stream of consciousness rambling on a Sunday morning

This is stream-of-consciousness so I hope it is at least readable.  I did peruse it again and check and I understand what I was saying and I hope you understand enough to confirm or deny.  So, if you are a tenacious enough blogger, read on let me know what you think.  

 

One of the travesties of the post-modern ideal; the by-product of a thoroughly “original” renaissance is that the true nature, or rather need for art has been lost. Of course, we who know Christ know that all things were put on this earth to glorify God and anything that does not is merely a perversion of something that in it’s proper context would. I cite the marriage bed defiled, the gossip, the nude, the idolatrous love and the wisdom of man without God—all these laws, modes and appetites were put in place by God the Creator. And yet we see that man in his pride; man in his fallen nature has set himself up as a god to control his own fate, to elicit his own loves and let his base desires be the impetus to his greatest achievements, his magnum opus. Art becomes both the worshiper and the idol, its own sanctuary and shrine.

The artist in this context is obsessed, perhaps crazed with the notion that to leave any sort of legacy, one must birth a totally original and novel notion. This is part of the great deception since all life has been in some sense a parody of what came before it ever since the fall. In fact, the very first break from this sort of cycle was the sacrificial death of Christ to free us from the generational cycle of sin and yet we see that as long as Time’s hands keep spinning, this cycle will continue for each generation must in its turn choose release from this fate. Even Christ’s sacrificial death was in a sense a parody of what came before and in parody I do not refer to some comic element or buffoonery, but merely that it mirrored an institution of sacrifice that was laid down before. The difference here is that the I AM, unhampered by the limits of finite scope and sequence laid down the foundation to mirror a building that was not yet begun. This requires Omniscience for it is not merely foresight, but comes from realms for which our minds have no calculations and the laws of this universe do not apply.  

The other interesting aspect of this desire to “create the original” that man in his godless vanity has pursued in this post-Darwinian era is that the artist will go to great, rather absurd lengths to do this. The awful gut-wrenching dissonance replaces the careful construction of the melody and where beauty was once order from chaos, now chaos becomes the new order and beauty itself. The art that comes out mirrors the twisted nature of the unregenerate soul and like playmates calling to each other, these twisted themes are mirrored in the lost souls around the artist and a following is created. The old masters, the “creators” in a human sense, realized that all they did was merely mirror the Creator. God is and will remain the only One who created something out of nothing. He is Eternal and feels no pull from the restrictive chains of the ephemeral. Our bodies, our minds and all that we “create” is tied, is set within a framework that God created out of nothing. So we see that all art is parody of God’s masterpiece and yet it is not His masterpiece, for we see in Scripture that there is more to be revealed that the human mind cannot comprehend. The parody, when done for God’s glory is a thing of beauty and when done for the glorification of the one created, it becomes a thing of shame; a sort of comic prank that man plays on himself without ever being aware that he is doing so.  The great masters of art recognized their dependence on who came before. Certainly all of mankind builds on the shoulders of the giants from before and can claim nothing for themselves.  

The curious notion lies in why so many seek out the “original” idea at the cost of beauty when people indulge themselves in art for a sense of the familiar. They like certain songs, gaze at specific paintings and hang well shot portraits on their wall for the purpose of stirring something of the filial within their souls. What was begotten thinks with fondness on those that begot it. This is where the soul differs from the brain and the body (which post-modern thought relies on) in that the soul is eternal and longs for higher things. So, in seeing the familiar, the soul is longing for home, a home that it will not find in the ephemeral trappings of the terrestrial. It longs for release and in this way if nothing else, we are so far above the animals as to hardly warrant comparison. An animal is not pensive, it does not brood (though it may appear so) and it does not contemplate its own mortality unless it is in the process of being chased by a larger carnivore. The soul-ishness is what gives us a divine beauty. I do not speak of us as gods, but rather as reflections of divinity, which I believe is not found in the body but rather in the soul.  

When I choose a book to read, or a song to listen to or a movie to watch I do not seek out the foreign and the strange, but rather something that has a hint of the familiar, something that ties me to it by a kindred love or desire. This is why a Christian who devotes all their time to secular music, reading and entertainment shows a soul-sickness within for darkness does not long for light nor vice-versa.  

The one that feeds continually on the baser elements shows an appetite for the perverse, the hunger of depravity. The soul that seeks out music that glorifies the temporary pleasures, the body, the sort of “love” that is relegated only to sex and it’s chemical appetites shows it’s true nature in that affiliation. The soul desires that because it is a hint of the familiar; it is, though distorted like the view through warped glass, a longing for the sense of nostalgia that is inherent in all humans. In it’s pure sense we get from a song, book, verse, movie or conversation that feeling of waking up in the arms of your father or mother after a long drive as they take you in complete security from the backseat to your warm bed. It is that Saturday morning ideal of waking up to a day of limitless possibilities, a point-of-view that is robbed from you as age and reality set in and you see in pessimistic clarity that perhaps this day is only average and may hold much pain.  

This is precisely why the Bible tells us that all kinds of evil proceed out of the heart. A child does not need to be trained to do wrong, he is pre-programmed with a carnal nature to do so. He seeks his own will. Tell a child not to touch something and he will break his back to try and touch the very thing you forbid. He is not cognitively aware of this since for him everything is sensory. He does not realize that the thing you forbid him is a stovetop and that indulging himself will only lead to a sensory overload of pain. Man in his pursuit for a “new thing” or art that speaks for itself and its own generation indebted to no one, would relegate us to those children again. The art is to be mindless and straight from the ever fickle and unreliable emotions. This is best pictured in the image of Jackson Pollock as he leaned over a canvas lying on the concrete floor, his sleeves rolled up and the cuffs of his pants likewise above black loafers, (this in itself is a description of those who think they are original—stylists) a cigarette loosely hanging from his lips as he dangles a paint can at a 45 degree angle making arbitrary paths of oil paint on the pure white canvas. There is no thought, no sense of order, just a maze of colors to mirror the chaos in his soul. And now like souls pay thousands to own and display one of these tragic messes on their walls to be admired by like souls who frequent the same “watering holes” of self-wise conversation.

In the arid regions of the Karoo, in a tiny town called New Bethesda, there is a shrine to what happens when man ("man" here being generic for humanity) becomes a law unto himself and seeks to “create” from nothing for his own glory. A tiny town of dirt streets and dusty houses, where people still sit on porch fronts and greet those who venture in like old friends. On the age of this town is the Owl House. It is a monument to man’s depravity. A woman lived there who decided to create art, perhaps for others enjoyment although she eventually lost her mind and became so self-absorbed that she desired neither people nor companionship. The house itself is eerie. There are blackened walls and dark red ceilings all imbedded with shards of glass. Everything is how she left it with even ragged dolls and a tattered threadbare nightgown and worn slippers on her bed. The yard is full of her ‘creations;’ monuments to a darkened soul; each one a concrete statue with a malevolent blend of Islam, Christianity and dark paganism. There are wisemen facing a nativity-esque shrine blended with a place she called her “Mecca.” There are beasts that are a mixture of different beasts with naked angel like creations standing with their hands stretched toward heaven and owls that watch the entire scene with an ever-present vigilance. It is a place that no whole soul should feel at home because every corner, ever closet and every shadow speaks of a brokenness that I have never seen before. And in every room and around every statue I heard other travelers speaking in awe of her great “genius,” of the beauty of what she created…like souls calling to one another. I was never happier to get free from any place. On those dirt streets of New Bethesda as with the famous art galleries of Europe and every other monument to humanity we see the tragic state of the soul. Art has become the vehicle for the soul’s symptoms and if we look at art today, we see that this world is bleeding. A good question to ask is, do I claim filial connection with those whose art is nothing more than a perversion, a shadow mirror of light that dissipates all truth before it can penetrate? Perhaps it is time we all did some soul searching.  

To prove my point of “original” thought…all this musing was sparked (whether it’s good or bad I’ll let you decide for yourself) by listening to C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias lecture on different aspects of Christianity. C.S. Lewis on the Four Loves and Ravi Zacharias on “Can Man Live Without God?.” I am painfully aware of my reliance on others.