[The name of the supermarket “Lunds & Byerlys” is printed under the initials “L&B” on opposite sides of a transparent bag. These texts appear superimposed on each other, in reverse, when the bag is empty; as it is in this photo, because I ate all the grapes that were in it.]
Dearest diary,
Is everything moving in the direction of progress? Or does the general wellbeing of the world go up and down? I say that it fluctuates, or even that it continues to decrease. Maybe it’s plunging. Because, look at the primitive societies that loved each other and lived in harmony; and then look at modern “civilization,” which is constantly at war. There is terror all around. The common people in the age of Shakespeare desired to see his plays, whereas the current generation . . . How could we not admit that we’re on the highway to hell? The alphabet was an advancement upon the previous system of communication, but now we’ve regressed back to the point of replacing written words with convoluted pictographs. Think how the warning labels and instructions appear on the control panels of flying saucers or doomsday machines.
Seeing a movie in a cinematic multiplex is a dystopian experience, compared to attending the performance of an ancient drama in the Theatre of Dionysus. But, admittedly, it is better to enjoy music from a recorded album, on a stereo system, in the comfort of one’s home, than to purchase tickets and see a band play live, because . . .
Are we talking about modern rock music, or a piece performed by a classical orchestra? Because live rock bands are awful, since you must stand outdoors in the rain, and their loudspeakers are of poor quality. Howbeit, while attending a symphony, I also hate to look at all the musicians – the guy on the flute, and the gal on the cornet – because they make strange faces while operating their instruments, which distracts my attention from the music itself.
Is music purely of the mind, or does it have a stake in our shared reality of mud and blood? I say that the important aspect of music is wholly mental. It’s true that, to get itself perceived, music must condescend to knock actual molecules together in the atmosphere, but after its message is decoded by the ear, it can abandon any connection it had with spacetime; just as an epistle can ditch the envelope that it was delivered in, once it has been torn open and pored over. Especially if it turns out to be a love letter, scented with spikenard.
And if any creative elements of a communique appear to be warped, I gladly suspend my disbelief. On finding its form in the broken world, I readily amend, by way of my fancy, any aspect that seems awry about a given artwork: song, sculpture, picture, or poem. I mentally “fix” it to match what my heavenly intuition deems it should be. Make it resemble its platonic ideal. What Emerson says about architecture, I think applies to all art:
It seems to me nothing is truly great, nothing impresses us, nothing overawes, nothing crowds upon us, and kills calculation. We always call in the effect of imagination, coax the imagination to hide this and enlarge that, and even St. Peter’s, nor this frost-work cathedral at Milan, with its 5000 marble people all over its towers, can charm down the little Imp.
Isn’t that nice? He also says this:
It is in the soul that architecture exists, and Santa Croce and this Duomo are poor far-behind imitations. I would rather know the metaphysics of architecture, as of shells and flowers, than anything else in the matter. . . . (Journals, Q; 10 June 1833)
But whence comes this persuasion that things should exist in a certain way? I said that all is declining: Who defines progress, anyway? What authority gets to decide that an aspect of culture is inferior to its former variations? And are they variations indeed? Perhaps what we take to be stages in the creation of some ultimate idea are more truly several different concepts, self-contained: not means to an end, but each an end of its own.
For instance, observe the development of a human embryo: before it emerges from the womb as the perfectly formed Christchild, it undergoes multiple mutations – at week one, it looks like a tadpole; then, at week seven, it resembles nothing so much as a fish; by the third month, it’s a lobster, and then an octopus and a winged horse, and even a grizzly bear. If you were to take a snapshot of the fetus at just the right moment, anyone who beheld it would agree that you had captured the image of a fighter jet against an orange sunset: it is postcard-worthy. And why should not each of these intermediate instances be celebrated as well? It is folly to downgrade or overlook all such transitional plateaus of an embryo’s career, just because they transpired before it opened the flexible doors. For, what happens backstage is just as marvelous as . . .
When an actor struts onstage speaking perfect English even though his role is newly born, we in the audience offer him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, because his talents entertain us. But we are only perceiving the events that are revealed; just think of what is going on behind the curtain. There are serpents and cherubs back there. Who perceives these things? Does not this alter-audience deserve to be entertained as well, or even more so?
My point is this: Just as its reader is the true creator of a scripture’s meaning, the author of anything from artworks to embryos is the uber-audience of their every instant and atom. For the finished film pleases the paying public; yet, in the eyes of the movie’s maker, all the behind-scenes chaos of the crew, and the myriad strips from the cutting room floor, constitute the crowning achievement.
Each individual is a visionary aspect of God’s ommateum. Whatever we experience, while building goods or performing services, is itself a work of art to our Oversoul.
What does this have to do with the fact that human culture is decaying at a rapid rate? I confess, I do not know: I had no aim when I began writing this.
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