniel is simply articulating the need for a spiritual impulse which is appropriate to our age.
If artists are visionaries and creators of new forms of incarnate meaning, advancing humanity through some medium, then the notion of ego-istic self-expression has become outmoded and threatens to degenerate into pure narcissism. The self that needs expression now is not the modern abstraction of the individual from nature and society, but rather the totality of self that integrates humanity through sacrifice.
Somewhat parodoxically, this would imply that one of the only ways to express this 'interdependent' self is to create a space for others to express their individual selves. But in so doing, we dissolve the boundary between self and other and see their expression as our own.
And though many people seem to disdain Christianity, especially in California and at Burning Man, the esoteric forms do seem to allow for this kind of evolution for humanity. Teilhard De Chardin, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield have articulated thiese notions quite well.
If, however, he is saying that artists should stop creating and start becoming politicians, then i would have to disagree. The imaginative and compassionate functions of art are exactly what we need more of. Artists are the heart of human organization and in our times, it would be better that politicians become more artistic than artists become more political.
yes
Great post, Mitch.
Thanks for clarifying.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Shamanism, Acting and Theater
"I do think the movement in the future could be toward conscious reintegration of the roles of artist and shaman."
This puts me in mind of a conceit I've been ruminating over for nearly twenty years and has been bubbling over recently: the linkage between shamanism and the craft of acting.
Back in 1987, Brian Bates wrote "The Way of the Actor," likening the role that actors play in society today to the role shamans once played. It was an influential book for me and well ahead of its time. Today, I take issue with some things in its pages, and a re-reading of it has been on my list of things to do for some time, even with the intent of reviewing it for RealitySandwich. Bates, an acting teacher and authority on Anglo-Saxon Druidry, argues that in traditional societies, shaman and actor were synonymous, that the techniques of the actor in awareness, physical conditioning and the ability to "transport" people via story-telling were and are shamanic tools.
If one thinks of acting in this way, it is possible to see how things may have gone awry in modern society, where that role is delegated to an incredibly small group of people who the vast majority of us experience almost exclusively as incorporeal images on a screen. The work of Augusto Boal (the Theatre of the Oppressed) makes the case that some forms of western theatre are used effectively as a tool of the state to keep the masses downtrodden and passive. Part of his work is to change the theatre experience from that of "actors" and "spectators" to "spect-actors," where everyone in the space has a conscious contribution, where the "fourth wall" is often obliterated, where there isn't a binding of a transporting experience into confined expectations and roles.
If one puts Bates and Boal together, we may have a clue as to what has happened historically to the actor/shaman in modern society. Corraling the energy of the shaman into celebrities who live detached and rarefied lives, into Broadway shows that only hundreds of dollars in ticket prices and travel can access might just be an incredibly powerful formula for controlling the "shamanic distribution," as it were.
I agree with the sentiments that there is a lot of consuming of art that doesn't really lead to any meaningful action on the part of the consumer to change things - I'm significantly guilty of that myself. Changing my own relationship to art from consumer to creator has, I believe, been a step forward. By participating in art myself, as an actor, recently as a director/facilitator and as a writer, I find myself losing the arch need for consumption I usually feel. I suspect that in doing so I have ceased delegating certain emotional appetites to movie stars, that I've stemmed the flow of giving so much mindshare and appreciation to monied institutions that routinely disappoint me anyway.
I think that theater, simply defined as people in a shared space, if re-examined and explored in the "Open Space" tradition of Peter Brook, Augusto Boal, Jerzy Grotowski and more recently by English director Phelim McDermott and my own teacher, Ragnar Freidank, has the potential to re-connect any person - "professional" or no - with a primordial sense of themselves as storytellers and actors in their lives, in a fiction, in society, in a dream. In this way, I think the reintegration that Daniel speaks about can - does - occur. The difference being that the old model of the shaman - he who is separate from society - is updated to be the nascent birthright of every individual. Such a re-orientation could be the responsibility of the theatre, the fullfillment of its legacy as an intimate to the active and immediate aspect of the shamanic process.
Newness and Inspiration
In my experience, as both a creator and witness, art conceived in pursuit of the radical, the revolutionary, is dead on arrival. Whereas art created to answer some unknowable, unarticulable need intuited by the artist has the opportunity to be a gift to the community and has the potential to enable internal transformation. It is in some sense a performative act of transformation that, if it is good, can catalyze transformation in the person who experiences it. This mode of inter-action empowers individuals and disempowers institutions. To my eye, inspiration is not a mere bourgeois romanticism. Rather, it is a sufficiently accurate way to describe the mystery that is the act of creation. Inspirited acts and objects add value to the world. (The strut and fret of ratiocination can be charming, but it contributes little.)
So, in this sense I agree with the poet whose email Daniel shares here. But I want to qualify that too – and in this sense I think I agree with Daniel. The way we now relate to the New New Thing, we once related to Inspiration. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square. A work of art, a song, a political act that moves us in some transformative way might feel new and it might feel inspired -- these qualities might even be necessary in order for us to be moved – but neither newness nor inspiration can be relied upon as equivalents for the power to move, transform or revolutionize. They are circumstantial (or even accidental) attributes that we have to be careful not to mistake for the thing of value itself.
Old ideas (like Romanticism, Modernism, or Marxism) and old forms (like lyric poetry, abrstract painting, or performance art) sometimes become flags for naivete or conservatism. We use the act a naming sometimes in order to dispense with uncomfortable content. This is an abuse of language I think, more sophistry than rhetoric in pursuit of communal truths. The isms are not the point. All forms, and the ideas they invoke, have the potential to bear new fruits of inspiration.
Forgive my wordiness. Thanks for the interesting thread.
Best Ian
secret vs. zeitgeist
at least we talk
Everything said here should first be seen as refreshing because at least we are talking about matters of the soul. Art is more in the realm of the child than of the activist. It is a form of dream and imagination. So I would say pure art is not involved with politics in any way I agree with you Daniel that the collective talents of all of us are wasted on our individual pursuits. But what do you do? Other than state the fact and critique others? If the world is impermanent anyway, why not create freely, unhindered by the need to "save the world" which is clearly an illusion of white bourgeois culture.
Looking for some piece of form of expression that will suddenly be the dues ex machina to make us all wake and save the world seems like a exhausting exercise. If it comes about, so be it. I detect an inherent ego on the flip side of this. The ego of I am going to fix this. I can make myself better and different than all those "selfish" artists out there. Who knows how a piece of expression inspires some one to action. And what kind of creative process could be fulfilling in any way with that intention. Unless of course one is a architect or and engineer, designing new system for our changing times. What does a painter have to do with that? They can give one vision, but there purpose is not to go out and form community's for the end times. To change subject that is the important role that psychedelics play. If one is lucky enough to take a strong dose and hit the "vein" if you will, they will discover the nature of inspiration and creation. They will be brought to a place that is beyond all forms of human expression and is the orgian of all artistic inspiration. That is why they are demonized. Because they have the ability to show us that all the grandiose activity's of our human family are nothing compared to what the universe can do.
This is not black and white. One feels something and does something or doesn't. It is a never ending cycle. If one cries about war and never protests or takes physical actions to end the war, is the feeling some how less? Is art a linear process with a goal? "I make this statement so people will want to go stop the war in Iraq and stop using plastic." Maybe that happens maybe not. But I wouldn't want to be that artist. strapped with the duty to change the world. The world changes as it does. The artist is there to reflect and suggest. Stimulate and move. Movement is never ending. That is why it is movement.
I just feel Daniel you sit on your chair and spout unoriginal rhetoric. How does being non-dual show up in your life? What do you do day to day to "transform" the world? Are you transformed? and what does that mean to YOU? What does it actually look like in REALITY? I feel as if your are always priming for some point in the future. What is happening now? Other than doing a internet magazine. (which is awesome by the way)
to digress further: Lets look at burning man. A great cacophony of expression but in reality a giant waste of resources. Should we all stay home and eat rice and burn hemp oil? Not taxing the environment? What is the trade off? future clean world boredom or the madness of the moment?
oh and by the way The planet says its fine. You are the ones with the problems.
Sorry to be so ranty but I am hungry and I wish I could just talk to you all in person.
ART has become money what we dream is beyond conceptual hands the way we feel is only part of the story this is way beyond what we understand a relative pleasure of like and dislike a communal experience of ceremony and ecstasy
How should freedom end up looking?
How attached are you to what you want it to be?
Are lables are made after the fact.
The artist is not his label he and she is the itching weird burning drunk feeling of vision
look at the transformtive power of micheal jackson ... what do YOU THINK about that?
do you WANT TO CRY LAUGH OR MAYBE HAVE your third EYE open
Remember your past lives or just feel space>???
DAFFY duck BLEW HIM SELF UP and THE crowd still wanted more...
artFULLness
"The moment is dear to us, precisely because it is so fugitive, and it is somewhat of a paradox that poets should spend a lifetime hunting for the magic that will make the moment stay. Art is that chalice into which we pour the wine of transcendence. What is imagination but a reflection of our yearning to belong to eternity as well as to time?" -- Stanley Kunitz
"We are all provided for" - C.S. Lewis
the duty of the artist
your trash is my art
A Writer in Turmoil
Thank you for this discussion. I have been working on structuring and writing a ficitional memoir of my travels in asia four years ago, wanting to also bring in concepts about astrology, shamanism, all things spiritual - but i'm feeling not so much writers block, but dilemma - just read an article from the new newsweek that i would LOVE others to read about amazon's new electronic book that will hold almost a hundred thousand titles initially and will be connected to the internet for easy download - they're talking about how it will change writing itself and that more authors are now thinking of creating their workds in serial form, or writing chapters and blogging them out and then getting feedback along the way...as someone who's new to writing in the 'novel' form, i'm feeling overwhelmed, intimidated, confused as to what direction to go with my work and also cognizant of the fact that by the time i complete this book, with all the myriad other practices/arts i do, the importance of the book may not be as relevant - i really want the acceleration of technology to be a character itself, how it affects travel and interpersonal relations. Meanwhile, who is the audience and how and where?
VerDarLuz
Integral Healing,
InNerVisionary Photography
verdarluz@gmail.com symbiart.net
Don't be afraid of the dark
I am digging your work, Daniel. I have been waiting for this moment in time since my own psychedelic experiences back in the late 80's when it was revealed to me that we were on the verge of something very, very big. I think this may be it, this global "waking up" that seems to be occurring.
Anyway, I am an artist. I like to paint monsters. No, I love to paint monsters. You can see my work here: http://www.chetzar.com/oil_paintings/ART.html
I take issue with the view that art needs to have an explicit positive agenda in order to be contributing positively to the global consciousness. For many people like myself, "dark art" inspires. It inspires us to feel, to live, to explore our imaginations. The works of Beksinski- http://www.beksinski.pl/ , Giger- http://www.giger.com/ and many others, are stunningly beautiful in their own way. I might even say that it is because of the inherently ugly framework the artists choose to work in that their art is that much more beautiful than something more obvious. It is, in essence, the transmutation of darkness into light, ugliness into beauty.
I am not a dark person. I am a peace activist, a father of two children and a husband of 19 years to a wonderful woman. I am a vegetarian and an avid animal lover. I am a very positive soul, you can ask anybody who knows me. Yet my aesthetic tastes are dark. Does that mean I am creating darkness in the global consciousness? Perhaps I am helping to inspire the fringes of society who have a similar appreciation for such things? If it inspires us to feel alive, even spiritually connected (which Beksinski's dark and surreal visions definitely do for me), well, isn't that the point of all of this? Is that not a healing act?
I also would like to state the idea that dark art can serve a useful function to society as a way of facing our fears in a safe way, bringing them into the light for observation and understanding.
This global change is not just going to be everybody getting together and having happy thoughts. Maybe part of this movement will be a healthy integration of the dark and the light. So much of our planetary destruction seems to come from our unconscious fear of the dark, our fear of the awesome power of nature and tour fear of death. When we realize that death is not the end then the symbol of a skull is no longer a symbol of death but of transformation. Or better yet, it stands on it's own for what it truly is- a beautiful object of nature.
If I come across as a overly sensitive to this subject, it is because I am. Growing up, that's all I ever heard, "Why can't you draw something pretty?". Well, I think monsters, skulls and spiders are pretty. Not only pretty but beautiful. Maybe there is something wrong with me (and a lot of other people), but I don't really think so.
If the world needs to come together, then we ALL need to come together. Look deeper and you might find that with our apocalyptic visions we are practicing another interesting idea that was revealed to me during a psychedelic trip- "The Principle of turning Hell into Disneland". The concept was that once the truth about reality and life and death was more fully undestood, Hell became more like an amusement park ride- all in good fun because the real truth of reality is this: it's all good.
My two pennies...
There are a lot of comments here and I have to admit I haven’t read all of them. I’d like to put my two pennies in all the same!
I should also add that i wished to post this comment some weeks ago but was unable to for some inexplicable reason. These then are my thoughts at that time.
This is a very interesting subject area because it concerns our abilities to transform the world around us, to work with it to fulfil its and our desires and potential. So, for me, it seems a matter of evolution. Are we really progenitors of our own evolution and if so is there even a strategy for proliferating it? And if not, are we currently undergoing the growing pains of a new stage of development, being prepared for something unprecedented? Does our art reflect this or do we allow the transmogrification through our art? As a poet and musician I would be inclined to say that art is extremely important regardless of these questions. To create is an innate function of humanity, indeed of Mother Nature. Perhaps we even strive towards a symbiosis with nature through the act of artistic creation, inspired by her art in order to inspire others with our art. I would say this is the case, that regardless of what might be considered censorship or propaganda, when you see a piece of art that resonates with you, it has fulfilled an important function even if it has only reassured you of your own standpoint. It has communicated with something deeper within you. This is what I would call the sunlight of art, shining and breathing new life and power into existing qualities within that require nurturing. If a piece of art is troubling, challenging or thought provoking, this is like turning over the ground to prepare for new seeds to be sown. And if it is inspiring, if it moves you to express something in your own unique way, then this of course is the seed for something new. This brings me neatly onto the idea of newness! I think that all things are new inherently by virtue of being expressed by another. If you follow this rationale I think you arrive at the conclusion (or at least the possibility) that we are all different yet unique. An idea far from new to anyone I’m sure!
But the artist does face one problem in the world today; the idea that there is truly nothing new under the sun. We are liable to suffer from a problem endemic in our collective lack of ability to fulfil dangerously rapacious desires; newness for newness’ sake. Controversy for controversy’s sake. Surely anything made for its own sake creates an abstract vacuum. And I don’t think we need more of those. This in turn, as far as I can see, affirms a rubric of reception for art, the same single mindedness that enables us to be judgemental of one another when extending feelings of empathy would be easier and more pleasurable for all concerned.
So, for me, the role of the artist IS to seek new space, but I would say in order to resist the often cynical yawns of over stimulated audiences. That is the challenge of the artist – to be aware of the disinterest one can be met with in trying to subvert the often stagnant world of abstract, conceptual or avant-garde art or even in more mainstream arenas of reception; to be self aware and self questioning. With this in mind one can create from the centre of the soul and produce things new, old or even more besides. I’m reminded of what I have heard the likes of filmmaker David Lynch say with regard to this, that if you stay true to the original seed of a thought then you remain true to your artistic intention. Or what I have only just finished hearing Terence McKenna say on a YouTube clip stating “culture is not your friend” – “by putting the art pedal to the metal we really maximise our humanness and become much more necessary and incomprehensible to the machines (of mass produced culture).”
Ultimately I guess I agree with your standpoint Daniel, that “there may be a kind of romanticizing of inspiration implicit here” and we do need to challenge our modes or reception of art, or reprioritize our desires for expression as artists. I am personally moved more by art that incites not just thought but actions in me by not shying away from the urgency for truth. However, I think we always need to be aware of the capacity for abstracting ourselves from our goals. Someone said in one comment that art is more in the realm of the child than the activist. If we are simply more aware where the child-like can become childish (an important distinction between the tantrum and the tantric perhaps) in both the realm of the artist and the activist we stand a better hope of re-politicizing their contexts.
My god that was a long comment! Thank you if any of you can be bothered to numb your arses by reading it
"2112" and the Poet's Dilemma
Dear Daniel-
I read your "'2112' and the Poet’s Dilemma" with great interest, since it touches on many of the creative issues that I have struggled with since the middle of the 1980’s. Over the past twenty years or so, having become disenchanted with the narcissistic pretensions of much of the avant-garde, I have attempted to create a style that is able to bear a charge of spiritual energy, to embody rather than simply describe other-dimensional states, and to serve as a vehicle of shamanic flight.
The challenge was to keep my creative cutting edge, to bring a full awareness of modernist complexity with me on a voyage to the beyond. Too much of what passes for spiritual poetry can be flat and formulaic. Big words get thrown around. There is talk about enlightenment or transformation, but the drama is all retrospective. A powerful breakthrough can bring with it the sense that any language will be inadequate.
We know that something of significance has occurred, but the language lacks the kind of shock that would produce a corresponding experience in the reader.
Can art or literature prepare us to interact with the space that exists beyond the end of time?
This dilemma, of course, cannot help but bring to mind the dilemma faced by writers in post-war Eastern Europe, when the trauma of the Holocaust was at first thought to make all literature irrelevant, as though any metaphor were an insult to the dead. Ironically, this turned out to be one of the most fertile of all poetic periods, with writers like Czeslaw Milosz and Zibigiew Herbert radically redefining the relationship between silence and expression, between memory and the external world. Already, the apocalypse had happened. It was possible to begin beyond the end.
What I am left with and return to is my sense that poetry is the primordial language, with prose a recent offshoot of the family tree. Scrolling down the comments on your essay, I was amazed that so many people were critical of the usefulness of poetry while giving a free pass to conversational prose- the medium in which they swim- which is far more forgiving of inattentive habits, and makes a more limited use of the full body-mind spectrum.
Of what use is art in the face of an invasion by the absolute? How can language give form to a reality that is beyond imagination? I would argue that the limits of imagination are in no way fixed, and that the very difficulty of the task is what will catalyze and empower language to rise to the occasion. Good models do exist.
Rumi, Rimbaud, Rilke, and the anonymous authors of the Rig Veda, for example, confront the dilemma posed by superconsciousness head on, by breaking and then reassembling the ego as a vehicle for the self. The creative act becomes a kind of ultimatum, for both the poet and the reader. The leap of consciousness is scheduled to take place within the poem, which is to say in the perpetual present moment. Amid much upheaval, the world is spoken into being. A collision of dimensions provokes the reader to question all that he or she is, to remember the primordial field of connection on which the door of metaphor opens.
At the end of The Archaic Torso of Apollo Rilke says: "…for there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life."
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I have recently finished revising four books of poetry and three of prose. These are as follows:
Poetry:
Maps of the Metaphysical Double: In the Footprints of de Chirico
To Akasha/ Part 1; An Incantation for the End of History
To Akasha/ Part 2
The Preexistent Race Descends
Prose:
Masks of Origin/ Part 1; Regression in the Service of Omnipotence
Masks of Origin/ Part 2; Voyage to a Nonexistent Home
Masks of Origin/ Part 3; The Transplantation of Omphalos
There are many pieces in these books that may be of interest to you and to the other members of Reality Sandwich. I believe that I can provide a few missing pieces to the puzzle of what a synthesis of modernist complexity and post-historical shamanism might look like.
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Here are a few short sample pieces:
From "To Akasha/ Part 1; An Incantation for the End of History":
0
Birds invented rules for the games to be held above north Asia. Tribes from each planet massed for the march.
Species with a shout raised weapons to salute the institute of recombinant technology. Gods were sacrificed. Blood burned. They forgot the rules. In the red sky of prehistory the war between two worlds was fought.
Giants threw weapons charged with all the power of the universe. Yoga conjured armies out of breath-induced hallucinations. Mantras levitated continents. Constellations were used as shields.
26,000 years aligned the footprints of the dead with the slowly evolving perversions of omnipotence. Space itself was the refuge and the destination and the library that contained the records of all actions and events.
The void fought its shadow. Lightning struck from the circumference of the Zodiac. A wave towering above cites rose. The end appeared as a dream about natural disasters. One survived.
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From "Maps of the Metaphysical Double; In the Footprints of de Chirico". (The pieces in this book are written in the persona of the painter Giorgio de Chirico, the most important predesessor of Surrealism, and a direct influence on Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, and Salvador Dali, amoung others.):
3
The great prison, once built by the engineer Daedalus, had been showing signs of age. Monstrosity came and went. At will, and like an echo. It had kissed the iron boot of the demiurge, Chronos, husband to a crop of planetary tyrants.
There was nothing to be done. The beast was hungry, and would not soon tire of playing with his victims. One by one, the weapons of high modernism fail.
I alone, in my squalid studio on the rue Campange-Premiere, had begun to discern the ghosts of a more complicated art. The year was 1912. The clock’s hands had stopped at 11:03, on the morning of June 28th. Just then, I had closed my eyes, those artificial windows to the soul, and was practicing how to see out of each part of my body.
The seal that protects my omnipotence is hermetic.
The "I" is "Other". As was argued by Rimbaud. It is my double who has access to the records, who can read the illegible messages of the fates.
It is possible that my joy does not go deep enough. Fear that all of history is a projection on a screen. From a distance, I had observed the export of Apollonaire from the train station. In another 6 years my friend, the author of "The Breasts of Tiresias", would survive a blast of shrapnel to the skull to then be carried off by the flu.
I would cease to exist, if I saw more than some few waves of the ocean.
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Best Wishes
-Brian George
Visionary Artist as Mediator Between Heaven and Earth