Chapter Nine
Perennialist Artistic Creativity
- media--e.g. painting, writing, self-development
- forms--e.g. representational painting, novel, social awareness
- content--e.g. seashore, romance, election reform
- appreciative discernment of artistic manifestations
- opening oneself to inspiration from higher sources
- selective envisioning of artistic expression
- creative manifestation
- rediscovering and preserving the human wealth of art
- New, authentic innovations in media, forms, or content--and
- New, counterfeit manifestations that are not innovative creations of media, forms, or contents, but are destructive of previous elements.
- Receptivity to new media, forms, or content
- Discernment of the essential elements of media, forms, and contents. For example, the discerning artist understands that poetry as a medium must involve words with multiple levels of meaning. The discerning appreciator of art recognizes that the novel as a form must involve:
- A plot--story line
- Characters who undergo development
- Crisis-points--problems the characters face and respond to
- A denouement--a climax to the story
- The higher inspirational source is revealed in the object
- The manifestation is something other than itself--a revelation of a higher source
"In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better."
Paul Klee (1879-1940), Swiss artist
- The manifestation opens, for the appreciative, discerning recipient, into an experience of a different--sometimes higher--dimension
"Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
American essayist, poet, philosopher - Erato: the Muse of lyric poetry and mime
- Euterpe: the Muse of lyric poetry and music
- Polyhymnia: the Muse of sacred song and oratory
- Calliope: the Muse of epic poetry
- Melpomene: the Muse of tragedy
- Thalia: the Muse of comedy and pastoral poetry and one of the three Graces (three sister goddesses, known in Greek mythology as Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia, who dispense charm and beauty)
- Urania: the Muse of astronomy
- Terpsichore: the Muse of dancing
- Clio: the Muse of History,
- Selection of a medium--e.g. painting, writing, self-development
- Selection of a form--e.g. representational painting, novel, social awareness
- Selection of the content--e.g. seashore, romance, election reform
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Perennialist art is the deliberate use of skill and imagination in manifesting individual inspiration. The outcome of this creative act results in a myriad of expressions: painting, sculpture, drama, * symphony, novel, cartoon, Internet Web page, movie, illuminated manuscript, or a finely crafted self.
Perennialist art involves:
Today, various art forms are being devastated before our very eyes. What makes it worse is that the devastation is not even recognized. The desolation is, in fact, being celebrated as "high art." Debased public taste, molded by this wreckage, "grows by what it feeds on." So a still-born counterfeit of a movie such as "Pulp Fiction" is touted by Time magazine as a "2 1/2-hour tapestry" which "weaves four tales into a meditation about tough guys with too much or too little time on their hands. What do you talk about before a killing?" The crude ramblings of a bogus novel, such as Bret Easton Ellis's Less Than Zero are acclaimed by USA Today as
"Catcher in the Rye for the MTV Generation."
" Good authors, too, who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose ...
Anything goes".
Cole Porter
Increasing numbers of "movies" are based on screenplays lacking the essentials of plot, character, or climax. All other art forms are experiencing a similar debasement. In this age when art has become, as Al Capp put it, "a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered," it becomes necessary, therefore, to re-examine the essence of authentic art.
"Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all."
Oscar Wilde
Searching for the essence of genuine, transformative art is a tremendous challenge, for, as Beethoven said: "Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?" I suggest that there are five aspects of enlightened artistic creativity:
Appreciative Discernment
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Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose ...
Anything goes".
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The appreciative discernment aspect of authentic artistic creativity is the least understood. And this is a major cause of the current debasement of art forms by counterfeit malformations.
Sham artists simply do not have the capability of discerning the essence of an art form. They see, for example, a transformative movie such as Casablanca but do not understand its essence--how its elements interact to produce dramatic effect. They assume that a flair for lewdness and insolence epitomizes the skills necessary to write a great screenplay.
Part of being an enlightening artist, and a facet of artistic production, is the capability of appreciative discernment of the revelation of a higher, inspirational source in a particular manifestation. An art object or event is only realized--made real, completed, and brought to fruition--by appreciative, discerning recipients. Those recipients can include the artist himself. A transformative poem such as Wallace Steven's "Analysis of a Theme," is only actualized and consummated by its being appreciated, understood, and enjoyed by a discerning reader.
A reader who merely passes over the words of such a poem, without genuine comprehension, leaves the poem in an unfinished state in regards to his own experience. If the reader, out of egotism or scholastic puffery, injects spurious, extraneous meanings into the poem, he creates a perversion of his own design totally unrelated to the real poem which Stevens created. The essential poem, containing multiple meanings, cascading associations, and profound metaphysical dimensions, is available to the appreciative, discerning reader who has prepared himself to discover what Stevens deposited in his artistic creation.
" All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists."
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), French artist.
Appreciative discernment of genuine artistic manifestations includes the ability to discriminate between:
Counterfeit art is destructive in pretending to be a new medium, form, or content when in fact it is nothing but a sham. It is destructive in adopting specious artistic criteria and values--e.g. assuming that a counterfeit, new "form" of novel or screenplay is genuine and superior because it has achieved the rank of a "best seller" or "an Oscar winner."
"Appreciation is as definite a contribution to whole creation as any of the other qualities which seem to us the peculiar property of genius. Appreciation too works in the substance of thought, and therefore joins hands as co-worker with the original creative impulse."
Stewart Edward White. The Job of Living
Appreciative discernment of the revelation of a higher, inspired source in a particular manifestation requires specific capabilities:
We use these criteria in determining if a particular object of art is an illumined manifestation:
"It may be that occasionally some chance of angle or fall of light makes ours the only eye to see. There is in such cases laid upon us also the duty of interpretative creation that will shift the concept upon the visibility powers of others. Interpretative creation is thus a very high form of art, in that it implies a sympathetic understanding of the original artist's manifested intention; a clear-eyed understanding of one's own angle of view; and an intuitive understanding of the angles of view of one's fellow men."
Betty White. Gaelic Manuscripts
Openness to Inspiration
Having developed the capacity for discerning appreciation of artistic creations, the authentic artist must also gain a second capability: opening oneself to inspiration from higher sources.
"Inspiration is not a suggestion of detail ready formed. It is a pouring in of all essence in a vital stream, from which the creator segregates and absorbs those things appropriate to his vision, as the organs and functioning mechanisms and tissues of the body take from the homogeneous blood stream those elements only which make for their health and building."
Betty White. The Gaelic Manuscripts
It is here that we come to the tradition of the Muse. In Greek and Roman mythology, the Muses were the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science.
The tuneful nine, as they were called, included:
In more general terms, a Muse was considered to be a guiding spirit or a source of inspiration. Robert Graves, among many other artists, believed that art is produced by an actual experience of infusion from a guiding spirit, which he called the White Goddess.
"All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work "comes" to him.
W. H. Auden (1907-73)
Anglo-American poet.
Envisionment
Having developed appreciative discernment and the ability to open to inspiration, the authentic artist learns to carry out selective planning of manifestation of inspiration. In other words, the artist envisions and plans how he will express his inspiration in some object or event. This assumes that the artist has already developed skill in using various media, forms, and contents and has developed appreciative discernment of artistic manifestations.
This third aspect involves these activities:
For a work of art to achieve any degree of excellence, the artist must carefully plan what structures he will use and what particulars he will include.
Creative Manifestation
The definite act of creation of a work of transformative art is primarily a giving of oneself to the higher creative dynamism. The artist has determined in what medium she will work, she has decided with what kind of content she will deal, but now she must, if she is to be successful, abandon all mental effort and open herself to a power beyond her.
"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."
Henri Matisse (1869-1954),
French artist
Paul Klee, the Swiss artist, described his experience of painting as his hand becoming the instrument of a remote will. It was, he said, as if works were born out of the void. "Ripe, graphic fruits fall off." But this pushing yourself aside so something creative can come through is a challenging process--hard work.
"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"
Edna Ferber (1887-1968), U.S. writer
E. L. Doctorow, the American novelist, likened writing to "driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." The artist--writer, painter, sculptor, dramatist, ordinary person developing herself--must work effectively to remain open to inspiration from "somewhere else," not allowing extraneous elements of strain or over-critical analysis to block the flow.
" Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of."
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet
As we've seen, there are several stages in artistic creativity. In the phase of selective envisioning of artistic expression, our conscious mind makes its contribution. In the phase of creative manifestation, the mind can be a definite hindrance. About the most we can do is to work to our highest capability. As Robert Browning, the English poet, advised:
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Appreciative discernment of the revelation of a higher, inspired source in a particular manifestation requires specific capabilities:
We use these criteria in determining if a particular object of art is an illumined manifestation:
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Having developed the capacity for discerning appreciation of artistic creations, the authentic artist must also gain a second capability: opening oneself to inspiration from higher sources.
"Inspiration is not a suggestion of detail ready formed. It is a pouring in of all essence in a vital stream, from which the creator segregates and absorbs those things appropriate to his vision, as the organs and functioning mechanisms and tissues of the body take from the homogeneous blood stream those elements only which make for their health and building."
Betty White. The Gaelic Manuscripts
It is here that we come to the tradition of the Muse. In Greek and Roman mythology, the Muses were the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom presided over a different art or science.
The tuneful nine, as they were called, included:
In more general terms, a Muse was considered to be a guiding spirit or a source of inspiration. Robert Graves, among many other artists, believed that art is produced by an actual experience of infusion from a guiding spirit, which he called the White Goddess.
"All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work "comes" to him.
W. H. Auden (1907-73)
Anglo-American poet.
Envisionment
Having developed appreciative discernment and the ability to open to inspiration, the authentic artist learns to carry out selective planning of manifestation of inspiration. In other words, the artist envisions and plans how he will express his inspiration in some object or event. This assumes that the artist has already developed skill in using various media, forms, and contents and has developed appreciative discernment of artistic manifestations.
This third aspect involves these activities:
For a work of art to achieve any degree of excellence, the artist must carefully plan what structures he will use and what particulars he will include.
Creative Manifestation
The definite act of creation of a work of transformative art is primarily a giving of oneself to the higher creative dynamism. The artist has determined in what medium she will work, she has decided with what kind of content she will deal, but now she must, if she is to be successful, abandon all mental effort and open herself to a power beyond her.
"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."
Henri Matisse (1869-1954),
French artist
Paul Klee, the Swiss artist, described his experience of painting as his hand becoming the instrument of a remote will. It was, he said, as if works were born out of the void. "Ripe, graphic fruits fall off." But this pushing yourself aside so something creative can come through is a challenging process--hard work.
"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"
Edna Ferber (1887-1968), U.S. writer
E. L. Doctorow, the American novelist, likened writing to "driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." The artist--writer, painter, sculptor, dramatist, ordinary person developing herself--must work effectively to remain open to inspiration from "somewhere else," not allowing extraneous elements of strain or over-critical analysis to block the flow.
" Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of."
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet
As we've seen, there are several stages in artistic creativity. In the phase of selective envisioning of artistic expression, our conscious mind makes its contribution. In the phase of creative manifestation, the mind can be a definite hindrance. About the most we can do is to work to our highest capability. As Robert Browning, the English poet, advised:
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The tuneful nine, as they were called, included:
"All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work "comes" to him.
Anglo-American poet.
Having developed appreciative discernment and the ability to open to inspiration, the authentic artist learns to carry out selective planning of manifestation of inspiration. In other words, the artist envisions and plans how he will express his inspiration in some object or event. This assumes that the artist has already developed skill in using various media, forms, and contents and has developed appreciative discernment of artistic manifestations.
This third aspect involves these activities:
For a work of art to achieve any degree of excellence, the artist must carefully plan what structures he will use and what particulars he will include.
Creative Manifestation
The definite act of creation of a work of transformative art is primarily a giving of oneself to the higher creative dynamism. The artist has determined in what medium she will work, she has decided with what kind of content she will deal, but now she must, if she is to be successful, abandon all mental effort and open herself to a power beyond her.
"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."
Henri Matisse (1869-1954),
French artist
Paul Klee, the Swiss artist, described his experience of painting as his hand becoming the instrument of a remote will. It was, he said, as if works were born out of the void. "Ripe, graphic fruits fall off." But this pushing yourself aside so something creative can come through is a challenging process--hard work.
"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"
Edna Ferber (1887-1968), U.S. writer
E. L. Doctorow, the American novelist, likened writing to "driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." The artist--writer, painter, sculptor, dramatist, ordinary person developing herself--must work effectively to remain open to inspiration from "somewhere else," not allowing extraneous elements of strain or over-critical analysis to block the flow.
" Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of."
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet
As we've seen, there are several stages in artistic creativity. In the phase of selective envisioning of artistic expression, our conscious mind makes its contribution. In the phase of creative manifestation, the mind can be a definite hindrance. About the most we can do is to work to our highest capability. As Robert Browning, the English poet, advised:
French artist
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"Try to be Shakespeare,
leave the rest to fate!"
Rediscovering and Preserving the Human Wealth of Art
- One of the major aspects of transformative artistic creativity is to foster the continual rediscovery and preservation of the human wealth of art.
- To understand what wealth really is, let's take the hypothetical situation in which a rich man named John D. Billionaire purchases an expensive set of the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
John D. can't really own the works of Shakespeare even though he has a bill of sale for the set. Why? Because to "own" Shakespeare in an authentic sense means that you have the capability of understanding his works and the sensibility to appreciate the subtle nuances and dimensions of his writings.
Neither of which John D. has.
By saying this, it is not my intention to demean the money-laden John D. Billionaire or to presume a superior aesthetic sensibility. But it must be made clear that authentic wealth is something much different from mere affluence.
Defining Human Wealth
In a hundred years you and I--and Mr. Billionaire--will have our being in another realm where true wealth will be measured in terms of the capabilities we developed during our earthly life.
So at any given moment in human history, the people who possess true wealth are the women and men who have developed deathless qualities such as:
- compassion for others
- understanding of humans and the events in which they move
- appreciation of beauty, truth, harmony, justice, and freedom
- the ability to manifest what we understand
- the desire to continually evolve (supersede past shortcomings and develop new abilities)
"While I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him, after my manner: 'You, my friend--a citizen of this great and mighty and wise city of Athens--are you not ashamed of devoting yourself to acquiring the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?' . . .
"I proceed to interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no 'virtue' in him, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less.
"For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul."
Socrates's Speech Before the Athenian Senate
Humankind's Lost Treasures
Wealth is not physical objects at all, it is the possession of qualities which will survive the death of our physical body.
Genuine wealth requires specific capabilities, among many others, the discernment of subtlety, nuance, and hidden dimensions. These capabilities are not innate; they must be attained by each individual. This means that humankind can lose its wealth if it loses its ability to:
- recognize its underlying values
- appreciate those values
- pass on essential capabilities to each generation
Recognizing and Appreciating the Foundations of Human Wealth
Humans can lose the ability to recognize higher values if they mistakenly identify lower values as supreme. For example, humans can mistake sheer violence and mayhem for bravery and courage. It can mistake mere crude, uncultivated, indecorous "self-expression" for authentic art or music. At present, the seemingly unfathomable appetite for mindless, inane TV sitcoms and rabid-right "news" shows drives out the possibility of truly entertaining comedy or genuinely fair and balanced investigative reporting.
I'm not advocating the high-brow, pseudo-sophisticated, stuffy pretentiousness that now often passes for "culture."
leave the rest to fate!"
John D. can't really own the works of Shakespeare even though he has a bill of sale for the set. Why? Because to "own" Shakespeare in an authentic sense means that you have the capability of understanding his works and the sensibility to appreciate the subtle nuances and dimensions of his writings.
Neither of which John D. has.
By saying this, it is not my intention to demean the money-laden John D. Billionaire or to presume a superior aesthetic sensibility. But it must be made clear that authentic wealth is something much different from mere affluence.
In a hundred years you and I--and Mr. Billionaire--will have our being in another realm where true wealth will be measured in terms of the capabilities we developed during our earthly life.
So at any given moment in human history, the people who possess true wealth are the women and men who have developed deathless qualities such as:- compassion for others
- understanding of humans and the events in which they move
- appreciation of beauty, truth, harmony, justice, and freedom
- the ability to manifest what we understand
- the desire to continually evolve (supersede past shortcomings and develop new abilities)
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Wealth is not physical objects at all, it is the possession of qualities which will survive the death of our physical body.Genuine wealth requires specific capabilities, among many others, the discernment of subtlety, nuance, and hidden dimensions. These capabilities are not innate; they must be attained by each individual. This means that humankind can lose its wealth if it loses its ability to:
- recognize its underlying values
- appreciate those values
- pass on essential capabilities to each generation
Humans can lose the ability to recognize higher values if they mistakenly identify lower values as supreme. For example, humans can mistake sheer violence and mayhem for bravery and courage. It can mistake mere crude, uncultivated, indecorous "self-expression" for authentic art or music. At present, the seemingly unfathomable appetite for mindless, inane TV sitcoms and rabid-right "news" shows drives out the possibility of truly entertaining comedy or genuinely fair and balanced investigative reporting.
I'm not advocating the high-brow, pseudo-sophisticated, stuffy pretentiousness that now often passes for "culture."
| We can revitalize and maintain our priceless human heritage by developing and then using our aesthetic and intellectual abilities. The concomitants of human wealth can only be taught or |
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transmitted by persons who have themselves developed the requisite capabilities, not merely studied them so as to be able to discourse learnedly about them.
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At present, fewer and fewer persons know about this treasure trove we're speaking of, not many have any appreciation of it, and only a handful can recognize the capabilities which make it possible for a person to "possess" these riches.
We now live in a barbarous age in which humankind's heritage of literary, moral, and aesthetic values has not only been forgotten but is condemned by brutish, ignorant people.
This "letter to the editor" in a local California paper is representative of this savage temperament.
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This was written by a man who lives on the shores of a polluted lake and who probably thinks that classical music is also a waste of time.
To such people the only response is silence, leaving them to their own barren lives.
Below are links to several examples of material which encourages us to discover our hidden cultural treasures:
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Our exploration of human artistic and literary treasures in this chapter presupposes an awareness, to whatever degree, on the part of the reader of a higher or spiritual dimension. If a person believes that mechanistic materialism (there is nothing but matter in motion) is the true interpretation of reality, then she or he would find our exploration humdrum or nonsensical.
The Perennial Tradition--to which this chapter points--seeks to transform the entire structure and direction of society. Its goal is to infuse day to day living with a transcendent awareness that helps humans learn to commune with higher forces about them.
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*"Religion is the creation and reenactment of myth for the purpose of realizing—in both senses of that word as "perceiving" and "making actual"—and celebrating the relationship of human beings with supra-human, spiritual forces. . . . Theatre, no matter how "secular" its content, is in this sense of the word, religion."
(http://www.fa.mtu.edu/~dlbruch/rtjournal/vol_1/no_1/bert.html)
