When I talk of art, I am talking about the things we humans do to express who we are and what we're about; that gives us a sense of identity. I could (and perhaps should) talk about art in terms of the arts; the art of movement, architecture, fashion, cooking, drama, writing, sculpture, painting, plumbing, farming, multimedia, music, woodworking, and so on.
Art is pervasive.
Art is anything and in everything we humans do that involves creativity; from the person who puts initials in the newly poured cement of a sidewalk to a grandchild who makes grandma's cake recipe for a family celebration.
One might ask what do such mundane experiences have to do with mysticism?
Mysticism involves recognizing the markers that remind us who we are, what we're connected to, and where we are on the path toward a greater realization of being, what I have referred to as Paradise Regained in past posts. These markers are echoed in the products we humans create.
LESSONS IN LEFSE
My wife's grandmother, Grandma T. was Norwegian and made a lot of lefse around Christmas. My wife was not a fan, but I became one. Grandma T. came from humble Norwegian stock - farmers and homesteaders in South Dakota. They lived simply. Her lefse captures the essence of that simplicity. She didn't have any fancy devices to make it, no specific lefse roller. It was all made by hand, rolled out by hand, and baked on a cast iron griddle. People in the area loved her lefse. I love her lefse. It has its own flavor and texture. She made no secret of it and gladly taught people how to make it.
She taught me, and that was an experience in itself. Everything done by touch, taste, sight and smell. "You boil your potatoes and wait until they're this temperature," thrusting my hand in to a pot of drained boiled potatoes, "and then you add about this much lard and mash it all together. Then you add about this much flour, and knead it until it feels like this. Then you roll out like so and put it on the griddle and wait till it starts to bubble and brown a little and smell like this."
Touch, sight, smell, and eventually taste.
People on my wife's side of the family and in the area Grandma T. lived use her simple recipe to this day. I've had other types of lefse and none of them come close to what Grandma T. made. If I want it, I have to make it. I have her cast iron griddle and pans - prized possessions. You can't taste lefse made from her recipe without calling her and her life stories to mind.
Her lefse is not about perfection, it's about experience. There is no consistent outcome in making Grandma T.'s lefse. Each piece is an individual creation in itself; each piece a playful experience awaiting one's creative way of enjoying it. Each piece a work of art.
Mysticism is experiencing a greater sense of what I call Self. I'm not a blood relative of Grandma T.. Apart from the relationship I share with her as my wife's grandmother, we are part of the same Self that all humans, all created things, are. All of us are discrete aspects of that same Self, that myriad of individual creations expressing a universal Being, the Self we emerged from and are merging with. We are works of art for the moment at least, just like Grandma T.'s lefse. As individual aspects of the Self we emerged from, we interact with other aspects such as my interactions with Grandma T.. This broad interactive and mystic perspective of life is embedded in all forms of human art.
CREATED THINGS
It is unfortunate that the term creation has been hijacked in the mindless debate over evolution by "creationists" who insist on their literal understanding of how everything came into being. I'm not going to spend time on that debate but rather attempt to reclaim the concept of creation as it applies to art.
Essentially art is using a material or the function of material things in way to create something "more" than the mere sum of its individual parts and their functions. Creativity begins in the imagination, the sense of things before being realized. More often than not, the sense of things evolve as they take shape. The imagination is never far from the completed work. One could say that imagination is embedded in each work of art and is what connects the work of art to the person experiencing it.
The mystic perspective is connected to this imaginative property experienced in art. There is always a part of the creator residing in the creation, and that is not all. Works of art take on a life of their own; inspiring interpretation and other creations. Once a painting is framed, a sculpture put on a pedestal, a musical score completed, a playwright's script published, a piece of lefse put on a plate, it is freed to be interpreted, free to inspire the creative imagination of others.
Once you experience a Rembrandt, a Rothko, a Van Gogh, a Vermeer; once you experience a Michelangelo, a Rodin, or a Calder; once you experience Bach, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, The Beatles, or Eminem; once you experience a play by Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Arthur Miller; once you experience Grandma T.'s lefse, you know something of the artist and are open to inspiration.
Paradoxically, the individualism expressed in art has a unifying effect on those experiencing it.
Art congregates.
Museums, concert halls, restaurants, or a family dinning table ; anyplace that uses art in any form to draw people attests to art's congregating properties.
PAUSE
Art replicates the human experience. Go to any museum, whether it be a fine art, a historical, or scientific museum and what they all have common is a series of still lifes that portray the human journey. Go to any theater, concert hall; any venue where art is being performed and one can be drawn into a unitive (shared) experience of the human journey. What all of these places have in common is that the experience of them is more than the art or more than the performance, it is also about the experience the audience, the spectators standing or sitting in silence have in a shared, unitive moment of mutual observation on what it is to be human.
A Starry Night
When we are visiting our youngest daughter in New York City, I like visiting one of their many museums. My favorite is the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). There is one painting in MoMA that consistently has a small crowd gathered around it, Van Gogh's Starry Night. I love that painting as do millions, and it is always a thrill to stand in front of it to see it "live."
I am always impressed by the small crowd, pressed together, trying to share the same view. There is a sense of hushed reverence. Spectators become silent in its presence. In essence, it is a religious experience. The only thing that seems to missing is candles and incense to underscore it. The painting is the draw, and it speaks to us of the wonder of the universe in which we live. The experience is in standing with people from around the world in a shared, unitive moment of deep respect for a human creation and the human who created it. Van Gogh remains present in the painting's colors and swirls of the sculpted oil he created.
One thing that can be missed on a first visit is the fact that Van Gogh didn't fully cover the canvas with the painting. There is a space on the left and right side of the canvas that is untouched by paint. One might be tempted to say he didn't finish the painting but he did, and the thin uneven patches of raw canvas peeking out at the painting's edge sends its own message (at least to me), "There is more."
The blank patches give the painting a sense a linearity (probably unintended); that the scene Van Gogh painted is a moment squeezed between a before moment and an after moment; that we are transfixed by the moment he portrays and what a moment it is. What Van Gogh captures is the essence of Pause as I have been using it in these posts on mysticism; those moments between moments that lead to transfiguration.
Pause is not only expressed in the visual arts, but all of the arts. The noted rest in music, the prolonged pose in dance, the dramatic or comedic pause by an actor in the performance of her line are done to bring the audience to a transfiguring moment frequently defined as resolution.
TRANSFIGURATION
One of the best artistic examples I can personally think of that demonstrates an artistic resolution of pause into transfiguration is a performance by Simon Johnson on the grand organ at St.Paul's Cathedral in London, England. I consider the cathedral Christopher Wren built and the pipe organ that has been installed and added on to over the centuries to be one instrument. The resonance of the domed cathedral is unique in its ability to capture and hold onto sound whether vocal or instrumental.
While visiting the Cathedral with my family in 2011, I purchased a recording of Simon Johnson playing the organ which included William Strickland's arrangement of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. Barber's Adagio has been adapted from its original string composition to arrangements for voice, organ, and piano. The Adagio exemplifies the transition from Pause to Transfiguration. It lyrically builds upon a slow, soft, melodic theme framed by various notational contexts (variations) that from a mystic perspective express the unitive force finding expression in individual moments, the variations of a common theme played out in various contexts of life.
My favorite way of listening to Simon Johnson's performance of Barber's piece at St. Paul's is to sit in candle light or dim lighting with my headphones on to keep away any distractions. In fact, I prefer to listen to all musical performances from a recording rather than live performances for the same reason. I find audiences distracting during musical performances. It's not the audience. It's a me-thing. I'm easily distracted by people. Church services being an exception; in part, because my focus is on other things.
Mr. Johnson brilliantly plays the cathedral as much as he plays the organ. He utilizes its unique reverberation and the organ's tonality to maximize the impact of Barber's Adagio on the listener. As the piece reaches its pinnacle point of the prolonged crescendo, I visualize the dome of the cathedral as an inverted cup filling up with sound - sound that overflows the rim of the dome and pours out into the transepts and into the nave until he stops feeding it. When his hands and feet leave the keyboard and pedalboard, the sound lingers for few seconds as it naturally decays and decrescedos into the silence of the cathedral which he allows to settle in (pause) to give the piece the dramatic effect it deserves, and then the theme quietly begins as it started and continues to an elongated, hushed ending that hints at its continuation in another realm.
Transfiguration is about merger; the end point we are all headed for, the singularity from which it all began, from which we and everything before and after emerges. This transfigurative property is found in artistic expressions. Transfiguration results in seeing things differently, hearing things differently, and feeling things differently. Transfiguration is seeing the bigger picture of our unitive existence through a perspective that can be experienced and expressed only through a work of creativity.
The Transfiguration Story Revisited
To illustrate what I've just said and to connect the dots to what I've written in my posts on the mystic journey, allow me to revisit the work of art that started me on this venture into mysticism, the story of Jesus's Transfiguration.
When Jesus was on the mountain top with his disciples Peter, James and John, Jesus began to glow and there appeared in that glow along with him, Moses and Elijah. Then a cloud covers all six of them and the voice of God says, "This is my beloved Son, listen to him."
At that very isolated moment, which beloved son was God referring to? Moses, Elijah, or Jesus? Each, in their own linear moment, could have been referred to as such. Each in their own time demanded attention.
Theologically speaking, there are answers to why God meant Jesus, but at the moment I'm not going to consider them because there appears to be mystical perspective offered in the story that transcends mere theological speculation; a perspective hinted in the artistry of the story's presentation. This story is all about sight, sound, and feeling, the tools of art used to bring one to a greater sense of being. It is about being transfixed by and in a momentary experience shared by others.
What the story utilizes is something that Christians largely treat with suspicion, numerology as symbolism. Numbers have been given meanings through the ages beyond their mere arithmetic functions. The New Testament uses numbers in a symbolic fashion.
Three disciples and three personages of the term "Son;" three observers and three conversers. Six in all; the number representing making of man by God in God's image. The number six is also used to represents chaos or confusion as reflected in Peter's response.
Then there is the cloud - bright in one version, hinted at being dark in others - a dramatic (one could say abstract) pause between one moment and another - a moment of wilderness before transfiguration brings us back to a new perspective of the person left standing on the mountain, Jesus.
Jesus in this story is portrayed as the unitive Son of God - the Son or Child of God in whom all God's Children are present. That's the art of this story (and the art of theology at its finest).
The mystic perspective always brings us back to the present in a new transfigured light after shedding light on the moment captured by an artist. It is the new light of transfiguration that moves one forward on the mystic journey we are all on.
Art makes us pause. Art transfigurates.
Art expresses the unitive force that is keeping the universe together; the force that is heard in Barber's Adagio, the force that is seen in Van Gogh's Starry Night, and the force that is tasted in Grandma T.'s lefse.
Until next time, stay faithful.
