This was sparked off by Laura's story, which I quote here.
I heard a story today: 'A teacher was supervising her young pupils during class. As she walked round she noticed that one little girl was very intent on her drawing.
'What are you drawing?' asked the teacher.
'God,' said the child.
'But no one knows what God looks like,' said the teacher.
'They will soon,' said the child as she continued her drawing.
A few of us met with Mr Jaiswal at the weekend to talk about art - everyone there was either an artist of some kind or a writer - and he said "the artist is the soul of the school". He added that while the rationalist understands the past very well, he has no vision of the future; but the artist sees the future.
This phrase, "the future" is particularly odd. We are accustomed in our tradition to think of the present as the only reality, yet Mr Jaiswal in another talk spoke about "the absolute of the past", "the absolute of the present" and "the absolute of the future". Creativity is "the absolute of the future". What does this mean?
Maybe the key is the Sanskrit word sat, which means "real", "good" and "manifest". To connect with the present is to connect with sat. Then we have the word asat which has some negative connotations, but also carries the sense of "unmanifest". In one of the Upanishads (sorry, can't remember where) the asat is higher than the sat. This makes sense, of course, because the unmanifest is closer to the absolute.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V Sc i.
So the artist, it seems, discovers the asat, that which will be, while the practical man connects only with the sat, that which is.
When we met the Indian tradition at the start of the 1960s, we brought with us a tradition that connected strongly with the sat of the present moment. Accordingly, there was a strong mistrust of anything that smacked of asat: imagination, dream, thinking are all words we learned to disparage. They were associated with delusion, sickness and psychosis - which, of course, has some truth. Shakespeare in the same passage says "The lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are of imagination all compact". If we tread in the unmanifest, we may stray into the unreal, that which has no possiblity of manifestation.
The Indian tradition is rather different. It does talk about the value of the present, but it gives it far less emphasis than one would think from second-hand accounts. There is much more to the tradition than sat. To give one example, there is meditation: a practice that is a retreat from the waking consciousness of sat. Which probably explains why we have never made much progress with meditation, and why even our leaders can tell us so little about it.
By the way, you know about meditation. You've just learned to despise that part of you that knows it.
How best to serve the School? Is it by stopping on the path, asserting that we have already arrived, and protecting its heritage? Or is it by continuing along the path, doing what we can to build upon and exceed what has already been done?
We are like tourists who have two maps. The first one is commercially produced by a roadside inn, showing how to get there, but nothing else. The other is a real map, which shows not only the inn but the terrain and the way ahead to a site of pilgrimage, which is the historical reason for the road's existence. Both maps are true, but unless we put away the first and start to follow the second, we will stay where we are. The inn is getting older and a bit run-down, because fewer people pass along that way.
The way to help the inn recover its health is not by fixing up the sign or replacing the tables or advertising it, but to make the pilgrimage. When people are reminded of that, then they will need the School to help them on the way. But they don't need the School in itself, any more than we need an inn on a road to nowhere.
Only the artist - the real philosopher - can see that 'nowhere' is really where it's at. The challenge is to make that obvious, even to someone as dense as a practical man.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Nowhere Man
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16 comments:
A word of caution, my friend. Artists are not the real philosophers and I would be surprised if that's what Mr J said. Artists experience and reveal their philosophy in a particular way, a valuable and necessary way. There are other ways. As space should be given to the artists among us, so that space - if their art is to mean anything to us - should be an open one that includes all approaches, even that of the practical man. God bless the practical man says the artist having a decent shower at last in Waterperry.
Oddjob,
What he said was 'the real philosopher is an artist', which I take to mean that a philosopher has to have something of the visionary about them. Fair enough?
I apologise if you really are an odd-job man - which from your aggressive tone I suppose you might be - but my intention was not to rubbish the way of action, but to correct a bias. We have terribly over-stressed the value of the physical, at the expense of the intellectual ('logic-chopping') and the devotional ('sentimental', 'dreamy').
Sometimes to bring the vehicle back on track you need to lean heavy on the wheel. The aim is balance, not an equal and opposite extremism.
So put away the sharpened chisels.
That's well argued, but I wouldn't fancy sitting in the back of your car! Fine tune, careful adjustment, seek the reasonable.
What Mr Jaiswal said then is rather lovely. And characteristically so. The real philosopher makes an art of whatever he/she turns the attention to. Here's a bit of Auden.
You need not see what someone is doing
to know if it is his vocation,
you have only to watch his eyes:
A cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon
making a primary incision,
a clerk completing a bill of lading,
wear the same rapt expression,
forgetting themselves in a function.
How beautiful it is,
that eye-on-the-object look.
Horae Canonicae, 1954
Your assertions about the emphasis on the way of action within the school are, I think, accurate. My worry was only that those who feel undervalued will compensate by declaring that actually they have a validity greater than the previously overvalued alternatives. And so on it goes. I would like the school to celebrate the contribution of all its members, the visionary nut-cases (ironic reference to Midsummernight's dream so acceptable hopefully), the rodinesque thinkers, foreheads a-furrowed, and the chaps who like to stick up acro-poles and move bricks around. What a marvelous collection. And that we can all sit together in a room and share deeply of our selves, recognising our own experiences in those of others ... surely wot it's all about, guv.
Oh, and my apologies if the tone sounded aggressive. I suppose 'a word of caution my friend' can sound a bit sinister but really was just meant as a friendly, smile on the face, comment.
Oddjob,
When I was thinking about steering, I had in mind some kind of heavy agricultural vehicle - but maybe a supertanker would be more accurate. So we're safe. I very much like the Auden quotation.
Damian
It seems to me that the answer to your doubts in the first paragraph are answered by what you say in the second about your conditioning.
For my part, I don't find Messrs Whiting, Jaiswal or Saraswati particularly charismatic, or complicated. It's like listening to what my own heart would say if it could.
Your interesting account of the meeting of creatives with Mr Jaiswal leaves the questions : how would artists like to be supported more than they are (at every level, heart, mind, action etc); and how could/should we support them more ?
And I guess oddjob might agree -- every student should know that they are the soul of the School ?
Didn't Oddjob have a rather unusual arm extension - not a man to be trifled with?
The best thing with artists, I think I'm right in saying, is to leave 'em alone to get on with it. Technical instruction, of course, plenty of time for practice, an inspirational pointer or two but, as for support, the best is ..... a cheque-book!
In Sri Aurobindo's view the way to liberation might be seen as a mountain - all routes lead to the top although some paths are more difficult than others. Artists go further than others but even they have to turn back as 'artists'.
I don't think it is a question of supporting the artists, or even letting them get on with it. Right now, we have a culture that is in many ways anti-art, anti-thought. Show someone your work, or tell them your idea, and their eyes flicker imperceptibly. Did you see it? - that was them checking you against their idea of "The Truth". That idea, "The Truth" is completely in the past - and so anything new will inevitably fall short.
Before we can start letting the artists get on with it, we need to stop doing that.
The Artists' Hall is a good gauge of how far we have come, and how far we have to go. From the point of view of dutiful obedience, it's a great achievement (and even quite artistically done, as we say that a wall has been built artistically); but from the point of view of art, it's nothing.
It is exactly as good as one could expect, given the School as it is today. One senior individual got it right when he said to me, "I suppose it's hardly fair to expect someone to paint the divine life, if they've never seen it."
Yes, we are all the soul of the school - but how many of us believe that, and how many just pay lip-service to it? If you borrow other people's words, you are not even the soul of yourself.
If we were to follow this through then the blank sheet - or blank wall for that matter - might be the ideal.
You can paint the gospels, or stories or icons from the gospels - and many stained-glass windows and illuminated manuscripts testify to the beautiful and instructive effects.
The best, it seems to me, incorporate scenes from life as it was lived then - the sower, the reaper, the rider - to indicate earth in heaven and heaven in earth.
It's relatively easy to observe life as it unfolds in front of you, and not impossible to see the inward nature of action and so depict it. But to show a divine life - without revelation - will always rely on a crib.
There's one painter in the School - a fine one - who attempted pictures of the divine. But his recent and current paintings of opening doors do more for me than any amount of diffused golden light.
Such is a paradox.
We do know about meditation, Kevin, you are quite right. We may even - if we are sincere - know of meditation. We do not need anybody else to tell us what it is like. That would be - referring to another post - like borrowing others' clothes.
All that's necessary is to practise a very simple mantra. Then we may discover. Trust helps.
I don't think it's paradoxical at all. Nor do I think the blank canvas is anything but a resignation.
Paint what you see, not what you think you should see. This is a universal principle and applies to all the arts.
It also applies to philosophy - say what you know and believe, not what someone else tells you.
If an artist can produce that flicker of the eyes, then he/she has done more than is required of most art. The receiver is momentarily jolted out of the safe and for the merest speck of time searches for a new meaning of Truth. Unfortunately, they generally then settle for an old meaning which, as you rightly point out is hardly meaning at all, never mind Truth, but still, it's a start. Don't be disheartened by not being understood. It didn't bother William Blake and I still don't understand him!
A question remains, I suppose, as to what exactly do the eyes turn in that moment of disorientation, of doubt? Is it Truth? Is it a pale reflection of some received structure? Or is it something even more tawdry and, speaking as a school member, embarrassing than that? Er, I'm afraid I think it's the last. The question that the average (?) school member asks when faced by a new work, a living, contemporary piece of art is: am I supposed to like it or not? Once a thing has been up there and either approved or disapproved of, it's easy. A couple of years ago or so it was much the rage to go and see Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World, the nautical movie. I overheard several conversations extolling its virtues. Why? Because Mr Lambie saw it and enjoyed it. Now, if Mr Lambie saw it and didn't enjoy it, would the same conversations have happened? Would people have gone? If he hadn't seen it, would anyone have bothered and if they went, would they know if they liked it or not? Bit sad, isn't it?
A long time ago it was thought aesthetically pleasing to strip the wood back in Stanhill Court. Which it was, as it happened. The place had lots of wood, very nice wood. Around the country in school members' houses, skirting boards and doors were ravaged by nitromorse and wire wool. Strip back. To the wood. If anyone asked why (not that anyone did), then they would have been satisfied by the philosophy that rather oddly emerged to the effect that this was like removing the veils of delusion (paint) to reveal the true nature (wood). So stripping your skirting became a mystically charged activity. It was an indication of one's devotion to Truth. Ah, sweet. But worrying too if you think about it. Can we distinguish between a received and unquestioned notion and a genuine capacity to evaluate, discriminate and decide? As an experiment, try introducing into a conversation that you saw Master and Commander and didn't really like it. See what happens!
I have an evolving theory that all this stripping back of wood in old houses created a lead-paint toxicity problem. You breathe in a lot of very nasty fumes that affect judgement, create fatigue and can lead to an erosion of cerebral function. This was in the eighties when things all went a bit peculiar. Co-incidence? Well, yes, probably, I'm just being whimsical.
The serious point is that the rejection (or at least severe hesitation) with regard to fresh works of art that are as yet uncheese-marked stems from the fact that most school members have become dependent on being told what to think. Which is why the arts are such a provocative issue at the moment. Since many members can't be bothered to do any study of their own into anything they haven't been told to, they can't discuss the merits of post-expressionism, they don't know how Ernst led to Duchamp and how any of this leads to anything of the present day, the good, the bad, the ridiculous and the frankly wonderful. It's not that one has to have a view as to whether contemporary forms of art are good or bad, it's that we should be able to decide for ourselves. I don't have a lot of time for the unmade bed but I have been rivetted by some loopy installations that I've seen. That's my choice. In the absence of being informed, the school member damns the whole lot and circles back unerringly to round about the renaissance because they're assured that's okay. The same with modern philosophy. Too idle to read any Wittgenstein or to consider what the logical positivists are actually saying, they just mutter 'rubbish' and walk away if anyone mentions them.
You artists have a job on your hands. But it's a great job and it's what you boys and girls were made for. You can't complain that you're not understood and call yourselves artists in the same breath. Oxymoron, mate.
Good luck to you all.
Great stuff, Oddjob, and doesn't it bring it all back (and forward perhaps?). But there had to be something for us all to do at Stanhill, attention to the working surfaces and all that.
Stripping wood takes up a nice lot of time and since the windows were wide open, blasting in the winter weather, we suffered more frozen necks than fumes - either nitromors or methylated spirits. Ah... those wrinkly methy fingers.
At one residential we spent hours and hours picking at weeds in the hard stoney paths with old kitchen knives. At the evening meeting the head of level remarked that, if the intention had been to free the paths of weeds, we'd have sprayed the lot with weedkiller. A contemplative pause settled over the room.
The point about stripping wood in the 1970s and 80s - and, silly me, I didn't realise it was supposed to be mystical - was that it was fashionable in the UK, or at least in its southern metrolands. That fashion was started by Conran and, as fashions go, wasn't such a bad thing.
But fashion is one of our enemies, not least because it can seem so charming and seductive. And it's a boon to the idle, says she speaking of that which she knows.
It's fashion which gives the respectable gloss to a received opinion, from whichever source it may come. That's not to say one can't take recommendations from those one respects - not to accept advice is to spurn the hand of friendship. But fashion is the bugbear.
Oddjob,
I enjoyed reading this - I hadn't heard about Master and Commander, but it has the ring of Truth about it! Hopefully Mr Lambie's new Toyota Prius will usher in a new era of eco-friendliness, and we can dispense with the Nitromors and Biozapkillo-Spray 2000 that we now use indiscriminately in the kitchens.
I think your final point is valid, but at the same time I think there are echoes of the classic old-skool trap which says, "well if you were REALLY conscious this wouldn't be a problem (neh-neh, neh-neh-neh!)" (the last bit is 'lopa', which as Sanskrit scholars will know means it's unspoken, but mystically there).
I believe that the problem with art in the last century or so has been that artists have been 'got at', mainly by intellectuals. As HH says in 1965, the devotional man needs to learn about reason, otherwise the intellectual cynic will confuse him - IE story about the melon plant and the mango tree.
John was an artist; Yoko was an intellectual, but not really an artist. Before she stuck her oar in, we had the Beatles; afterwards the Plastic Yoko Band or whatever they were called, and Wings. By any measure, that is a loss of consciousness.
I'm not complaining that artists are not understood, but that they have been subjugated to the will of others. We all lose out.
Interesting, Kevin. Intellectuals certainly like to confuse, it makes them feel superior.
The following may be of interest - while we are speaking of recommendations. On 11 January at 7.30pm at the Queen Elizabeth Hall there's a performance of selected works by Gurdjieff/de Hartmann. Called 'Fragments of an Unknown Music' there's a piano, cello and oboe to play them, and all three musicians are members of the Gurdjieff Society which is putting on the event. Tickets from £12.
I've put a very few leaflets in the events pigeonholes at Mandeville.
Hmm. As it happens I was at Mandeville for a rare visit last night, and I picked up a leaflet for Gurdjieff / de Hartmann music.
OK, maybe I just needed a reminder. Thanks, L.
Couldn't have got into better hands. I must just have placed them there a few minutes before you picked one up.
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