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Re: Creation,poetry and beyond, was Re: has the list limped to the side?

"My father and mother were captives in that world, knowing they did not
belong with it or in it, and yet unable to get away from it. They were in
the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different
way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above
the level of the world without delivering him from it."  -- Thomas Merton,
"The Seven Storey Mountain"

This paragraph hit me like a "diamond bullet in the forehead" back when I
was in a band. Then it hit me again in the R&R Hall of Fame. There you have
an attempt to present Rock&Roll which is a "performance art" as a collection
of museum pieces - you leave with a vague feeling, "that was kinda neat",
but uncomfortable, like the blatant inadequacy of something to transcend
this world on its own had been laid bare.

What do you think?

Pauli

----- Original Message -----
From: <Gilhamilton at aol_com>
To: <over-the-rhine at actwin_com>
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2000 12:38 AM
Subject: Creation,poetry and beyond, was Re: has the list limped to the
side?


> In a message dated 4/12/00 6:49:10 AM Central Daylight Time,
> prayforamy at bigfoot_com writes:
>
> << Hopefully what we create goes beyond what we saw in the first place. >>
>
> Yep.
> I hope so too.
> What I tend to see is all pretty much mundane day to day stuff. I'm mired
in
> it, the workweek, the weight that seems to sit in my head like lead, the
> noise I fill myself with too much to drown out the lack of peace that too
> often fills me. And, as someone who attempts poetry as his *art* for the
> express reason of moving the reader beyond the mundane *into the mystic*
or
> at least into a place where life seems more than that aformentioned
workweek
> and reality a little more magical like other artists (like OtR) have for
me
> on occasion, well... if I'm not succeding I may as well give it up.
>
> And if anyone says *give up* I'm gonna find me a cyberpunk to go over
there
> and smack ya!
>
>  On interpretation;
>  I think some of the fun of art is in the searching out and finding what
the
> artist intended but at the same time I think we meet ourselves and the
artist
> more fully, get the deeper stuff of a work when we bring ourselves into an
> interpretation, it's kind of like communion with the artist AND his/her
muse.
> The best art is always mysterious, elusive, full of questions and
longings.
> It's *meaning* finds us almost subliminally, shaking us up and moving us
> along on our respective journeys with our barely realizing what it has
done.
> We just *know* that we have somehow grown from the experience. In short,
if
> it doesn't move us, make us THINK then it's not ART.
>
> ((((( A little a side: ---> As a Christian I'll admit, as someone *on the
> inside*, that many of *us* don't get that. Many creative endeavors by
> Christians are little more than propaganda. BUT, I also think that much of
> the most beautiful art ever made was and is being made by spiritual
people.
> It's as high and low as humanity itself sinks or raises in quality.)))))
>
>  While it can never be exaustively understood what an artist intended
(hell,
> half of my stuff even I  don't  understand) that doesn't mean it can't be
> known at all. And known well. But we must leave mystery in our work, leave
> that room for that grandest Mystery of all to kick around in there. I've
been
> trying to write (or did before this last years massive writers block)
using
> words like surrealist images, finding metaphors to hammer out a portrait
of
> what I'm trying to say and lately the images don't always make sense fully
as
> words if read with exact meaning (poetic language has it's own rules of
> course, but I mean even by that standard) but when read *together* and
> *looking* at the images provoked it seems to take on a meaning of its own
> that I never even intended or thought of. I find that kinda cool.
>
> God's peace,
> Kevin
>
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