Artwork from Kate Bush CD A Sky of Honey, via Andrew Campbell
In an article last week, I described Jung’s four orientations for learning, understanding and seeing the world:
- sensual (through the senses),
- emotional (through the heart),
- intellectual (through the mind) and
- instinctual (through the body/genes)
I
described artists as those particularly competent at the sensual and
emotional orientations, and one of the notable capacities I listed
under those of sensual orientation was storytelling. That's because
stories are detailed creations, and require the journalist's precise
and perceptive attention to who, what, when, where, why and how, and
ability to capture them in ways that speak to others. Stories are about
telling what is (or was) from a particular perspective.
As I thought about that I read this from Zane at Lichenology:
I
believe that art is central to the process of change that needs to
happen in the world, but the connection is not straightforward. I've
never been attracted to art that serves as a vehicle to deliver a
Message. While it may have some value, it ceases to be art, in my eyes,
and becomes propaganda—or just bad art.
I've struggled in my own
creative work (I count four short, solo dance performances and a
smattering of poetry as my small opus) to be relevant, but not preachy.
I've wanted to stir people up, to stretch their perception of the
world, and to raise questions without pretending that I have any pat
answers. I find that in the process of creation, I have to turn off my
normally active analytical mind or it gets in the way, always trying to
make sense.
Art ferments in the shadowy world of association and
dream, not in the rational light of day. Like a mushroom, it draws
energy from a vast tangle of subterranean mycelium and fruits briefly,
sending out its spore to the breeze.
Part of what I always
wanted to create through performance was a common experience and a
shared participation in meaning. Our society has perfected the
separation of roles and the partitioning of experience—the separation
of church and state, of mind and body, of performer and audience. It
fits very much with our passive role as consumers, but it doesn't bode
well for the process of social change, where active engagement and
renewal is needed. Good artists bridge boundaries, like the shaman of
traditional cultures, crossing into a different fabric of experience
and bringing back knowledge about how to heal human rifts and live in
accord with some larger truth.
The
change that needs to happen in the world, like the best art, needs to
be participatory. It is not a spectator sport. And like anything in
which we fully participate, there is the possibility of falling short.
So we stand back, we shy away from getting sucked in, preferring the
endless possibility of distraction to the risk of engagement.
A
major new focus of business is on storytelling, and, in the larger
sense, adding context and meaning to information, precisely what Zane
describes as the role of art as a 'shared participation in meaning'.
The essence of good storytelling is engaging the audience, drawing them
in, transporting them, making them participants in the experiencing of the story,
so they really understand its meaning. And so it is with art. In a
sense, all art is storytelling, helping us to understand in a sensual,
emotional, intellectual and
visceral/instinctual way what 'it all' means. It is a bridge between
the four ways of understanding and knowing. Some arts (novels, film)
tell stories in a clearly linear way, while others (music, painting,
sculpture) tell their stories holistically, non-sequentially.
Why
is it then that for most of the last century, there has been a growing
dichotomy between 'popular' art (the mass media, including popular
music, film and novels) and more complex art? We need to know this
because if art is to be a vehicle for social change, it must be
accessible and engaging to activists, to those who would take personal
(Let-Self-Change), political, economic, social, educational,
technological and scientific action as a result of the understanding that art brings them.
The
reason, I think, is not anti-intellectualism or (as Joe Bageant would
have us believe) a dumbing-down of the population to the point complex
art cannot be fathomed, but rather that its very complexity makes it
inaccessible and ‘unpopular’ and hence not useful as a vehicle for
social change.
As I've said before, we loathe complexity
– it offends us that elegant simplicity is usually an illusion, that
everything is beyond our control and understanding, that effective
things are inefficient and efficient things are ineffective to the
point of dysfunctionality. We don't want to work that hard. We do what
we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do what's fun. There is no time or inclination for the complex.
The mainstream media with their sound bites and reductio ad absurbum pander to our longing for simplicity, but they do not create
that longing. We create the paradox ourselves (with some complicity of
politicians and other corporatists) by filling our lives with difficult
work (the work of making a living, the work of making love last, and
the work of satisfying our needs of the moment). After all that
exhausting work, to spend our 'spare' time on anything difficult is
surely masochistic.
And likewise, too many 'artists' don’t want
to work that hard either, especially when formulaic, unoriginal,
amateurish 'popular' works can be so profitable, and complex works so
unappreciated. The enormous popular success of most rap music, trash
fiction, and some really mediocre blogs can only frustrate the true
artists, composers, creators, investigative journalists, craftspeople
and other hard-working 'storytellers' whose work requires an investment
of time and energy that few seem inclined to give. We all want
attention and appreciation, and few will persevere when the terrible
and important truths we show the world are ignored and misunderstood.
So
what do we do, when none of us, not even those who appreciate the need
to know and to act, has the time and energy to appreciate? To
appreciate complex art or complex reality. It’s all just too hard.
For example: Andrew Campbell sent me an image of one of his works (below) as an attempt to articulate the meaning of Now Time.
Many of us try to interpret works of art on a strictly
intellectual level, to 'decipher' it as if it were a puzzle. But complexity cannot be understood on that narrow
level. We have to allow it to be internalized within us in its own way and in its
own time, to 'ferment'. We have to allow it to engage our senses, our
emotions and our instincts holistically with our intellect. We have to think 'about' it. And in today’s world of instant gratification and attention deficit that is a challenging and unrewarded activity, and one that we are increasingly unpracticed at.
Just
as we must bear the responsibility for making this world as bearable a
place as possible, a little bit better each day, despite knowing that
our civilization is unraveling and that what we have done will be
undone (though hopefully remembered by the few brave survivors of this
century), we must, too, bear the responsibility for telling our stories
despite knowing that few are listening and even fewer understand. This
is nothing new.
And so, we brave storytellers, each in our own
way, continue to tell our stories as best we can, perhaps
much as the cave artists did in the millennia before civilization, as
the indigenous peoples did during the millennia of civilization’s
hopeful dawn, and as the artists of the renaissances of our
civilization did as that civilization churned forwards.
We, artists all -- painters, composers of music, sculptors, investigative journalists and many others -- represent to the world the portrait of our civilization’s fourth and final turning. We 'just' tell its story. Whether its meaning will be understood and provoke needed action is not our business.
Perhaps
those who survive civilization’s end, and build a more joyful and
sustainable society, will have the time and energy to appreciate what
we do. And learn from the self-confessed mistakes that cry out in our
portrayal of our terrible world, and its terrible beauty.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
