ART'S PERSPECTIVES

When exploring the variant realities we humans create, the museum, the theatrical stage, the concert hall, the library and the restaurant prove to be the best resources by which to navigate the broad spectrum of those realities.  Sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch flood the emotional senses of awe, ambivalence, joy, happiness, love, compassion, longing, anger, fear, hate, disgust, sorrow, sadness, and the like to create and recall memories that shape our perspectives and understanding of the realities we humans have created.   Similarities can be as shocking as the differences we discover which challenge our perspectives and understandings of the realities we have created within this creative universe.  

Art is paradoxical.  To construct art always involves the deconstructing of something; usually the products of nature like rocks, plants, and animals to create the food we eat, the sculptures, the musical instruments, the paints, the theaters, the libraries we make and the books we write, and so on.  The art of living things is made up of living things that have been deconstructed by nature.  The atoms we are made of are recycled from the atoms that once made up dinosaurs and one-celled animals that evolved from stellar and planetary collisions billions of years ago.  Birdsong, hoots, howlers, squeals, booms, and the human voice evolved into the language of earth's species that began with the deconstruction of a universal silence, known as the Big Bang which created an eternal hum that sings throughout the universe.  

Art is analytical.  All art is an analysis of what is.  The tools that we and other animals have created to feed ourselves and make life more comfortable began with an analysis of the conditions in which we live.  Even plants, perhaps amongst the most creative life forms on the planet, are analytically reacting to the conditions of their environment; having the ability to create chemicals from light in order to protect themselves and which other life forms, including we humans, have become dependent on in order to exist. For us humans we use every from of art to express and analyze who and what we are.

Art is proportional.  This may strike some as me exposing a bias to certain forms of art that "make sense" mathematically.  Math certainly is evident in art and almost all art forms can be understood and dissected mathematically, but where art is concerned, proportionality must also fall within the domain of art's paradoxical and analytical domains to express the disproportionate.  In the visual arts, proportion and disproportion exist in classical and abstract forms of art.  In music, proportion and disproportion exist in classical harmonies and lyrical sequences as well as dissonant harmonies, syncopations and tonal qualities.  In the theatrical performance, we find both classical and absurdist theater.  In literature, especially in poetry, there are classical, abstract, and dissonant forms.  Even novels are increasingly exploring proportionality with the twisted or absurdist plots that apparently have no connection to reality as we know it, but which make us think about the reality we live in, the purpose behind all art. 

Human beings as works of art from which the variant perspectives of reality emerge and are expressed is too big a topic to include in this post, but collectively we are the outcome of universes creative processes, works of art.  Within that creative process we have created realities that are expressed and analyzed in the art we create.  The universe is an ever expanding work of art that we cognitive creatures are blessed to enjoy and ponder in the time we are given to interact with it.  

Norm

   

  

 

FAITHFULLY AGNOSTIC

What does it mean to be a faithful agnostic?    

When I began this blog, my definition of a faithful agnostic was one who remained faithful to the Christian faith I belonged to as I questioned certain aspects of its teachings.  It comes as no surprise that  I have come to understand that Christianity does not lend itself to being questioned. 

While some theologians claim that doubt is a path to faith, as an agnostic I can only respond paradoxically by saying, "Perhaps but perhaps not."   Both theists and atheists dislike that sort of answer.   For Christians, doubt is tolerable as long as it doesn't result in denial of its main tenets.  On the other hand, atheists are frustrated with someone who doubts but holds that there might be some meaning to a long-held beliefs that have no factual backing.  Humans are uncomfortable with the grayness of ambiguity.  "Either be for something or be against it."    

There is a Christian (and thus a cultural) bias against being non-committal which I grew up with and is expressed in the third chapter of the Book of Revelation where its author writes:  

"To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:  ... I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."   That's an image that can stick with one. 

What about religion?

When it comes to theistic religion, I have cooled down to the point of being on the cool side of tepid rather than lukewarm.  I get that a good many people feel they need religion in their lives as it gives them a hint of certainty and a modicum of control over the chaos we all fear.  On the other hand, I also know that all religions have their ardent ideologists who have caused much of the chaos we fear and have led to the most violent wars in history.    

I am reticent to discuss the topic of God, which I've done a great deal of in past posts, but I feel compelled to give a brief repost of where I'm at on the topic.  The term God is problematic as it generally personates something as accessible and capable of being appeased or manipulated to do what we ask.  There has never been nor can there ever be any proof that such individuated being exists.  

When I use the term God, I am thinking of a ubiquitous force that permeates the universe, including us.  Hypothetically speaking, we are because it (the universe) is.  That is perhaps the closest one can get to certainty with regard one's existence.  

What about reality?

I have said in past posts, that reality is consensus of perceptions.  In that sense we humans are dealing with a multitude of realities at any given point in our collective history.  Every religion, theistic and secular, creates its perceptions of reality.  All perceptions are malleable.  Those that constitute common shared perceptions of objects are those which have been handed down as a continuous chain of perceptions.  Ultimately, reality is nothing more than  perceptions that have no intrinsic meaning.  

Beyond shared mundane perceptions of objects, reality becomes increasingly diverse as abstract perceptions called ideologies.  Most malleable realties are those that broadly fall under the domains of economics, politics, and religion; realities that have an impact on the welfare of every living creature on our planet home. 

Being an agnostic does not mean I don't care about such ideological realities.  I care very much about them.  My skepticism does not make me ambivalent to them - quite the opposite.  Skepticism leads me to research and understand the ideological realities that we humans create and are dealing with.  

If one wants to study the vastness of the realties we create, art in all of its various forms is a great place to start.   Dance, music, novels, plays, poetry,  paintings, sculptures, all forms of audio, culinary, and visual arts are ways to engage our senses and our variant perceptions of what is real in the world of our making.  In the post that follows, I will ponder with the reader how art projects our perceptions and shapes our sense of reality.

* * *

Norm   

THE MORNING OF HOPE - A Poem

 

The Morning Of Hope

                                            The morning of hope had vanished behind flag-striped booths 

                                            where dotted ballots erased a republic with pock marks 

                                            made on a paper wall by a firing squad, millions strong. 

                                           Darkness descended before the sun could rise; a horizon of avarice and fear

                                            shading the beacon on the hill and the golden lamp welcoming the 

                                            tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free.

                                    The people spoke the sentence that doomed their freedom;

                                     the irony lost with the loss of the dream once 

                                    held by those who said it.

                                            Time backwards does not flow,

                                            Molding a future from a history once lived 

                                            never lives again.

                                    The past a fading mirage, 

                                    a lifeless icon offering nothing but the semblance 

                                    of a bygone remembrance.

                                    The dictated day will be long.

                                    Where no sun rises, no sun will set.

                                   The sun will rise on a day not dictated,

                                    but on what will it shine?

                                            Norm

                                            November 6, 2024