"Art is a Pain"

I've been thinking… about our need for pain.  Shall I explain?

The expression of pain through musical or visual or literary art is a great example of how misery loves company.  Relating to the minor cadences of a haunting piece of music, or the prose of a suicidal poem which cascades through every veiny patch of memories we can't stanch but masochistically tap into on repeat-- these things are created to elicit an emotional, visceral reaction, and likely, they are only successful in doing so because they were created by a wounded vessel.  It's strange to look at it so analytically… so devoid of passion… but, I am stimulated by the fact that human beings, in their most desolate states have the succinct capacity to generate empathy for hundreds of years past their momentary expression of need.  

Art is a need before it is a comfort.  It is an obsession before it is a solution.  One artist's pain is the medicine or the lesson for a human being oceans away, decades to come.  Art therapy has been implemented in child psychology for decades and has entered rehabilitation centers such as prisons and hospitals-- as a useful step toward healing.  Music has long been found to activate babies' brains, Alzheimer patients' memories and assisted in mental illness studies.  

The human experience in every way begins with pain and survives pain and often relinquishes to pain in the end of our lives.  And we can be united or divided because of pain… But the art of pain is something that hypnotizes us into a state of collective understanding.  As much as we need affection, love, nurturing and forgiveness in life, we, also, need pain.  Pain protects us, informs us and delivers us from bad situations as we self-preserve in both healthy and unhealthy adaptive manners.  The music we turn to is an equalizer in feeling, at least in part, that we are not alone.  Books are life-savers in that regard many times.  Poems are meditations for us.  Photographs are inspirations… Art is the mirror of life when it is authentic.  It is also our glimpse of fantasy and escape.  Art is necessary.  And so is the pain that it comes from.

That's all for now.  

Desperado, Come to Your Senses.

"A whale wounded (as we afterwards learned)... had broken away from the boat, carrying along with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony of the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the lone, mounted desperado Arnold, at the Battle of Saratoga, carrying dismay wherever he went." -Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

From the haunting and perplexing novel, Moby Dick, there is a thread of coincidence that hooks into my Pisces' sense of direction which came to me like a minuet of dreams and questions in my relentless insomnia last night:  The overtly, complexly symbolic characters in the novel epitomize the personalities of a modern society for which we blithely sail above empathy. We dive into dichotomies of our own doing; such as the orphan-like, alienated outcast (Ishmael) and the obsessively punitive Captain (Ahab), who lives only to destroy what he deems as "evil" (the whale)... One could infer the whale is the cosmic energy we breed and destroy ourselves with.  I am struck with the paradox that Ishmael is considered "orphaned by the world" but the domineering Ahab is actually an orphan in the story.  And it is here that I begin my point (as you mumble "FINALLY, Jeeeeezus!").  Ahab is brought into the cold abyss of the sea, to his death by being literally entangled by the weapon he uses to hunt down his object of resentment.  It is of my perception, that Ishmael is the only one spared by the determined whale who returns ten-fold to the crew the merciless harm they have inflicted, to paraphrase (albeit poorly) the author's sentiment.  But both men suffer a loneliness that drives them to isolation: Ishmael lives and survives contained by himself, while the reader suspects he wants an inclusive existence.  Ahab foregoes life to pursue death as his motivation, and it becomes his identity-- death.  He dies in the bottom of the lonely vast sea of oblivion. As the opening quote suggests, we carry with us the pain inflicted by others, but it is ultimately up to us to create our own fate.

Everyone has a struggle to survive.  Everyone has to defend the skin of their being, in one way or another.  Sometimes though, I wonder if we exist as orphans plagued by the fear or anger we choose to embrace in order to deflect the  illumination of who we really are beneath the scars and medals and niceties and compulsions.  

If fate is the whale that comes back to sink or amaze us, and the ocean is the tide upon which we conduct ourselves, then can we evolve enough to be neither hunter nor prey? Can we not learn to coexist with the demons within us while remembering to respect the frailty around us? Each of us, I believe, is a vessel, no less sinkable than a ship, but has the mechanics to float and touch upon new horizons if we allow ourselves the courage to accept our limitations and strengthen our skills for progress, not destruction.  Unity.  Everything is united, in some way.  In that sense, no one is alone.  And those that wish to scour the earth for absolutes and ultimate victory, like "desperadoes", eventually learn that the answers and the riches are never things that can be taken but only learned and given.  

It's romantic to love an outcast, a captain or a whale.  But the sustenance of greatness and longevity are acquired in the beliefs we choose to nurture about the world around us-- fear, rage or power will never protect you, only make you a greater target in the end.  Love is always more powerful than hate.  I've decided, this week, there is no such thing as a victim of love or the disease of compassion; you can navigate yourself away from danger without losing your compassion for the wounded beast that thrashes against you.  You can love without drowning in the hallows of a siren-song.  Some of us are in dire need of belonging; some of us are compelled to conquer.  The journey to healthy love is long and challenging, but richly rewarding if we do not confuse safety and complacency, confidence and indecision... trust and self-respect.    

"It seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table.  But you only want the things you can't get...Your prison is walking through this world all alone." ~Desperado (Don Henley/The Eagles)