Brief acknowledgement of Eff Day, plus an addendum on erring

I didn’t find out until now that yesterday was Father’s Day. I like good fathers. I wish the name could be changed to Good Father’s Day; however, “quod scripsi, scripsi” — ALL fathers must be honored, even the non-good.

Will males ever learn to sublimate their sex drive? Females seem to be able to do this pretty easily — or maybe they just make it look easy. To channel the energy that would’ve been expended on copulation towards something more intelligent. Of course a heckler will say “But isn’t procreation the most intelligent thing that one can do, at least in certain circumstances?” And I answer: “For humans, procreation is permanently unadvisable.” — “But didn’t the LORD God say: ‘Increase and multiply’?” — And I say: “Yes; I rest my case.”

The LORD God is our Heavenly Father, so-called; therefore we must honor Him, because yesterday was Father’s Day.

Now let me change the subject and consider a little more closely the idea of mistakes — in my last entry, I wrote some wandering thoughts about art, centering on the idea of copying, and I only briefly mentioned the role that error plays in this; now I want to talk about that some more. I said that all art is essentially an act of copying, and there are two major categories of artist: those who strive to copy as accurately as possible the things of our world, and those who deviate as wilfully as possible from representing the way things are. This latter group still copies everything they offer as art, but they strive to combine fragments of reality in unprecedented ways; the aim might be to represent one’s own “inner” world (subjectivity), as opposed to the “outer” world that we all share (objectivity). There might be no aim, as well. But what about the idea of mistakes, errors, unintended deviations from accurate copying? When an artist accomplishes a successful depiction of a creature’s visible form in tempera paints, he is yoking his will to necessity: to time’s “it was”; whereas, when an artist purposely paints a vision of things as they ARE NOT, he is accomplishing an accurate depiction of an aspect of his fancy. But when either of these artists makes a mistake, whose will is being manifest? The artist attempting to represent a scene of the LORD God eating roast calf under a tree with Abraham (Genesis 18:1-8) ends up making a picture that looks more like Satan provoking King David to number Israel (1st Chronicles 21:1 and 2nd Samuel 24:1). Simultaneously, our second artist tries to make an abstract composition, yet it winds up looking identical to the first artist’s masterpiece. Both arrived at a metaphysical truth by erring from opposite sides of intention: the first, failing to represent reality, faithfully represented myth, while the second arrived at exactly the same sanctum after falling from his inward aesthetic ideal. 

Perhaps there are no mistakes: something beyond us is forever attempting to speak thru our actions, but what emerges from all artists, no matter the type, is never altogether a representation of our shared reality, neither is it that of any individual’s mindscape, nor the totality of the clear and urgent message that those trans-dimensional aliens who permeate our being continue attempting to transmit to us, but rather a garbled mix of all three. And that’s what makes art so darn interesting — every impulse of the Trinity is firing at once: Reality, the Artist, and the Beyond. I myself favor the last, which is why I dedicate the entirety of my energies to erring. But I never succeed: for all my creations are perfect.