What Art Does - Quareness Series 176th "Lecture".
Recently I have taken to wondering whether art might be a problem for some (many?) people because it doesn't mirror "the real world". Our obsession with this real world can seem somewhat of a comfort and refuge from stray thoughts that might take us out beyond the space of our minds. And given that life really has no answer for the questions posed by art, it can appear so much better to stay safer inside our normal fictionalised existences.
In getting to the core of the collectivism that has flourished since the dawn of our time, we find deep in the human mind a great block of nothing...meaning or saying nothing...just there. And art in taking a bludgeon to this block, shatters it in an instant. Opening all the doors and windows lets in the light...the kind of light which does not occur in nature (e.g. in works by Van Gogh, etc.). Noticing this we may get to wondering what is it that keeps human beings locked up in their collective fantasies. Perhaps what keeps them from standing outside of reality may be a reluctance to stand alone...preferring to think that "all of us together" will build a better world. But for the artist making millions of new worlds, this is way too narrow a view. Birthing millions of new and different spaces and worlds is the whole point...that's what art does.
The reality machine, on the other hand, spits out a line of existence in an unending spool for everyone. However, by destroying that fictitious and presumptuous "everyone", we can open up the possibility of more artists coming into being. Our not being such "artists of reality" feeds a stale and robotic state of existence...an empty suit lacking quality...a tune that never leaves the same key...or even an old story with the same old ending. We intuitively seem to know this and tend to view "reality" itself as a bit of a con, given the persistent nature of the basic fairy tales of transcendence (religious and otherwise) we've tended to tell ourselves. From the point of view of the machine, what the artist does is unthinkable and makes no sense. Nevertheless the more "impossibles" we generate, the more we can see that nothing is ever the same...and our living gets so much the better for such insight.
At some point (sooner or later) this normality marriage of mind and machine has to break apart...when disbelief and being seen as unrealistic has waned and the subconscious has digested the artist. History tells us so. And it might help to hasten such "lightbulb breakthroughs" by thinking of art as the launch of an intergalactic voyage...what's out there?...who wants to find out? It's more than not knowing...it's not having done it yet and being an initiator overcoming the refusal to be first. Art has always been based on open space that could never be occupied because it was invented. It's the landscape of the rebel mind always subverting tradition with each new age actually breaking out of the last one.
The unique worlds of these real artists have to be ones where they must think independently and regardless of recognition or reward. For them what could be a greater reward than being able to sing the song of one's soul...to create worlds where none existed...to share the deepest promptings of the heart and the journey into the mysterious unknown. It's from our sensing the awe and wonder of this mystery that the passion for real art arises, as we get to create our own realities and voyage into the abyss where the dreams beyond hope and fear are born on that edge where life meets eternity.
Reality is fluid...ever changing...always being created from infinite points of human consciousness...beyond time and space. Life cons us into thinking it's a real thing but if we break down all those layers of substance far enough, we find there's nothing really there...only pure energy appearing as something in our minds that we define for ourselves. In truth the reality of our existence is a matrix of energy and thought and information. Can we handle this truth? Can we handle this reality? That's what art does.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
January, 2023.