A Love Letter to the Artist
In my clinical work, I’m drawn to the artists and the creatives. Or are they drawn to me? One can only ponder this as we only influence one another…completely. Enduringly, intrapersonally and interpersonally, we are ever and only seeking to forage for our aliveness. This “mining” gets played out in my work with my clients - lucky me!
Recently, we have moved in unison to use art to descend into the more granular layers of the Self…getting closer to Soul and Dharma with variated art mediums. Alice Coltrane (yes, John’s wife) and her Universal Consciousness work was recently used as a way to move a young artist out of her head and into her heart.
I told her this - and, it’s great advice for all of us:
Don’t tell anyone what you’re going to do or even what you’re doing. Just do it and put it out there, unabashedly. If we have to tell people what we’re going to do or what we’re doing, then we’re likely pandering to that part of us that needs approval and attention. That’s head, not heart. Art does not seek approval, it seeks disruption of the most beautiful quality.
Alas, all art originates from the most untamed part of us: the heart. As the saying goes, the rib is a cage to contain the wildness. Anatomically, the health of the heart is found in the millisecond-timed variation between the heartbeats. It’s as if we’re made for art that causes disruption. Can it be that syncopation - a stress on the offbeat - is our natural state? Can it be that we’re wired to place rhythmic stresses where they “normally” wouldn’t occur?
In either case, and as such, my clients have moved me to not only see life as one big rendering of art, but to also seek further, by seeing what “society” is: a process of recognition. This recognition is comforting as we are beings drawn to pattern recognition. But, if art is not that which makes us more conscious by way of discomfort, then is it not art? Is it not a production of conscious artistry as opposed to passive popularity? God save us if the the latter over the former!
And, is the latter not what is on the current hamster wheel? I’ve a slight envy for those living in periods of artistic movement; wherein art, there existed a stratum of the intelligentsia of society. Those poking and prodding radical and reformist ideas by way of different mediums, intending to invoke original schemas. Never placating to the desensitized and stupefied.
Unapologetically uninspired by what is being offered on the passive popularity menu -“food” devoid of the nourishment of awe, I’ve been poking my nose in the obscure… dare be dubious and determinate. It’s out there, just not available on the fast-food- art circuit. It’s been so long since I’ve been moved to tears or shivers by music - either lyrically or musically. It is not too much to ask art to assist me in gaining access to my aliveness. It appears, we just need to search, to work a bit to find the artfully obscure. Perhaps search within the “Uneasy Listening” genre?
I’ll leave these ideas here: an incomplete completion. Does that make you uncomfortable? Good!