Suffer the Artists

Why are the so called artists, people whose lives are spent in the pursuit of creative endeavors, so often perceived as conflicted, unbalanced even tortured individuals? Of course this perception may well be a myth, merely part of the persona expected by every great artist. That he should suffer for his art; making us the audience less envious and thus perhaps less hesitant to praise him. We can even delight in it: ‘oh how he suffers for us’. The artist plays the part gladly, a carte blanche to break the norms and etiquette of respectable society as the public cheers him and condemns him with equal measure and fervor.

Yet if instead we accept the premise of the tormented artists as real, then it might be tempting to think that it is that task, of attempting to look at the world afresh, with eyes unclouded by the thoughts of the thoughtless and the lazy impressions of the multitudes, which comes to unhinge the artist. In that sense, the artist even as he shatters the rules comes to reinforce them. Standing as a reminder of the price for seeking to go beyond what is given. Another explanation would be that it is simply those that suffer that are driven to such lengths to create. Tortured souls turn to art, attempting to turn something painful into something beautiful. It is that discontentment that is the fuel of the creative mind. Happiness is the bane of inspiration. The suffering needs art, as every artist eventually comes to need suffering. What then of those poor souls that suffer yet lack the creative impulse?

As the Pendulum Swings.....

His tendency is on the surface simple, almost banal. He always moves towards the melancholic; always towards the emotional and intuitive, even as part of himself quietly resists with its gently yet firm rational reprimandation. Ever are his two selves fighting for supremacy. Yet he has gone so far in interpolating these, the Dionysian and Apollonian, that whatever self there is cannot consider or know itself without these oppositions. These antinomies are what he has become. As one part whispers ever so seductively: Things are what they are, and should be. Enjoy. To you are the fruits of existence. Another part always responds: This is not happiness. This is but a shadow of a shadow. There is something more. You are playing a game of slave and master; always playing the part of either. This is not freedom. By the light of day the voice of complacency is stronger. The voice of least resistance. Attuning itself to the empty rhythms of contentment. But by night his heart beats to different drum. It rails and rages against the hypocrisies and platitudes of respectable society. It promises itself revolution and rebellion. Yet every morning sees a return to a more rational state of mind. He awakes as if from a furious dream, all the while knowing that the tempest has not past, but is merely slumbering. Awaiting the setting of dusk.

Dreams of Damascus

As war has once again returned to Syria I find myself often thinking of those days past, when I called that oldest of cities, Damascus, home. In particular I think of all the times I spent in the Great Omayyad Mosque. It should be said that I am not a religious man. I have never prayed. I do not even know how to do it, although I have seen it done a thousand times. It was not spiritual solace I sought; it was something else, another kind of comfort from woes less celestial in nature. Above all I used to sit out in the courtyard and watch. Children playing. Couples resting from the hustle and bustle of the souq. Families having picnics. The playfulness of this, the fourth holiest place in all of Islam, always struck a chord with me. No somber reverence of the Churches of Europe here. Noise, laughter, stolen glances. This was a kind of religious sanctuary that to me exemplified the best of the East in general and Syria in particular. The very architecture of the building reflected this relaxed approach to the divine; a mélange of all the faiths that had once walked this land. Although its likely origin was as a temple to the Aramean god Hadad, it was the Romans that turned it into one of the largest structures of the ancient world: a great temple to Jupiter. Those powerful roman pillars still dominate the temple, together its exact sense of symmetry reflecting the Roman obsession with order and power, and the connection between them. When Rome became Christian, cosmological power grew less from an organized universe as much as from sacred symbols and icons. And so the head of John the Baptist found its final resting place here, where it still remains, blessing the city with its aura of sanctity. The blessing would prove short lived, however, and the Islamic conquest would see the city and temple returned to its Semitic ancestry. Al Walid, the sixth Caliph, set about making it the most impressive structure of his large domain, bringing craftsmen from all across the newly conquered lands, from Morocco in the West to India in the East. All left their mark. Combining Roman symmetry and austerity with Persian love of sophistication and abstraction, to whimsical results. Like Islam itself it parts took from all the territories conquered and molded them together into something new. Something in the process of defining itself. While later Islamic periods would see clearly defined architectural styles flourish, as beautiful as they are predictable, the Omayyad Mosque still stands today a tribute to the power of idiosyncrasy. Here, within its walls I would lay remembering the times when Islam was yet open and inclusive, and crisp clear air and fresh winds blew through Syria.

A Moment in Time

One may indeed read philosophy as ’the spirit if its time’ for it is some the greatest minds of the age exploring the world and themselves through the concepts, imaginations and limitations imposed on them by their time, place and culture. And yet philosophy seeks always to go beyond itself; beyond its time. It is history but the universal and eternal history, the unhistorical history, of the present moment. To philosophise is then to talk with the past and the future, from the present about the eternal. But philosophy seems always to point away from itself. It never merely preserves the moment. It is ever changing, ever expressing the changes in reality and thought which it helps produce. It is the constant, bringing about change. Perhaps thus it grasps the Truth in which it is involved. In that sense philosophy is always disproving itself. Perhaps therefore philosophy is always accompanied by religion. Which is never simply grasping the moment; but imposing it. It demands of the Truth to remain the same. It seeks to prove the present by perpetuating it. Perhaps the man of faith is the philosopher grown weary of eternal movement. ‘Let us sit and rest’ he says. ‘Let us preserve and build’. Yet thought ever restless, yearns for new frontiers. Change breaks it bonds; for now its moment-in-time gives it freedom to express itself. Yet thus realised it comes to realise its own end. Ever ending, ever giving birth to new beginnings and new moments.

As God unto the World

He wonders. Even worries. Perhaps he is taking too much pleasure in this new found freedom of meaninglessness. Everything broken down, he finds that all that remains is him. Everywhere he turns everything comes back to him-self. All thoughts are his thoughts. All the world becomes his world. All of reality exists only in him. Yet alone with his thoughts, he feels less and less at home in him-self. As thought comes to take the place of action, he becomes aware that while his actions may be his own, he is certainly not the originator of his thoughts. Attempting to grasp himself without himself he finds that he is perhaps no more than mere fleeting desires. Or perhaps something deeper and darker lurks inside. But no matter how hard he looks; he always escapes himself. Unable to give account of even himself he comes to view his thoughts with increasing suspicion. This thus leads him back to action. For even if his thoughts are strangers; his actions, though not of him, makes him. Or rather they make him in the eyes of others. And so rather than remain alone and almighty, he returns from the lofty heights where gods rule, and returns to himself and the world. And with that he realises that every man may be a God. But in a universe no greater than his own mind.

The Cruelty of Philosophy

Each philosophy is an attempt to end philosophy. Each philosopher seeks to become the last philosopher. Yet for all its trials and tribulations; philosophy lives on. Inherent is that horrible paradox; that as little as philosophy can prove Truth, can it disprove it. It cannot find Truth, yet cannot deny that there is a Truth without falling into contradictions.
Once that first man, asked that first fateful question to Thought, to reason, and expected an answer in return; man has been doomed to continue asking. After 2500 years of asking ourselves; demanding of ourselves to answer questions about things we have no experience of, some have started questioning the wisdom of this path. Existentialism, in the footsteps of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, tells us to stop philosophising, face reality, take responsibility and live. But invariably it becomes another philosophy; and he who purports to take its message seriously must then asses all its alternatives; must in fact himself become a philosopher. He who wishes to disprove philosophy must join in the search for Truth.
Is then the philosopher merely a coward artist? Who refusing to face his own creations constantly seeks to ground them in truths beyond himself? He is a great mind in a world were Though serves no higher purpose. What can he do then; but give it purpose, extol the greatness of Thought and join in its oh so futile quest for answers? And unlike his relative, the man of faith; who admits his ignorance and prays to a higher power, he is after all, well respected. An authority almost. Devoting his life to the cause of Truth! How grand and noble! No dogmas lurk here! Except of course Truth; that frightful phantasm. Like God, Truth has a beginning; but it has not end. Once they are born they refuse to die. Ever will they haunt mankind with their inexplicable delirium; holding out the hope of something more.

The Intimate Stranger

He is man of today. Not tomorrow or yesterday. He is a nomad. At home everywhere and nowhere. He never stays long in one place. At the same time he always seeks the real and authentic, and so he has to stay long enough to think that he has experienced the truth of his temporary residence, has gotten a feel of the place. Always an intimate stranger; he wishes to absorb himself in his surrounding; to let it touch and move him and at the same time he remains outside of it, always reflecting on it, never getting too attached, never getting too real, always knowing that his escape is just round the corner.
He goes to a place not to have his beliefs reinforced but to have them crushed. To have them crushed and replaced and to come out a new man. Him aim is not self-realisation but self-destruction and rebirth. He believes himself fundamentally without a permanent self to realise. He can only break down its ephemeral shell to have it rebuilt again. Everything about him is built on shaky foundations. Everything is built with the expectation of its imminent destruction.
He fears to dream, to work towards future goals, because he fears to be trapped by them. To him the future is the past’s enslavement of the present. The future exists to him not as potentiality but as a illusion. He knows it is not he who will live it. The future belongs to someone else. Nor is his past his own. Each rebirth removes from him from his past.
And yet his escape from the future and the past makes him a victim of the present. As the present invariably bring moments of unhappiness, boredom, despair he finds he can neither project towards a brighter future, nor can he draw strength from a past he no longer connects with. The present proves a trap and instead he is compelled to treat his own life from a distance; a distance not in the past nor future, but merely an abstraction. He is obliged to draw on the abstract nature of thought to create a gap between himself and his present moment. He thus remains always at a distance from himself.
In the end he watches himself as if with a passionate disinterest. As if reading a book he finds captivating yet at the same time fearing becoming too engaged in the story he disengages himself. So he fears becoming enslaved by his own life. Fears to care too much to regret its inevitable end.