Uncle Yarv #7: art edition
Rurik from Hanoi writes:
What should an artist be doing right now?
More specifically, what should the kind of artist who finds himself amiable to your writing be doing now?
Even more specifically, in a world where comporting your message with Power is a component of success, what should an artist do who see disagrees with the prevailing vision of Power but who still wants to push his Art out into the world?
A lot of rightish people think that art is just message in an aesthetics wrapper, and they create mostly cringe art.
The best I can come up with is believe that aesthetics proceeds the politics I would want, not the other way around. So I’d start (composer) assuming that most political ideas in my mind are cringe and not try to signal or countersignal anything political. Instead just start with the details and write a piece to discover what it’s about. If a message manifests, fine, but if it doesn’t, fine too. But let the message come from my feeling for the details and structures of the work.
Then ask:
“What’s going on in my mind that draws me towards these choices?”
And if this helps unify my approach at some point in the process, so be it.
So I summarized it like this:
All political themes are cringe now
Avoid “messages”
Write a piece to discover what its about
Stay true to aesthetic sense
Develop a feeling for every detail
Later asks “what is going on in my mind that draws me towards these choices?”
See if that can unify my approach at some point in the process
I figure you can always title or talk about something in a way that’s safe with regards to Power, and if the aesthetics are there, they’ll do whatever it is they need to do.
When I posed this question I wanted to be scientific and guess what you would say.
My first guess is you would have an old book to quote an idea seemingly orthogonal to what I was talking about. And then explain how my concept of aesthetic clear pilling was totally wrong.
Hopefully I can find out! I’m curious what you have to say to artists trying to get by in this environment.
Well, no, Rurik, I’m afraid this is basically exactly right.
When you try to do right-wing art as propaganda, it is always cringe. The left-wing art is cringe too—it’s just embedded in a reality-distortion field so you can’t feel it. Future generations will feel it, though.
Your themes will emerge naturally from who you are. You don’t need to force them and you don’t want to force them. Through any art that is truly expressive and effective, even instrumental music, some sense of personality will emerge—even unconsciously.
I used to think it was impossible for unconscious truths to pass through the author into the content. Then about six months ago I wrote a poem about how my wife was dying, without knowing that she was (acutely) dying—I posted this on a Thursday and she passed the next Tuesday. Now I just don’t worry about it.
Ultimately the strongest emotion you are expressing is just the will to be free from all this garbage. In a way that will—the freedom to be unexpected—is the basis of all art. It has never been easier to distinguish art from propaganda, as the latter is becoming constantly more and more predictable. Which art by definition never is.
Yep right on, don't try to make "right wing art" --- all politics (even good politics) occurs at a level of resolution that has already cropped out the nuance required to produce good art. You need that raw, unprocessed ether, you need that shadowy chaos, you need to dive deep beneath the waves to get to that shiny good stuff, then you need to drag it back up to the surface via artistic interpretation and express it in ways normies can understand.
I'd even caution against expressing yourself --- try to get at truths, which will end up expressing your experience of those truths, but "self expression" is another trap of modern art (much less detrimental than politics, but a trap nonetheless). You want to express God (or for you atheists, "The Universe"), Truth, grace, beauty, something that's real and bigger than just you, though of course it is your unique vision that comes through in the art. It's just that latter bit is less important. Try not to take credit for the majesty of existence.
Just seeking Truth as an artist will make your work political (though it's not created from politics or as politics, it will take on political meaning in the world). Don't force it. If you make something True it will stand in such stark, damning contrast to propaganda that it will end up far more effective than mere counter-propaganda. This pomo obsession that art is purely subjective is an excuse for the weak and floundering --- there is comfort for the lost in fragmentation, like a shattered mirror. Art is difficult and infinitely complex, but True art is as True to you as it is to me.
Just creating will pit you against the destroyers. The devil can't create, and he hates you because you can. Ignore the noise by focusing in on your craft. Dismiss distractions. Look to pre-modern art, participative art, liturgical art, art with a purpose other than simply taking up space.
And good luck brother, now is a great time for real artists --- right now it may be only us who see the beast in its death throes, but it will be obvious to more and more people as time goes on, and when those people look around in confusion, we'll be ready to point them towards what's real. Until then do what artists do.
Art is a calling. The metaphor of the Muse describes a real phenomenon. She sings through you. It is not you, meaning the you that eats and shits and goes to your day job, but the you that is bigger than that and deeper than that, the you that you spend most of your time pretending is not there because it crushes you to admit it, because it shows that they guy in the mirror, shaving, has, all too often, disgraced what he could be and should be. Trying to transcend that disgrace is hard but, it seems, worth trying. Probably so, based on observation and speculation more than personal experience. If you are called by the muse, it is blasphemous, wrong, a sin, not to respond. If you have anything to say, you have to say it truthfully, meaning artistic truth, in whatever medium, not literal truth, which is of course not art, which is never literal, even if it feigns literalness. And it is not political, which is among the most debased of human activities, the manipulation of power for advantage. If you answer the call, if you submit to the call, then you are likely to suffer because it is hard to do. You will be pestered by the urge to compose or write at the wrong times, when it is inconvenient and disruptive. You will try to balance it, but it is not a phenomenon which is susceptible to balance. This is because the Muse is a goddess, not a hireling or a prostitute. You work for her, not the other way around. She is willful and bossy and unreasonable. And if you take her gifts, you submit to her authority. You become hers by right, and you have a duty to let her sing through you. And what comes forth from you then is bigger than you, and it is not just yours anymore. And if it is good, or it's shit, others will say. But that has nothing to do with your duty to make it. And you should make it as good as you can, but that is technique. It is very important, technique, but do not mistake it for the essence, which is the Goddess's song singing through you to the world. If you don't hear that, and answer it, and send it forth, then whatever you are doing is some kind of business or psychological acting out, or posturing for approval of others, or jockeying for some kind of recognition, but it is unlikely to be good, or maybe it will be merely good. Some ways to invoke the muse: Immersion in excellent examples of the medium you are drawn to, seriousness about craft skills that make it possible to actually execute, and a willingness to pay a hard price to tell the truth through the work you do, or at least to embark on the journey so that you have foreclosed the option of not paying the price. One way to persevere is to find a small number of honest, tough-minded friends who share our love for the art you aspire to, to commiserate and to receive corrections. But even alone, perseverance is possibly the most important virtue, especially picking up where you left off, no matter what life has thrown at you. That people who hear the muse respond to her is more important than any of the political things happening now. It is the foundation on which all else is built. But it is still pertinent to politics, but indirectly. The path to clarity and change and transformation which will make it possible to transcend the shit show we are currently trapped in is through truth telling, and art is truth telling. This last is a paradox, but is certainly the case nonetheless.