Meet food…

Is Art necessary?  Once again I am responding to Ken Burns’s “Jazz”.  Wynton Marsalis made an interesting comment where he claimed that he didn’t consider Art to be necessary.  Food and drink sustain life, Art just makes it worth living.  Fascinating thought considering Marsalis is undoubtedly supported by the longing for art.  He hits upon a theme that has churned in the bellies of artists for centuries:  do I have to make Art.  Would society be the same tomorrow without the colors that art spreads upon the palatte of human existence?  What does the artist contribute to the everyday life that a person lives?  According to the bill in Congress, not very much.  There is actually a codicil that prevents the current stimulus from supporting a theatre (or aquarium, bastions of waste that they are).  I even read a comment that essentially states that the only purpose of higher education is to get a job.  Education to get a job.  Smacks me in the face.  Why on earth do I read the books that I read?  Thomas Pynchon, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Friedrich Nietschze, and Donald Miller aren’t going to pay the bills; but can I set their books down to collect dust for that reason?  In a backhanded way I think that Marsalis is purporting the necessity of art to making a civilization and culture thrive.  There is something fundamental in wanting to reach beyond the everyday and mundane.  If our life consists merely in  nine to five pursuits, then why continue?  In the film I’m watching, people would save their pennies  so that they could visit a club at the end of the week to hear and experience something more than what their daily life was capable of produciong.  The perilous call of beauty constantly circles our consciousness.  Yes, beauty is perilous.  The reaction to beauty is where the peril lies.  It is very difficult to enter the presence of something, anything, that you find beatiful and walk away the same person that you were when you entered.  That is not necessarily bad.  Just dangerous.  Perhaps that is wrapped up in what Marsalis was saying.  As I said in my last post, we are very protective of our safety.  We become quite combative when that safety is threatened.  But Art is often in direct contrast to that safety.  It is a reaching for connection from a place that isn’t known or safe.  If we reach out and touch Art we risk.  We risk finding ourselves in a place we’ve never been and that might not be in accord with places that we have heretofore resided.  Personally, I would really like to pay the bills, put food on the table, and clothe my family.  But I can’t ignore Art.  When I find myself in the presence of Art time stops, my insides deepen, and I sense how big the world truly is.  So what am I saying?  I want us to chew on the things that aren’t comfortable.  We need to look beyond the things that seem to be necessary in life to thingst that fulfill life.  And when we look, realize that simplicity and harmony can lift us beyond the mundane.  I think that Aria creates some of the most amazing stories I have ever heard.  She has no illusion about the intention of her story and simply becomes entranced and transported by the wonder and transformational quality of the story.

Here is the driving spirit of Art.  Aria brought home a box that she had made and decorated during her after school program.  Suddenly, this is more than a box.  It’s a dream box.  When you wake up, you whisper the sweet dreams that you had the night before into the box.  That way they stay safe, don’t fly away, and have a chance to grow.  If your dreams fly away, where is Art?

Whisper in your dream box and make your life bigger.

~ by hamrex on 13 February, 2009.