Live the Question: Pursuance of Art

"When God created - and in that way made the perception of beauty and the human creation of art possible - he gave art a place in this world in which we live; and that world he called good.  Art is here because God meant it to be here."  - H.R. Rookmaaker

Imagine: as soon as God created, Art came into being.  It was the first thing to truly exist in our Universe, in our Reality.  Sure, He made Light first.  But in the same words he breathed Light into being, Art took shape too.  There was no war, no worries, no struggle.  In God's perfect Universe, alongside everything He created, there was Art.  God called this world Good.  Perfection centered around existence, praise to God, and Art.  After the Fall, that changed.  War and worry were added.  Our focus was violently shifted.  But Art is still out there, just waiting to be pursued.

In our society today, the arts are being mercilessly cut and removed from our education system to make way for the "essentials."  But really, when God created the Universe, were social studies, Language, Math, and Science the focus?  Not at all.  They were all in the working background.  I do not mean to say that these disciplines are unimportant; on the contrary, these disciplines hold the fabric of the Universe together.  But they are not the zenith of God's beautiful creation.  Always, there is Art.

There are some great people throughout history who have not forgotten this truth: Art is made to be pursued.
 Art is the capstone of every civilization.  In every Golden Age, the pinnacle is creativity.  Why do we remember the Golden Age of Athens or of Rome?  Great philosophers, sculptors, orators, painters: artists.  The nearest any civilization has come to perfection is always highlighted by the deepest Creativity.  There is a quote that is floating around on the internet: "When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favor of the war effort, he simply replied 'then what are we fighting for?'"  The quote isn't verified to actually be Churchill's, but even if it isn't, the truth of those words has resonated in my head ever since I first read it.  Why on earth are we cutting funding to the Arts?  What then, are we fighting for?  Are we abandoning our Golden Age?  It seems we are no longer pursuing what characterizes the things that give the Lord deep glory.  It seems we are no longer pursuing perfection.

I have been searching for who I am for quite a long time, as most of you are aware if you read any of what I write.  Recently, however, I have decided that I want to be a music professor.  I love music; it is my Art.  I love writing; it is my Art.  Pursuing a graduate degree in music theory or music history (or both) is a place I can write and perform, and I can influence coming generations towards things that truly matter.

Like finding and using their Art for a Purpose that really matters.

And learning when a word needs to be capitalized.

I've been reading a lot of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" recently (sincerely thankful a dear friend gave me that wonderfully insightful book), and I was led to the following quote that helped solidify in my mind that I'm on the right track.

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

I am not claiming to have The Answer.  I assume that will not come until very few breaths remain in me.  If any.  But I do know I feel as if I have been given some new sense of direction, and I am following it.  I feel somewhere deep within me that it is leading me toward the Art that I have, for most of my life, greatly enjoyed but thought I would someday have to give up.  A part of me feels an odd sense of completion that I am being pushed in a direction that will not require me to give them up, but instead to pursue them.  To pursue my Art - my offer of praise to the ultimate Artist.

The past few weeks I have had small glimpses into the true definition and existence of Art with a capital A.  I am immersed in its beauty in ways I never believed possible, and in ways that nothing else can achieve.  I have no witty or strategic way to incorporate the following three poems I wrote under music's influence.  As you read them, try to imagine the most beautiful and all-encompassing thing you've ever experienced.  These are the feelings I have tried to capture.  I feel as if I'm in the middle of a vortex of words of pleasure, and in reaching my hands out I can only grasp a few.  Know that many more wonderful words and feelings still rage about me.

Overwash and flow,
Sing, violin's bow,
Flood my senses,
Beautiful, yearning, pensive:
Intense musical pleasure.

Shiver down the spine,

Whisper in time,

So much pleasure,

Measure after measure:

Musically Aroused.

Back of the mind,

Rolling in time,

On or off the seat,

Plagued by the beat:

Drum fill.

I don't know for certain where I am going.  I don't know the answer, but I am living the question.  

I am pursuing my Art.  

Music and words dance constantly through my head.  Lord, please don't let the dance stop.

Literary Horcruxes

"You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older."

- Amouk Aimee

I heard someone ask the question recently, "What is real Beauty?"  It was obvious to me that they were asking about beauty with a capital "B."  And I admit I still don't have an answer.  I'm just glad they weren't asking me.  And when I read the above quote in a little book of positive sayings I have (another aspect of my beatnikness, I suppose), it sort of festered in the back of my mind.

Not to sound overtly morbid, but I chuckle at the fact that most poets, philosophers, and "great people" don't really become famous until after they're dead.  At the height and cessation of their age, they finally achieve real Beauty.  Made me think of the following by Peter Van Houten, from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (a book that you must read if you haven't already):

"Witness...that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense.  When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.  You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them.  Language buries, but does not resurrect."

I guess that's the Beauty of being a poet: we pour our heart and soul (...if I had a soul, being a Ginger) into our work, and once we die, we are lost.  But much like a Horcrux, a part of us lives on in the little things we poured ourselves into.

The Literature lives.

This also made me think: what part of myself am I leaving behind?  Once I'm gone, what will people think of me based on the soul I left behind in my words?  As I said in my last entry, I noticed that many of my Scarlequain aren't exact the brightest and happiest of things.  So I'm trying to do better on that account.  I've also learned that one's day is greatly improved upon thanking your Heavenly Father for the simple things.  A friend asked the question "where would we be if we woke up the next day with only the things we had thanked God for the previous day?"  Made me think.

Cognitive thought,

Freckles and spots,

Life and breath,

A day stayed death:

Thankful, Gratis.

 Not everything has to be happy and thankful.  Life is rated R, and sometimes we need to know that there are hard things people go through.  And sometimes we need to know the silly things too.  They keep us Human just as much as the simple and the hard things.

Up in your face,

Put in your place,

As if we care,

Where's his hair...?

Just before break.

A blog I read ends every post with three things they're thankful for.  I don't plan on doing this much, but I thought it appropriate today.  So here you are:

1. A music prof. who stretches me and makes me see life in ways I never could without him, and who consequently inspires TONS of poetry.

2. The hard things in life that push me back to the simple things and to Him.

3. Literary Horcruxes.

Be Still My Soul (Inspired by Home, Siblings, and Steven Sharp Nelson)

"The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."  -William Faulkner

When I first read that part of his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in the year 1950, I was assuming Faulkner was talking about the deep things of life that keep us all going.  The Heavy things like eternity, glory, and heroism.  But now, as I sit in front of our fireplace in the home I spent most of my life in, listening to cello music by Steven Nelson, and musing over everything in my life up unto until this point, I realize that some of the props of man aren't necessarily super deep or even "grey" things.

This house and this city are full of memories for me.  Some of them are very good memories, but a lot of the recent ones have been difficult.  I've written about the long line of people that I've injured in the recent past, and most of them live around here.  I have a tendency to dwell on those things; but as I catch up with a few friends with whom things never change, I become aware of the great memories: the pillars that keep me supported when I feel like I'm falling.  Grandparent's house, good food, the deep connection I've developed in the past few years with my siblings - I love them more than ever, and they're some of my best friends - the wonderful friends I've met on the hill who love me dearly: all these things come rushing over me as I warm myself by the fire.

Food galore,

Relax and snore,

Love and care,

Cure from wear:

Grandparent's house.

  

And while the feelings of wonder and trepidation aren't gone, the fact that I am surrounded by such great friends and a loving family fills me with an awe that is difficult to put into words.  When I feel nostalgic like this (as visits to home generally make me), I like going through old music I used to listen to, or reading old poems, and just thinking about the good things that have happened to me here, and I stumbled across this:

I am one in seven, a piece of a heart,

That is separated for just a beat.

Goodbye isn't forever, though ways we part,

Lord thanks for dear friends, them bless and keep.

I wrote this poem last year for my dearest friends, and I think of it every time we're separated...but today it makes me thankful for them all, and thankful for friends past, and thankful for friends to come, and thankful for friends who will be with me forever...specifically my family.

I guess it's cliche to say such things so close to Thanksgiving, but things become cliche for a reason.  Sometimes I think we forget what that reason is.  The world we live in is bound to be full of wonderful cliches, because there are so many things in our lives that are worth becoming so.

I realize that the previous poem wasn't Scarlequain, and flipping through my little leather book of poems and sayings, I also realize that most of my Scarlequain are not happy or musing on the brighter sides of life.  But then, as I've told many of my friends who take the time to listen, the happier things are the hardest to write about.  They're the things that are so profound that words cannot begin to fathom them.  And a part of me is satisfied to leave it that way.  Let the happy things Feel.  They are too deep to be constricted by words.