We now live in a time where the relevance of the arts is being questioned. Arts budgets are being dramatically cut, they have been removed from schools for decades, and artistic entities are failing in staggering numbers. Americans can scarcely sing Happy Birthday to their children and carry the tune, or sing their National Anthem without embarrassment that their neighbor will hear them. Even the community of musicians, once known for inclusion and nurture of all walks of life (including those who need some guidance) now bully people who do not agree with them by using more of the same messages of hate they used to receive. With inadequate arts education, society already has enough difficulty understanding why art is of great importance, because it rarely fits into a comfortable range of perception. Thus, we should not send mixed messages when the ongoing challenge will be for artists to adequately teach art while being crystal clear on the issue, not only as to how, but as to why we have it. Music, as with all art, when practiced at its highest levels, is ultimately about truth; finding the central message between what is honest and what is not, while serving and connecting with others. Considering the added complexity of all our perceived realities being but a persistent illusion (Einstein), mature artistic awareness requires patience and flexibility and a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul (C. Smart). In art, a universal truth is translated and squeezed to fit into our minds, at which time it is no longer the whole truth (as if we could fully grasp it!), as it has been said that all of art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. But to the open-hearted, it speaks of something infinite and calls us to a higher state of being. That something infinite exists physically, too. As science comes closer to proving it with its theory of everything and string theory matching its vibrations with the vibrations of our music, we continue hand-in-hand, searching for elegance and simplicity in form. So too must we artists rise with the occasion and and meet science on the playing field of profound thought. That something is the ultimate truth that connects us; a web; a spider-wire charged with a hundred billion volts of light and dark energy. In our present state, even for the most enlightened among us, we are only sometimes lucky enough to brush by it, sense its charge, and hear its low, bellowing zoom like the low chant of Tibetan monks. But staying aware of the connection is the duty of the artist by staying sensitive to this underlying purpose. When we do happen upon it, many attach to the experience figuring they know the truth, they give it different names; God, nirvana, life force, reality, being present. Then it becomes dogma and they rarely find it again. The brain trumps the heart and substitutes a metaphor for the actual encounter. Art lets it be whatever it is. Such a vibrating truth is the holy grail in the center of a world in constantly shifting duality; right/wrong, light/dark, hers/his, is/isnt. Even when we sing, we inhale and exhale more molecules than there are stars in the entire cosmos, we take in a universe, and sing out with a universe. The universal wind that gave our grandfathers their first breaths will receive our granddaughters last sighs. Forgetting for a moment our usual iDistractions, even with the crude distraction of breathing, there is little wonder we have difficulty being still enough to sense that charged wire in this day and age. Art is our link to that nearly imperceptible, but universal truth. If we lose it, we lose ourselves. If we fight for it, we fight for each other. Arts support has been in steady decline ever since the end of the Cold War, when Western societies worked hard to prove how uppity they were. Those who support the arts now are the last seekers of the advancement of truth, and the closer we get to understanding the fundamental reasons for great art, the better we will convey its extreme importance to society, especially for the sake of living and future artists, the mythologizers of our day. If the arts are not worth our support, then nothing else is. It is the true song of the Earth. Perhaps I am calling for a new age of enlightenment. But with this now said, one could easily go back, re-read this post, and replace the word truth with love. (repost prompted by a very sweet friend)
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:43:43 +0000
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