Virtue 9: Poetry - Making the offering - The 12 Virtues of the Primordial Artist

This is part 11 in a series exploring the 12 virtues that can free artists from cultural enslavement.

ATTEND

The promise of Poetry is the fulfillment of the artists’ task. the making real of the mysterious dream, and the offering of that object as gift.

Poetry poses several challenges, both technical and systemic. Technically we can get lost in “what is art really” conversations and loose ways to actually make art better, better poems. Poetry, as the concrete expressions of the art process, can be improved, because it has elements that can be looked at and developed. The key, additionally, is to not get lost in perfectionism or creative blocks related to pleasing a fickle audience, or a fickle critic, including the one in our own head.

The other problem is more systemic, and it has to do with a closed system view of reality, where what we have discovered is what is real, and rationality defines what is acceptable for admission into the culture.

In a world only of rationality, we are buried, drowned in simulacrum, symbol, system, mask. Rationality is the function that fixes us in the world of man. When mystery is reduced to puzzles and answers, there is nothing beyond what is being sold, being owned, being promised, being controlled by man. If we as artists are trapped within the culture, and creating only renditions of other creations, we are perpetuating the problem of a false world. Not only that, we’ll be forever chasing the ever changing ever mutating trends of the market, trends of the impatient consumer (who themselves are trapped).

What is needed is a way to approach art creation that disables the blocking energy of cultural echoing and approval seeking. It needs to be tactical (because we’re actually making something) and it needs to be strategically connected to something larger – something larger than culture.

ENVISION

The Greeks defined Poetry as anything created, made by man, that was beautiful – that had been made well, and that had truth shining through it. Poetry is the act of creating something from the Mystery, for the Mystery. And if this is done well, the object itself becomes Mystery.

I was able to see a Rothco at the SF MOMA. I had read about Rothco, I had seen a documentary. Those were simulacrums of the artist, of the work. I wanted to see for myself. Upon turning the corner to the room, I was struck dumb as by a lightning bolt. I was perhaps fifty feet from the work. All the other people disappeared. It was only myself and the painting. Myself and the Object. I walked slowly toward it over the course of two or three minutes. It was a profound experience for me, perhaps one of the most profound experiences I have had viewing art. I was in the presence of a genuine object of the great mysterious – like a moon rock brought back, this was the real thing. This was not a picture of the thing, or a description of the thing – this transcended that. This was the real thing.

And in a smaller scale, at my state park I was sitting at a donated picnic table and enjoying the sound of wind though the pines. I looked down and saw a carved crescent moon. Beautiful, elegant, simple. No signature, no embellishment. Just the exquisite simple beauty of the moon. It was representing the moon, but it it’s own small way, it was the moon, there during the day, looking at me. I felt its presence.

Reality + Truth + Well made = Beauty is the way I look at poetry creation. These ingredients must be present, and each of them can be missing and identified for addition.

Reality means embodied reality, from the Warrior archetype and the Lover archetype. Is it here? Is it tangible? Does it take up space and time? The Poem must do this.

Truth means the Mystery – the transcendent – the Great Mysterious shining through from Nature. There must be something “beyond this” in order for it to be a poem, for it to be art.

Well made means Virtue 8: Arete – is there craftsmanship? Did you care? Did you do the best you could in your communion with the mystery and with the materials? Did you work to make it transparent? Did you work to make it proportional, strong, to make it well, to make it last?

Beauty means the poem itself. Beauty is the result of these first three ingredients. We do the conscious work to apply truth, reality, and Arete and we arrive at beauty. If beauty is lacking, one of the prior ingredients is lacking, and needs to be addressed.

The sound you recorded for the interview sounds wrong, it is off, maybe the mic was too far away, or the settings on the recorder wrong, or the mic the wrong type of of too low quality. Then work on making it better. Adding more quality to your technique, your way of making. Take a class, volunteer and apprentice with someone who knows better than you. Make your technique better. Pay attention. Use your perception to really look at the problem and wait and think, and see for yourself what might make it better. You may know you have just never asked yourself. You may be able to figure it out just by paying attention.

The material is too mundane. Just every day, there is nothing special about the material, nothing transcendent. Look for truth to add. Look for the truth that wants to be expressed through this work. What is the truth behind this? What is the transcendent value or wisdom behind this? What transcendent value or values are needing to be worked out here? In this?

If artists don’t make poems, the culture does not change.

If artists are seeking truth and beauty, and the culture is ugly and hypocritical, the poems may not land, at first.

But they will still make an impact. Like a tank sabot round – they may penetrate more than we think, and have effects inside the culture that we do not immediately see. They will affect. They will move the needle. And anyway it’s all we’ve got.

The warrior will send poems whether they are destroying the mendacity or not, destroying bad simulacra or not. The warrior will keep sending poems as good as they can make them. Tenacity, ferocity, audacity.

Make your poems well without becoming perfectionist. Because the audience may not like them anyway. So just get them sent. Start sending those sabots!

Ultimately for me, and for the work of liberating artists from enslavement to culture, Art is not made for human audiences. Art is made for god.

Humans may be invited to witness the exhibition, they may be invited to witness the gift, they may even be invited to celebrate, and enjoy – but the gift ultimately is not to man, the gift is to god.

This shift of attitude is the only way the artist can be free of human enslavement. Artists need to see their relationship to culture as tangential. Their purpose is to relate with the Great Mysterious. To connect with the great mysterious, to create art in communion with the great mysterious, and then to offer the art up to the Great Mysterious, “Holding, as it were, the mirror up to Nature”.

The artist can still have love for humanity, love for the other, love for reality as it is. This framework is dependent on that. They can offer love, but they do not make the work in order to make the humans of their community love them. The gift of art must transcend that. The gift must be unconditional.

Poetry as the fulfillment of the artist’s work incorporates all the virtues that have lead to it, and those that we’ll see soon in the Child Archetype.

Love of self – the artist must saturate themselves with love, that they can accept their obvious, natural, shadow, light, funny, sad, real responses to the Mystery they are communicating with.

Love of other – the artist must accept the beauties and flaws of their fellow men, extend good will toward them in their exploration of the mystery and perhaps the transcendence of their fellow humans’ culture.

Love of God/Reality – this foundation established is what is making the communion possible at all. To see and look and accept and love what is there is what softens reality itself and allows the transcendent mystery to shine through.

Physicality – The warrior’s body must emerge with strength and lucid resonance. There must be feelings and gestures and immersion and embodiment in the dance with the Mystery. You must go there. You must go deep. You must dive to the depth of the see to find the pearl.

Courage – Courage to walk alone. Courage to seem mad. Courage to look into the abyss. Courage to look into the terror of creation. How large can you see? How deep can you see? How many sides of the miracle can you hold?

Alternation – The artist must know how to act and then listen, to do and then rest, to move forward and then to retrograde, facing the mystery. To move in and move away. All of this subtly and tactical acuity and action and passivity are necessary now.

Piety – We know this. We know that gazing into the mystery requires this transparency to Nature, this abiding in the Mystery, this Obedience to the artist’s intuition.

And beyond the Mystic – The Child must be called.

Desire – what do you want to say? What compels you?
Mischief – what forms are dead and need to be broken off with delight and childlike recklessness?
Abandon – when do you let go of everything you’ve learned and release into the Mystery yourself? After completion, after offering, when do you let go of the work completely and begin again?

I think it’s helpful to see a hierarchy here of the creative act. Because it does have several levels, and it does have effects on more than one plane. Here’s how I see it:

The primary focus of poetry is the mystery itself – creating of and for the mystery. This intention towards communion and truth liberates the act from human approval seeking and cultural pandering. It keeps the aim true. Attend the Mystery and create for the Mystery

The secondary focus can be on one’s own authenticity, one’s own lived experience. Our lives are unique. We have been born at a specific time, a specific it place, our lives, our tragedies and comedies have shaped us and not only that, have presented us with opportunities unique to us. What tools do you have here now in front of you? What is your access? What is your language?

And the third focus, the tertiary, is the culture itself. For art does affect the culture. It does make a difference. The third element may not be directly addressed at all by the artist, or they may choose to reference, inflect, nod to, or any other level of attention and care. There may be love, there may be mischief (See Virtue 11) there may be complete release from it (virtue 12) – but the key distinction is that the attention to the culture needs to be last on the list. It needs to be an order of magnitude lower than Mystery – if not more so. Do not let culture dictate your art or you will remain enslaved to culture’s whim and fickle desires.

Ultimately the goal of poetry, that is the goal of art objects – to transcend their own artifice – to transcend their nature as a representative of something, and through piety and Arete and courage and physicality and love and everything else, the object becomes, as if through alchemy, the thing It describes. That is the true gift.

DIRECT

Solo

Small Object Creation

Abide in the Mystery. Prepare some materials. Allow the blank page to exist. Allow the blank page to be a portal to the Mysterious. Allow yourself to start expressing, to start searching, to start interacting, communicating with he Mysterious. Allow it to develop on it’s own accord.

Integration: what hinders you from returning to the blank page?

Object Gifting

Take an object you have made, perhaps the one you made in the prior exercise, and exhibit it to God/The Mystery. Create a frame, create a place for it, so that God can see it, so that God may look in it and see themself.

Integration: how does it feel to have god / great mysterious be your audience?

Advanced: Invite a fellow human being to witness your exhibition.

Integration: how does it feel to have a human witness? Does something change? Is there diminishment, increase? Is there loss of focus on the divine? Is it possible to explain your intention or not?

Story Telling (Johnstone)

There are structural elements that will help you develop a story. Here is one version:

Routine
Interruption (by mystery)
Pursuit
Crisis
New Routine

Try making a story by first establishing a routine with a character. Then make an interruption – something that creates a sense of mystery that needs to now be pursued.
Then pursue the mystery.
Then confront a crisis that could finally answer the mystery.
The result of which creates a new routine.

Pairs

Exhibition witnessing

A creates an object or a gesture or a moment of art. B witnesses it, knowing they are not the intended audience, but are an witness invited.
Alternate.
Integration:
A: what is it like to exhibit for God before a human witness? B what is it like to be the witness to a sacred act?

Group

One person creates / exhibits an art work for god in the witness of the others.
Each person gets the artist role.
Integration: what changes as the numbers of witnesses increases? How is this relationship different from typical patron / audience relationships?

CURTAIN

Poetry is the fulfillment of the artists work. Their preparation, their virtues, their connection with the great mysterious reaches a culmination here. They apply their joy, their love, their work, their discipline to the creation of an art object that shines with the primary source material – the great mysterious.

And when the work is offered – they are released. The task is complete, their need fulfilled, and they can return to a state of innocence and openness, released completely. We will see this play out in the next archetype, the Child.

Crucially for my framework of freeing the artist from enslavement to human masters, reconnecting them to the great mysterious, the artist must see the work they create as intended not for man, but for the audience of the great mysterious. The poem is full communion: The communion of witnessing the Mystery, crafting the artist’s object that is transparent and communicative of the mystery, and then exhibiting the mystery object to the god – an object when it is created with sincerity and transparency, becomes an expression of the Great Mystery itself. This is how Nature works – The tree creates its seeds, the flower, the bird, these all of these are expressions of the great mysterious, continuing to express in a holy continuum. Humankind can again participate in this ecstatic dance.