Most educated people say,”Where is it written? Our people say where is it lived?
Steve Gonzales
We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in an epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of near and far, of the side by side, of the dispersed.
Michael Foucalt
How will we know it is us without our past.
John Steinbeck
Community is local life aware of itself
Wendell Berry
The White man’s words are no good. They don’t give pictures to your mind
Anonymous Apache
One could say that when an old man or women dies in the Hispanic world, a whole library dies with that person.
Carlos Fuentes
Lucy Lippard in her book The Lure of the Local goes on to say…
“Place is a locus of desire. Every time we enter a new place we become one of the ingredients of an existing hybridity which is what all “local places” exist of. By entering that hybrid, we change it; and in each situation we play a different roll. The lure of the local is a pull of a place that operates on each of us, exposing our politics and spiritual legacies. It is the geographical component of the psychological need to belong somewhere, one anecdote to a prevailing alienation. The lure of the local is that undertone to modern life that connects it to the past we know so little and the future we are aimlessly concocting. Every place’s name is a story, out outcropping of the shared tales that form the bedrock of community. Untold land is unknown land. Indigenous names tend to locate resources for common good-pointing out a place where a healing herb grows or the water is bad-or to say what happened there. "
This is why local art’s ultimate power is the chronicalizing of time such that the communal construction of humans can manifest itself in a sense of sacred place or space. Artists must root themselves in a place and consider that the one place out of which all time and space reveal themselves. In this space we discover the sacredness of our human longings, our deepest desire for meaning and purpose. In this particular place our creativity and artistic expression become a reflection of the really real. Root your creativity in a people and place. Know the names of beauty's location.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Losing One's Mind to FInd One's Voice
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted
Martin Luther King Jr.
I have always been formed by the big questions. A product of the age of doubt and skepticism, I tend to embrace all experience with a degree of aloofness, distance, and separation. This has done me well in the area of academics and the mind as I have aspired to teach and be a part of an intellectual community. However, I found that I also sought to answer the “big questions” with the power and intensity of artistic expression. This posture often seemed at odds with my clinical engagement of experience and my tendencies to deconstruct and analyze. I began to discover that the creative process involved in art making was often opposed or deterred by this purposely detached sense of observation. In fact, it was the very act of theoretical observation that often kept me out of the serendipity of creativity and the growth and nurturing of my imagination.
George Steiner, in his book Real Presences, offers with graceful eloquence, the idea of art making as being rooted in a transcendent posture that removes creativity from the world of the scientific or therapeutic impulse. It is in the disciplined worlds of science, psychotherapy as well as post modern deconstructionism which attempt to render art making mere chemical responses to stimuli, objective observations or even nihilistic meanderings about nothing. Steiner contends it is the very act of meaning seeking in art that roots its formative power in the likeness of God's creative urgings. It is when we imbue ultimate meaning to our endeavors that the very process of art making takes us out of this distanced critique into the very presence of a created world. In this pose we are acting like our Creator. In this bearing we are truly present.
This blog is for individuals who have chosen the arts as a vocation or avocation and who also see that act through the lense of faith and spirituality. As a Christian, my lense has taken on a distinctly Orthodox coloring in recent years and for that I do not apologize. In fact, it is out of my faith positions that the bigger questions find a home and place out of which to grow and be manifest. It is under the canopy of faith that my aesthetic draws its purpose and epistemology. It is in this knowing that my personhood begins to find a story and destiny much larger than my isolated self can manifest. I find my self in relation to something larger than myself.
It appears that the nature of self is fluid and highly permeable. This porous nature is part of the wonder inherent in our humanness. However, like flowers, there are particular genus and species. There are roses and there are particular kinds of roses. Not all roses of the same genus and species are alike. Difference is written into our nature as well as similarity. In our early years we often play at difference and adopt the highly formed expressions of differentiation as a badge of honor. We work hard at creating distinction and variance so as to heighten our supposed points of view. But these adoptions are borrowed. Yet these excursions into the aesthetics and machinations of others are not ultimately lost. Much like a child in his or her grade school years, we are learning through rote memorization and repetition. Many musicians first learn their craft in a cover band learning the music of others. The more music one learns the deeper and wider the nuanced lexicon of choices and expressions becomes. Each nuance offers a unique perspective thus adding depth and breadth to our unconsciously submerged perspective. Still, we have only borrowed a view or voice. We are not speaking for ourselves as much as we are repeating what we deem worth repeating. We are learning the grammar of our imagination, the mother tongue of art making.
To begin to speak for ourselves can involve spiritual change. As in the case of all growth and maturity, pain often accompanies the growing awareness of being in our own body, living out of our own history and saga. We continue to speak of life in general, however, we now begin to slow our tendencies to borrow a voice or story from others and allow ourselves to sit inside our own expression and turn of a phrase. For the believer pain, suffering and prayer usually accompany this process. This is due to the fact that speaking our own story is our birthright. Our life is a gift thus our sharing of that life is the return of that gift as stewardship. To steward one’s gift is to steward one’s life. To guard and nurture one’s life is to listen to the heart of God as He knits Himself into the very fibers of our consciousness. The discovery of Him on each page of our life, the sighting of Him in each painting, the naming of Him in each poem, the joy of Him in each dance ushers in the season of speaking in our own voice. Now we begin to speak not merely for ourselves.
This can sound like an isolated engagement and possibly over spiritualized. When one’s true voice is emerging it may feel like everything else but spiritual. This breakthrough is often a breakdown. This experience is an infiltration of an authentic vision and is a sighting only known through the experience of suffering. Why suffering? Affliction and anguish frame our days inside the reality of our death. This imposes an awareness of our creatureliness upon us. This limiting encounter with eternity breaks open our delusion about the drama and grandiosity we can play around in rather than get down to the certainty of life’s limits and our place in that actuality.
Thus we must locate ourselves in a community (not just a local one but a global- i.e. Christian) Out of what tradition do we create? Many have thought that art traditions had more to do with particular styles rather than particular ways in which the imagination is formed. Style it appears is a preference that can change at will. Even one’s sense of being formed out of a tradition can be as well. We are, however, always planted in some tradition, some way of knowing and imagining. When we acknowledge this over arching story we can then work within that canopy of narratives and truly find ourselves inside this larger picture.
Ultimately, the creative act is rooted in a communal act of meaning making. The best art always comes from community. Today, much of art making is done in isolation of a larger task. That considerable undertaking at this point in our human history may very well be the salvation of the earth. Artists are now being called upon to join hearts and hands with the Creator to assemble enclaves of beauty that craft not merely materials in a particular medium, but as Steiner asserts, root us in something truly transcendent. This is art making in a first order presence. This is being there to see and know and speak the beauty while it pours over our souls pointing past the moon to something beyond. This may only take place when we lose the detached distance of a post modern cynicism (lose our minds) and discover the power of our innocent declaration (find our voice).
Martin Luther King Jr.
I have always been formed by the big questions. A product of the age of doubt and skepticism, I tend to embrace all experience with a degree of aloofness, distance, and separation. This has done me well in the area of academics and the mind as I have aspired to teach and be a part of an intellectual community. However, I found that I also sought to answer the “big questions” with the power and intensity of artistic expression. This posture often seemed at odds with my clinical engagement of experience and my tendencies to deconstruct and analyze. I began to discover that the creative process involved in art making was often opposed or deterred by this purposely detached sense of observation. In fact, it was the very act of theoretical observation that often kept me out of the serendipity of creativity and the growth and nurturing of my imagination.
George Steiner, in his book Real Presences, offers with graceful eloquence, the idea of art making as being rooted in a transcendent posture that removes creativity from the world of the scientific or therapeutic impulse. It is in the disciplined worlds of science, psychotherapy as well as post modern deconstructionism which attempt to render art making mere chemical responses to stimuli, objective observations or even nihilistic meanderings about nothing. Steiner contends it is the very act of meaning seeking in art that roots its formative power in the likeness of God's creative urgings. It is when we imbue ultimate meaning to our endeavors that the very process of art making takes us out of this distanced critique into the very presence of a created world. In this pose we are acting like our Creator. In this bearing we are truly present.
This blog is for individuals who have chosen the arts as a vocation or avocation and who also see that act through the lense of faith and spirituality. As a Christian, my lense has taken on a distinctly Orthodox coloring in recent years and for that I do not apologize. In fact, it is out of my faith positions that the bigger questions find a home and place out of which to grow and be manifest. It is under the canopy of faith that my aesthetic draws its purpose and epistemology. It is in this knowing that my personhood begins to find a story and destiny much larger than my isolated self can manifest. I find my self in relation to something larger than myself.
It appears that the nature of self is fluid and highly permeable. This porous nature is part of the wonder inherent in our humanness. However, like flowers, there are particular genus and species. There are roses and there are particular kinds of roses. Not all roses of the same genus and species are alike. Difference is written into our nature as well as similarity. In our early years we often play at difference and adopt the highly formed expressions of differentiation as a badge of honor. We work hard at creating distinction and variance so as to heighten our supposed points of view. But these adoptions are borrowed. Yet these excursions into the aesthetics and machinations of others are not ultimately lost. Much like a child in his or her grade school years, we are learning through rote memorization and repetition. Many musicians first learn their craft in a cover band learning the music of others. The more music one learns the deeper and wider the nuanced lexicon of choices and expressions becomes. Each nuance offers a unique perspective thus adding depth and breadth to our unconsciously submerged perspective. Still, we have only borrowed a view or voice. We are not speaking for ourselves as much as we are repeating what we deem worth repeating. We are learning the grammar of our imagination, the mother tongue of art making.
To begin to speak for ourselves can involve spiritual change. As in the case of all growth and maturity, pain often accompanies the growing awareness of being in our own body, living out of our own history and saga. We continue to speak of life in general, however, we now begin to slow our tendencies to borrow a voice or story from others and allow ourselves to sit inside our own expression and turn of a phrase. For the believer pain, suffering and prayer usually accompany this process. This is due to the fact that speaking our own story is our birthright. Our life is a gift thus our sharing of that life is the return of that gift as stewardship. To steward one’s gift is to steward one’s life. To guard and nurture one’s life is to listen to the heart of God as He knits Himself into the very fibers of our consciousness. The discovery of Him on each page of our life, the sighting of Him in each painting, the naming of Him in each poem, the joy of Him in each dance ushers in the season of speaking in our own voice. Now we begin to speak not merely for ourselves.
This can sound like an isolated engagement and possibly over spiritualized. When one’s true voice is emerging it may feel like everything else but spiritual. This breakthrough is often a breakdown. This experience is an infiltration of an authentic vision and is a sighting only known through the experience of suffering. Why suffering? Affliction and anguish frame our days inside the reality of our death. This imposes an awareness of our creatureliness upon us. This limiting encounter with eternity breaks open our delusion about the drama and grandiosity we can play around in rather than get down to the certainty of life’s limits and our place in that actuality.
Thus we must locate ourselves in a community (not just a local one but a global- i.e. Christian) Out of what tradition do we create? Many have thought that art traditions had more to do with particular styles rather than particular ways in which the imagination is formed. Style it appears is a preference that can change at will. Even one’s sense of being formed out of a tradition can be as well. We are, however, always planted in some tradition, some way of knowing and imagining. When we acknowledge this over arching story we can then work within that canopy of narratives and truly find ourselves inside this larger picture.
Ultimately, the creative act is rooted in a communal act of meaning making. The best art always comes from community. Today, much of art making is done in isolation of a larger task. That considerable undertaking at this point in our human history may very well be the salvation of the earth. Artists are now being called upon to join hearts and hands with the Creator to assemble enclaves of beauty that craft not merely materials in a particular medium, but as Steiner asserts, root us in something truly transcendent. This is art making in a first order presence. This is being there to see and know and speak the beauty while it pours over our souls pointing past the moon to something beyond. This may only take place when we lose the detached distance of a post modern cynicism (lose our minds) and discover the power of our innocent declaration (find our voice).
Monday, September 1, 2008
Evidential Power of Poetry
Poems are moments of clarity the soul offers up for guidance. They are the faces of a thousand submerged beings unable to offer up their voice in daily conversation. They speak in the reverent moments when we allow them voice.
I am child of the modern. My soul races after meaning even in the midst of ecstasy and worship. I am disconnected, dismantled, strewn all over the formulas and theories of my father and his father. This journey has made me the ultimate personality, the cloud of knowing of everything but the most needed.
Who would have known that I was truly loved? Could anyone speaking the language of proof and boundaries recognize the holy imagination quietly walking in the front gate of my heart and taking up residence? Who would have known God would take up His residence in my heart and love me. Ravish me in those places dark and hidden?
Now years later I am a child again. I look forward to death, to life, to this day to this moment. Life is a journey seeking the restless, pondering and wandering of an orphan’s heart. The very frame work of my soul has been formed in the hollow idealism and the hedonism of the age. I hate what I want but still desire. I see myself with clarity and wish for blindness. I long for more but am too cynical to walk into its possibility. Thus. I am deconstructing. I am collapsing in on myself.
Poems, rants, and essays represent that implosion. Their darkness is my voice; their hopefulness is submerged but ever present. But, in truth, the overall emotionality of these poems speaks of the end of a person. For me, this person is Raymond Webb. This was my original name before I was adopted. Although fairly unaware of my heritage and genealogy, I do mythically realize the nature-nurture hold on my soul. Much of my journey has been the releasing of a sacred self who speaks with a deeper sense of knowing. It is my prayer that these poems will name the countless ruminations of a soul colliding with its many selves. These collisions are gifts of sorts. May the naming bring forth life from death.
Influenza
Under the influence
I raise my hand to my mouth
In hopes to lessen the radiant power of words
Words held back for ions
Words held hostage through possession
Words now in collusion with some psychic filter
In this moment
After years of mute exile
These words
That occupy entire terrains of my soul
Throwing moods left and right
Peaking into the dark
Swooning like a drunken lover
Feigning love as illness
Reveal to me
That which shines ever so brightly in the lunatic dark
More often than not owns my very soul
I am child of the modern. My soul races after meaning even in the midst of ecstasy and worship. I am disconnected, dismantled, strewn all over the formulas and theories of my father and his father. This journey has made me the ultimate personality, the cloud of knowing of everything but the most needed.
Who would have known that I was truly loved? Could anyone speaking the language of proof and boundaries recognize the holy imagination quietly walking in the front gate of my heart and taking up residence? Who would have known God would take up His residence in my heart and love me. Ravish me in those places dark and hidden?
Now years later I am a child again. I look forward to death, to life, to this day to this moment. Life is a journey seeking the restless, pondering and wandering of an orphan’s heart. The very frame work of my soul has been formed in the hollow idealism and the hedonism of the age. I hate what I want but still desire. I see myself with clarity and wish for blindness. I long for more but am too cynical to walk into its possibility. Thus. I am deconstructing. I am collapsing in on myself.
Poems, rants, and essays represent that implosion. Their darkness is my voice; their hopefulness is submerged but ever present. But, in truth, the overall emotionality of these poems speaks of the end of a person. For me, this person is Raymond Webb. This was my original name before I was adopted. Although fairly unaware of my heritage and genealogy, I do mythically realize the nature-nurture hold on my soul. Much of my journey has been the releasing of a sacred self who speaks with a deeper sense of knowing. It is my prayer that these poems will name the countless ruminations of a soul colliding with its many selves. These collisions are gifts of sorts. May the naming bring forth life from death.
Influenza
Under the influence
I raise my hand to my mouth
In hopes to lessen the radiant power of words
Words held back for ions
Words held hostage through possession
Words now in collusion with some psychic filter
In this moment
After years of mute exile
These words
That occupy entire terrains of my soul
Throwing moods left and right
Peaking into the dark
Swooning like a drunken lover
Feigning love as illness
Reveal to me
That which shines ever so brightly in the lunatic dark
More often than not owns my very soul
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