Lately I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I’ve done with my life for the first forty years and what I’d like to do for the next forty. Most of my life has spent pursuing independent artistic objectives but for some time now I’ve been trying to think of a way to take what I love and translate it into something more stable, something less self-serving. This is especially true now that I have a family and I need to help support them. It isn’t that I am unable to work. I’ve worked most of my life and if nothing else, I know how to knuckle under and do what needs to be done when the rubber meets the road. At my age though, there are two things that get wearisome--milk crates that double as furniture and working from job to job just to get paid.
Most of my life has been spent working on my skills in the performing arts, often paying with my skills in the language arts. Justification has never been an issue, the intrinsic value in music, drama, words, art, these have been internalized my entire life and have guided my choices. However, now I find I need to clarify these values in a world that is losing it’s grip on valuing the cultural as anything beyond extracurricular.
I would like to teach. I would like to teach words, music, art, the things that touch the soul and are not quantifiable. I know I can teach these things and I know it is important to teach these things. I know that the art of ideas and the art of words are completely intertwined and that a life of the imagination is necessarily a life of communication. The products of the imagination only live if they are communicated. (This is perhaps an ironic argument coming from someone who writes a blog that is not intended to be read.)
So this is my increasing fascination, the intersection between art and language, particularly the performing arts. How do these disciplines relate to each other and to the culture of education? Why is it important to worry about words and art--what do they offer beyond classes in science, math, and the ubiquitous “media” that is replacing the world formerly inhabited by words and ideas?
I believe it can be boiled down to three areas of value that are uniquely shaped in the creative and literary arts. These are discipline, culture and self.
Discipline is perhaps not the first thing one thinks of when contemplating education in the creative arts, but it is in fact the foundation of any studies in this realm. We learn grammar in order to write, we learn theory in order to compose or perform, we learn the discipline of the body and mind to recreate characters on stage. More than any other subject, discipline, self-discipline is required to create and recreate art. While some strictures are superficial and external, like the form of a sonnet or a Stanislavskian exercise, with practice, the external becomes internal. While “practice makes perfect” is a cliche, it comes from the understanding that with discipline comes excellence.
Culture, while it can be studied in a history class or other environment is only experienced through the arts and writing of that culture. Reading about the Holocaust in a history book is an entirely different experience from learning music written in a Jewish ghetto or reading the poems written by the children of Terezin. You can discuss the significance of Shakespeare, but until you have been on your feet, acting the character of Mercutio, the connection is merely academic and seldom transforming.
The concept of self is slightly more involved. Initially I was thinking of self esteem, self discipline, self respect and so forth. However, one can gain self respect from learning to excel in any number of disciplines. I believe that when it comes to the arts, development of “self” goes beyond esteem or discipline. Literature, writing, music, drama, painting, these are all gateways into our internal life. We need to raise up the next generation not just with the technology and knowledge to move into the future, but also with the spirit and imagination to face the things we cannot yet imagine. Inspiration leads to inspiration, or so we hope.
Just some initial thoughts, more to come, I think.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Project - Day 20
Clean sheets are the best beginnings.
Hotels are best, bleached into submission, voided of their histories,
they lie crisp and inviting, anonymous.
This is the best sleep, the alone sleep,
hidden rest.
Tucked between sheets where no one can hear,
no one can see.
Time sleeps alone
and is at peace.
It begins and ends like this, white and crisp
and private.
What comes rumpled in between
that is the complication,
the restless mess which opens on waking
and slumps towards consciousness.
Hotels are best, bleached into submission, voided of their histories,
they lie crisp and inviting, anonymous.
This is the best sleep, the alone sleep,
hidden rest.
Tucked between sheets where no one can hear,
no one can see.
Time sleeps alone
and is at peace.
It begins and ends like this, white and crisp
and private.
What comes rumpled in between
that is the complication,
the restless mess which opens on waking
and slumps towards consciousness.
Monday, March 15, 2010
The Project - Day 19
The cloud in my head
is gray
and it drips slowly down my spine,
an inexorable drain.
There was a time when I thought the cloud was real,
I took the gray for stone and bowed my head with the weight,
a genuflection to despair.
The moist tattoo of sorrow is perhaps a lesser burden,
but there is no less pain
in the insistent hovering,
the always perceptible closing of light
that hints at a day
unbroken.
The gift of an eclipse is the corona.
Glittering, circling,
defining blackness within its compass,
each distinct from the other.
Dark promises light.
Gray augurs nothing but gray.
is gray
and it drips slowly down my spine,
an inexorable drain.
There was a time when I thought the cloud was real,
I took the gray for stone and bowed my head with the weight,
a genuflection to despair.
The moist tattoo of sorrow is perhaps a lesser burden,
but there is no less pain
in the insistent hovering,
the always perceptible closing of light
that hints at a day
unbroken.
The gift of an eclipse is the corona.
Glittering, circling,
defining blackness within its compass,
each distinct from the other.
Dark promises light.
Gray augurs nothing but gray.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Project - Day 18
Today is Sunday, so let’s talk a little religion. I was raised mainline protestant, fairly low church, meaning not a lot of pomp and circumstance and occasionally someone would sling on a guitar and sing in the front of church. It was a far cry from today’s praise team style of worship that permeates all denominations, but it was casual and accessible and the church always seemed full of people.
These days I work for a Catholic Church, one of the oldest in the area, singing in the choir as a section leader and honking out the occasional solo. It’s a very traditional service with a diverse crowd in attendance and follows all the liturgical standards of the Catholic faith. While I know I will never be a Catholic (The reasons for this are another page of writing) I find myself strangely comfortable there.
What I love about the Catholic church, and its relations in Protestantism, the Lutheran and Episcopalian churches, is the liturgy. Ironic, since in my low-church upbringing, I was taught to mistrust canned liturgy. We learned that real prayers come from the heart, spontaneously, and aren’t just the same words repeated over and over each week, each year. Although it wasn’t at all clear to me at the time, it seems pretty obvious now that I was being taught that the great liturgical traditions of the church, were rote and inauthentic expressions of faith.
Fast forward twenty years and I am surprised to find I am more comfortable in services at my Catholic gig than going to my home church contemporary worship. I don’t mean to say that this is a judgment of either liturgy, I know that people find meaning and spiritual connection in both types of worship. However, for me, I’m at a place now where I can feel more sincerity in repeating the same words every week, words that have been repeated for centuries and are repeated across the world by millions of people. I believe that words have power and that there is something to be said for the “little c” catholic aspect of a traditional liturgy. It might be true that it requires less creativity to repeat the same words every week and it might be easier to check out, especially on those mornings when the coffee has not yet hit the bloodstream. Still, the repetition of familiar words creates a resonance, a meaning that can exist outside of my own paltry attempts at meaningful intention.
My thought is this, no matter how deeply I feel worship, no matter how sincere my silent and individual prayers, I will always fall short when I stand before God. The idea that we don’t even know how to pray, not really, was always a compelling thought for me, and I have always believed that the entity of the Holy Spirit exists to fill the void between our human inadequacies and God’s divinity. So, if I know I will always be falling short of a true connection with God, then the issue then becomes to try and remove as much as possible that adds to my self-consciousness and separates me from God, rather than to find a “right” connection. The earnest nature of the contemporary “praise team” style of worship, the colloquial prayers, these make me very self-aware, not a state I associate with spiritual development. For now, being able to say with brothers and sisters across the world, “we believe” takes me out of my individual nature and into the corporate body of Christ. Credo is a corporate confession that does not allow for self and anything that releases self creates room for God.
These days I work for a Catholic Church, one of the oldest in the area, singing in the choir as a section leader and honking out the occasional solo. It’s a very traditional service with a diverse crowd in attendance and follows all the liturgical standards of the Catholic faith. While I know I will never be a Catholic (The reasons for this are another page of writing) I find myself strangely comfortable there.
What I love about the Catholic church, and its relations in Protestantism, the Lutheran and Episcopalian churches, is the liturgy. Ironic, since in my low-church upbringing, I was taught to mistrust canned liturgy. We learned that real prayers come from the heart, spontaneously, and aren’t just the same words repeated over and over each week, each year. Although it wasn’t at all clear to me at the time, it seems pretty obvious now that I was being taught that the great liturgical traditions of the church, were rote and inauthentic expressions of faith.
Fast forward twenty years and I am surprised to find I am more comfortable in services at my Catholic gig than going to my home church contemporary worship. I don’t mean to say that this is a judgment of either liturgy, I know that people find meaning and spiritual connection in both types of worship. However, for me, I’m at a place now where I can feel more sincerity in repeating the same words every week, words that have been repeated for centuries and are repeated across the world by millions of people. I believe that words have power and that there is something to be said for the “little c” catholic aspect of a traditional liturgy. It might be true that it requires less creativity to repeat the same words every week and it might be easier to check out, especially on those mornings when the coffee has not yet hit the bloodstream. Still, the repetition of familiar words creates a resonance, a meaning that can exist outside of my own paltry attempts at meaningful intention.
My thought is this, no matter how deeply I feel worship, no matter how sincere my silent and individual prayers, I will always fall short when I stand before God. The idea that we don’t even know how to pray, not really, was always a compelling thought for me, and I have always believed that the entity of the Holy Spirit exists to fill the void between our human inadequacies and God’s divinity. So, if I know I will always be falling short of a true connection with God, then the issue then becomes to try and remove as much as possible that adds to my self-consciousness and separates me from God, rather than to find a “right” connection. The earnest nature of the contemporary “praise team” style of worship, the colloquial prayers, these make me very self-aware, not a state I associate with spiritual development. For now, being able to say with brothers and sisters across the world, “we believe” takes me out of my individual nature and into the corporate body of Christ. Credo is a corporate confession that does not allow for self and anything that releases self creates room for God.
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