IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

A Conversation with My Dad

As a creative person, I can be...extreme.  In my twenties, I discovered the Enneagram, and embraced the label, “Tragic Romantic”:

“Motivated by the need to understand and to be understood, you desire experiences that are rich with feeling and meaning. You may find it easier to deal with painful emotions than to deal with the tedium of daily routine.”

-http://www.enneagram.net/type4.html

I must have been an extra-emotional teenager to raise.  Thank God I had extraordinary parents.  I remember a conversation with my dad at a fast food place.  I don’t know if he planned it, or if we just happened to be alone together and the opportunity presented itself.  But he began to talk about…well, feeling.  And longing.  And understanding that I had a desire to experience more than a mundane, daily existence.

I was in heaven, listening to my very practical father talk about such things!  He said, “You want to know if getting up, going to work, coming home, and going to bed day after day is ‘all there is’.”  I leaned in.  My dad was about to validate what I knew must be true:  that ordinary lives were okay for some people, but that special, artistic people like me could look forward to dynamic lives filled with exciting adventures and intense meaning.  He said, “The answer is yes.  That’s all there is.”

If you’re like me, you’re probably screaming, “WHAT???  How could a father tell his child there’s nothing more to life than monotonous routine?  That’s criminal!”  But my dad, in his fatherly wisdom, knew exactly what his tragically romantic daughter needed to hear.  If I had been a different child—perhaps disengaged, isolated, or prone to depression—his advice might have been quite opposite.  But he’d raised me and knew me well.  He’d seen the best and worst of my artistic sensibilities, and his wise advice for me—stated exactly how I needed to hear it—was, “Embrace the mundane.”

That day, my dad gifted me with a perspective that has served me well.  He helped me to see the value and purpose of building structure into my days, and of giving attention to the seemingly mundane parts of life.  While the picture of an artist engrossed in her work, not stopping to eat, too consumed to sleep, is indeed romantic, it tends also to be unnecessarily tragic.  And over the years I have found that when I am cyclically in a season of being all over the place, letting my fancies rule my time and resources, it is by embracing the mundane that I am able to turn my fancies into something productive and meaningful.

Oh, how I miss my dad.

ART APPRECIATION

I don’t spend much time surfing the net.  Oh, I’m there plenty, however most of my time online is for a very specific purpose.  But tonight, faced with the pressure of producing my second blog post, wanting desperately for it to be as interesting as the first, and trying to decide upon a worthy topic, I found myself…surfing…

…and enjoying myself immensely.  I found myself in a giant internet museum, looking around and appreciating an immense treasury of creative works.  I do spend so much time in the urgency of my own creative pursuits that I forget the value of art appreciation.  But tonight I found this:

This animation was created by Nina Paley to support her position that all creative work is derivative.  I think the video is a beautiful creative work in and of itself.  It illustrates a multi-faceted and interesting argument, at http://questioncopyright.org/minute_memes/all_creative_work_is_derivative.  Here is an excerpt:

“The whole history of human culture evolves through copying, making tiny transformations (sometimes called ‘errors’) with each replication. Copying is the engine of cultural progress. It is not ‘stealing.’ It is, in fact, quite beautiful, and leads to a cultural diversity that inspires awe.”

The statement at the end of the video, “All creative work builds on what came before,” brings to my mind generations of artists in reverse order, each tweaking the art of the previous generation.  My mind travels ever backward until…what?  A first creation?  An original?  For me, Paley’s statement, drawn to its logical conclusion, invites a discussion of origin.

As a Christian, I believe that God is the original Creator of all things, and that He created man in His image.  I believe that is why humans possess the desire to create.  In my worldview, “what came before” takes me ever backward to the original Creator.  And I, a “little ‘c’” creator, feel a sense of connectedness and purpose because I am an artist in a long line of artists that goes all the way back to the original Artist, “In the beginning.”

What do you think?  Do you think Paley’s statement is true?  Is all creative work derivative, or can man create something new?

SALIERI AND HIS TRIBE

I was 14 when Peter Shaffer’s movie “Amadeus” came out.  This was my coming of age movie, for it was through watching Antonio Salieri wrestle with his shortcomings that I recognized my own.  When the credits rolled I could no longer view myself through my parents’ hopeful eyes—a child bright with promise—but instead I was left with an honest awareness of my human deficiency.

I identified passionately with F. Murray Abraham’s Salieri.  I had considerable musical ability, and even my own “Mozart” (a rival in band who lately bettered me more often than not).  But it was Salieri’s intense longing to create beauty—coexisting painfully with his personal limitations—that bonded me to him.

In the video clip above, Salieri describes Mozart’s Adagio Serenade (K.361) as follows:

"On the page it looked nothing.  The beginning simple, almost comic.  Just a pulse - bassoons, basset horns - like a rusty squeezebox.  And then suddenly - high above it - an oboe, a single note, hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took it over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight! This was no composition by a performing monkey! This was a music I’d never heard. Filled with such longing, such unfulfillable longing. It seemed to me that I was hearing a voice of God.”

This scene is not the recollection of one who simply appreciates a beautiful creation, but of one who longs to create something beautiful himself.  It would not be enough to reproduce or imitate another’s work.  It is absolutely the unique, personal creation that must be attempted again, and again.

It is from this place of longing that I am motivated, according to Albert Einstein, all of the time.  If you are reading this blog, chances are you are, too, and I’m happy to make your acquaintance.  C. S. Lewis wrote, "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."  I look forward to our journey together.