Tom Block

Suspension!

2008-10-30T10:38:00.003-04:00

I just wanted to take a moment to explain why I haven't been posting here over the past many months. Other writing priorities have come into focus, pushing this blog onto the back-burner.

Starting in February, 2008, I re-wrote my "Shalom/Salaam: The Surprising Tale of a Mystical Entanglement" with the help of Virginia Gray Henry, President of Fons Vitae Publisher (Louisville, KY). (To see published articles excerpted from the book, please visit the right side of this page: http://tomblock.com/11shalom/index.php

I didn't finish this project until July, when I got it into my head to write some plays. I wrote "White Noise," a full-length play that is having a closed, pre-production reading by the Calliope Theater Company (and directed by Maryland State Arts Council Playwright in Residence, John Mocogiello) on December 8th, 2008. I recently finished another full-length play, "Night Out in Spain," which I am in the process of submitting to various theaters and festivals. I just began a third play, "The Prophet," which I will work on for the rest of the year. All three of these plays mix (liberally) intimations of sex and violence with existential crisis, God, the meaning of life, farce, absurdity and the occasion wild boar.

I also have two of other writing projects, which grew out of conference papers that I delivered over the past year. "Prophetic Activist Art" is my theory of bringing the historical purpose of art (to raise the human gaze towards our ineffable spirit), 13th century conceptions of prophetic legislation and the post-modern cult of the individual together, to propose specific manners in which art can have a transformative effect on the general society, and not just on the psyche of the artist and his/her closest friends. This paper was just published in the "International Journal of the Arts in Society" (Victoria, Australia), and it is a project that I am trying to find funding to turn into a manifesto/handbook, which could be taught in art schools and universities. To see the conference paper on which this is based, please visit: http://tomblock.com/speeches/ipra.php

"War as Love: How the Spiritual Quest has been Co-opted to Sell War" is an essay that was just published in the Popular Culture Association "Almanack," and is another project that I would dearly love to turn into a book. This piece looks at how all religious traditions not only use war-like language in describing the spiritual quest, but also justify war within a religious context. It then looks at the language and presentation of the Iraq War from 2002 to present, noting how in a population already primed by their religious tradition to see war in a spiritual context, it is not hard to sell them war as religion, and the quickest way to salvation. The book would look more deeply at the underlying human/animal nexus that leads us to conflate war and religion, and posit that war is actually necessary to civilization, as it offers an institutional manner in which to express our unquenchable aggressive tendencies, which would otherwise lead to a violent anarchy. To see this conference paper, please check out:http://tomblock.com/speeches/war.php

There are a few other writing projects that are in various states of disarray, and which I would love to find the time and funding to pursue. I have an 800-page manuscript of a novel, "The Fool Returns," which follows the adventures of the hapless Bartender Bill, chosen by fate to fulfill a 500 year-old spiritual obligation, leading him from his life as a bartender in New York City, through an increasingly bizarre series of experiences in western Spain, eastern Portugal and then finally discovering an incomprehensible catharsis in a brothel in the Alfama District of Portugal.

I would also like to pen the academic sequel to my "Shalom/Salaam" book, looking at the manner in which the earliest Sufi mystics were influenced by Jewish mysticism. This would close the circle between the mystical cores of these two religions -- and provide a strong, spiritual basis for renewal between these two Biblical cousins, who have recently fallen into a bit of a row over a dusty plot of land in the Middle East.

There are even a few more ideas -- a political essay, two one-act plays, even turning the blog below into two books, collected under the titles: "Letters to an Imaginary Friend: Concerning Art" and "Letters to an Imaginary Friend: Concerning Everything but Art." But no one has ever published a second book before publishing their first, so I am currently on hold (publishing-wise, at least), until the "Shalom/Salaam" project works its way lugubriously towards completion with Fons Vitae.

Concerning Good and Evil?

2008-01-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

These post-Modern Catholic thinkers (Maritain, Merton, Niebuhr) are always trapped by the tightening noose of their own necessary religious structure. When they bump up against the tawny strings of orthodoxy, they always choose to twist themselves in its loving embrace, instead of breaking through from out of their Catholicism into the full expression of their humanity. But always, just before they hang themselves on their faith in the human-created Catholic Church, they say some interesting things about God, life and humanity.
Maritain is shackled to the idea of morality as pre-existent, something that any religious person would be, but an idea that I struggle with more and more. For instance, he avers: “There are objective norms of morality, there are duties and rules, because the measure of reason is the formal constitutive element of human morality.”
Now, this is one of those places where religion and humanity might diverge. After all, if there are “objective norms of reality,” then how the hell are we supposed to know what they are? Is the Catholic Church (or any other religious institution, for that matter), really able to suss out right from wrong, the good, the bad and the ugly, and proffer us a literal and final version of objective reality? This is giving humans an awful lot of power – to look into the soul of God and divine just what, in the Grand Scheme of Things, is “right” and what “wrong,” what “is” and what “ain’t.”
There are many religious paths – Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism – which have a much more nuanced view of “good” and “evil,” in some cases even erasing the line between the two. In these cases, both “good” and “bad” fall under the category of “human actions,” after all.

"Actions Exist," acrylic, ink on paper, 10" x 7", 2007

As this tale about the Sufi saint Rabia stated:
“One day, she was seen running through the streets of Basra carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When asked what she was doing, she said: I want to put out the fires of Hell, and burn down the rewards of Paradise. They block the way to God. I do not want to worship from fear of punishment or for the promise of reward, but simply for the love of God.”
Here, “good” and “evil” simply become veils. And, as Dhu’l Nun averred: “Whatever you imagine God to be, He is something different.” Mightn’t this be so for good and evil, as well?
________________________________________
A friend of mine, Colette, had this to say about morality:
“I thought that the best response was perhaps a few words about my bedrock assumptions -- that humans are nothing more than any other creature in the natural world. Different, of course, but no better, no worse, no more part of the divine than sharks or bacteria. I do not believe in a divine spirit, other than the energy that connects all forms of life, and all inanimate objects, past, present, and future.
This, then sheds a whole different slant to ideas of morality-- that it is one expression of human life forms, but no more inherently "important" than the ability to reproduce oneself by mitosis. And so, even as technology increases, and perhaps removes all biological functions from us, it may still be that morality remains the domain of humans. Or, it may be that we surpass such a need, such a state in development -- and move on to another way of ordering the world, that we can scarcely (if at all) imagine.”
If we are willing to open our minds to the extent that Colette has – to move into a truly post-religious worldview, one which eschews even the underlying assumptions of most religions (and approach the conclusion that morality is simply a stage of evolution) – then the idea of “acting” becomes completely disentangled from “duty.” I, myself, don’t know if I can go there – after all, my whole art and thought career is built around working for the common good, and inspiring others to do the same. In truth, so is Colette’s, as she is an environmental theorist who is clearly attracted to undertaking actions and living in such a manner as to be respectful and even positive in her influence on the world.
But perhaps it is simply a matter of perspective. Catholicism tells us that we have to act in a certain manner “or else.” This seems like a position wrought for the infantile. Simone Weil, coming out of the Catholic tradition but refusing (as did other great 20th century Catholic thinkers) to subsume her humanity beneath the proscriptions of the Church), said: “Where there’s a need, there’s a duty.” And the Sufis shared with us this story:
“A Sufi dervish was asked: ‘If you were the lord of this world, and had the reins of divine power in your hands, what would you do, what decrees would you issue?’
‘Oh, my master, if I were in that position, I would have everything continue upon the course that it is presently on. I would never intervene to altar the forces of destiny.’” (Sheikh Nazim Adil al-Haqqani)
I don’t know . . .

The Death of Magic and the End of Time

2008-01-02T17:41:00.000-05:00

We live in a time of circuses – at the very least, we have this. Circuses still criss-cross the country: smelly, reprobate throw-backs to another era. The elephants are still horrendously treated, the acrobats are still mind-boggling and occasionally, in a minor circus orbiting at the edges of acceptable society one can still find a two-headed pygmy or a set of Siamese Twins. This something at least, no? The residue of mystery; the last tiny bit of the shamanic spirit.
Not so long ago, magic was everywhere. We humans understood nothing; all was speculation – the work of sprites and Gods. Prophets and seers, those same people that ambulate lethargically through the halls of today’s back wards of asylums, they were the ones with access into the world beneath the image of forms; it was they who spoke directly with Gods, and the future. In those days, ritual meant something – it led in a beeline into the world of the unseen, the place of dreams.
Now, we have beaten back the mystery – through the chimerical “knowledge” afforded us by testable science. We understand! Magic doesn’t exist. Retreating quickly over the past four or so centuries, magic has ben relegated to small, irrelevant puddles in the darkened shadows of our culture: among latter day Wiccans, in absurd, occult practices descended from the once proud traditions of the Templars, the Rosicrucians, the Kabbalists. In lotto winners and celebrities, sad shamans for the contemporary worldview. And, in the circus, where the forms or shamanism live on in the caller, the clowns and jugglers, the “death defying feats” (after all, a “death defying feat” was always the entrée into world beyond the world of forms for the Incan shaman or Egyptian priest), where the oily residue of a once oceanic belief in the theurgic universe still resides.

"U Ba Thaw," oil on canvas, 60" x 36", 2007

In our supposed knowledge, we have lost nearly everything. The world that our new zeitgeist, shorn of magic and wonder, has allowed us to dominate is about to shrug its shoulders, and be done with us. The Gods that used to have us cowering, giving us a sense of ultimate Truth, that forced us to be humble with ourselves and the world around us, have withdrawn, disappeared into the ether that we have willed out of existence with out addiction to “information” and “understanding.”

“With the destruction of an immutable set of principles which are the judge of both knowledge and virtue, and with the appearance of a purely terrestrial man whom became the measurement of all things, a trend from objectivism to subjectivism began in Western civilization which continues to this day. No longer was there a metaphysics and a cosmology to judge the truth and falsehood of what men said, but the thoughts of men in each epoch became the criteria of truth an d falsehood. The Renaissance brought forth a new conception of man which made all form of knowledge anthropomorphic.” (S. H. Nasr, Man and Nature, pg. 68)

It’s the Tower of Babel that we build, turning our back on the magic that is the universe, which is existence. We think that because we can name or even nominally understand something (the processes in the brain; the law of relativity), we have somehow subdued it, brought it into our realm, de-activated the magic within it. But – why do certain processes in the brain experience themselves as consciousness; why do the laws of gravity and relativity hold? Why is there someone here to ask why at all? These questions – the true questions – which lead in a bee-line back to the world of magic, are ignored or ridiculed, and we, in an ever-more myopic worldview, grind our teeth in our sleep while figuring out ways to master our domain, ignorant that our time grows dearly nigh . . .

Thirteen Years Ago

2007-12-18T16:31:00.000-05:00

Silver was the morning air outside of Lisbon that day. Along the quay between Estoril and Cascais, the flagstone walk by the sea was still damp from the high tide. The cafés were just opening for the day, white-aproned waiters wiped off the tables with dirty rags, the cooks fired up the grills where the whole fishes would be roasted for lunch.
Earlier that December day, I had been in the center of that crumbling city. After breakfast, I took one of the piglet trams down Rua Misericordia, past the Chiado District to the Cais do Sodre, the little station from which trains left every 20 minutes, following the Tagus River to the sea. I climbed into a near-empty car, sat by the window and watched the river widen to the gulf. 20 minutes later, I got off near the end of the line, by the castle in Estoril.
1994.
The glimmering morning of an early December day. I walked along the wide, flagstone promenade by the sea; all was quiet. One, and then another old man with nothing better to do than fish into the waves of the receding sea; an old woman walking a dog. The Estoril casino was shuttered; any beachwalkers were still in bed, or back in Lisbon.
I was going to make it!
I sat in a just-opened café, ordered an espresso and watched the sea foam breach the wall and splay out over the walkway. I had just been offered the strangest art event of my life and I was certain, 13 years ago almost to this day that I had “made it.” I wrote a poetic letter to a friend, the delicate fragrance of the hot coffee wafting into the silvery light; I composed odes about myself in my head.
I was to spend three weeks painting in the storefront of an unrented store in the Espacio Chiado, a high-end shopping mall in downtown Lisbon. Nestled on the uphill between the Baixa (lower city) and Barrio Alto (the upper, older part of the city that wasn’t destroyed and the rebuilt after the great conflagration of 1755), the Chiado district was home to some of the hippest retail and nicest Soho-style design stores in this butt-end European capital; the mall itself, a chrome and marble splendor, actually had exposed within it, a piece of the 12th century Arab wall that had once protected Lisbon, which had been excavated and then encased in glass, on the lower level of the edifice.

"Akbar Muhammadi," oil on canvas, 60" x 36", 2007

Indeed! Three glorious weeks as the featured artist in an “Atelier do Natal,” working my magic on large, wood-slatted paintings as crowds of Christmas shoppers passed by my spot, hard-by one of the entrances to the mall. All would see the process of a true artist; surely, the press would come, paintings would sell, I would be discovered and sucked up into the European art world, a 31 year-old “comer” unleashed on the capitals of the Old World.
I sat and dreamed by the sea that day; the sun rose higher in the sky and thinned out the silvery, salty air. Clarity overtook the day, the sea foam fought with the wafting smells of the reddening charcoal. A delivery of potatoes and kale; the Caldo Verde soup was put on to boil. The smell of the Portuguese chorizo mixed in with the salt. A vague smell of fish rot washed in off the sea, and dissipated.
I dreamed over the small coffee. All of my hard work! All of the time in that unheated studio over the fish store back in Caceres, Spain, the small provincial capital in the middle of the desert, where I lived. My decision to turn my back on the United States, move to a country where I didn’t speak the language, live as an illegal alien – all of it appeared to be the right move, as I sat there, teetering resplendently on the precipice of fame and fortune.
That was thirteen years ago.
And now, today, in my suburban office off the back of the master bedroom, overlooking a fenced, winter backyard (nearly half of the 15th hundredths of an acre that define my land), my wife and two children performing their late afternoon chores out in the family room – now right now I sit waiting (still) for some shove some imperceptible event that will truly, finally mark me as a comer, as a new art voice, as someone “important” within the narrow spectrum of this art world, this America, this still-born dream I am still dreaming from more than a decade ago.
And at 44, still young?
(And thirteen years from now? Still waiting? Still on the edge of a certain type of precipice?)

Letter to a Scientist

2007-12-13T08:15:00.000-05:00

I hope that you will forgive the length of this reply, as well as the time that has elapsed since your simple question of a few days ago; it's just that I have been lying on the floor amazed since I saw your quick note. A more profound and even plaintive question, I can't imagine.

"Who said G/god?"

I was immediately reminded of the Sufi dervish who happened upon a nest of Qalanders, deep into their sensual and ecstatic rituals, a series of sensual orgies they undertake in the hopes of shucking off the final vestiges of cloying humanity (for them, "cloying humanity" is represented by the social and cultural mores that define actions as "good" or "bad," and even their sense of "self"). The Qalanders undertake the most obscene, hedonistic "rituals" to unfetter themselves from any vestige of human morality and conditioning.

Shyly, our dervish stood at the door and peered in at the Bacchanalian scene, so foreign to his humble eyes. "Come in," said one of the Qalanders, more of a demand than a question, and before he knew it, the quiet dervish had been relieved of his goods, his clothes, his sobriety and perhaps other appurtenances; hours later, he was thrown out of the den like a rag doll, completely drunk as the day was dawning.

Having been touched in some profound manner, and now perplexed beyond understanding, he spent the rest of his life wandering in awe of every moment, oscillating between utter confusion and an ecstatic, mystical realization that lies somewhere beyond the sense of self, muttering: "Come in," and shaking his head in amazement.

You see, Doctor, that we can even ask such a question ("Who said G/god?") perplexes me. Who, indeed, "says" G/god? Though I might aver, who doesn't? We are, after all, but a message from God to God, and as such, each of us "individuals" is but a subtle eructation in the fabric of the universe, bubbling momentarily on the surface before easing back into our natural quantum (or "G/godly") state. Think "David Bohm."

Just what kind of era do we live in, that a person might say this: "I do not think that there are any other sorts of messages... hidden or otherwise. Why do I say this? Because we can explain what we see based on scientific measurements, experiments, and theory.
Widmanstatten texture is pretty well understood without any recourse to metaphysics or religion."

This statement immediately reminds me of a story about the great 18th century Jewish mystic, Baal Shem Tov, entitled, "The Famous Miracle:"

"A naturalist came from a great distance to see the Baal Shem Tov and said: "My investigations show that in the course of nature the Red Sea had to divide at the very hour that the children of Israel passed through it. Now what about that famous miracle!"
The Baal Shem answered: "Don't you know that God created nature? And he created it so, that at the hour the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea, it had to divide. That is the great and famous miracle!""

No doubt you might disagree with me, but proposing that we humans can get to the "bottom" of anything represents our own particular hubris, that which ultimately dooms humanity to being a failed evolutionary experiment. Our brains and prehensile hands will prove to be about as helpful to us as body mass was to the Dinosaurs, if we don't expand our spiritual maturity, and our sense of humility before the universe.

You know the Tower of Babel story, right? The silly Lilliputs of the Jewish Bible building their structure so that they might get a glimpse of God? The smashing of that tower and ensuing chaos represents the beginnings of perceived human variances, and of our current tribal structure of "different" ethnicities, religions, cultures etc.

Well now, through our technology, Internet, scientific know-how and other narrow but prideful intellectual pursuits, doesn't it seem that perhaps we are building another Tower of Babel, yet an even more insidious one, that allows us not to "peek" at God, but to supplant It? We no longer have need of anything; give us but a few scientific instruments and a pair of stiletto heels, and we're good to go . . .

Well, Albert Einstein, who knew more about both Physics and God than I ever will, said he didn't know what munitions might be "de rigeur" for World War III, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones. After the fall of the latest Tower of Babel!

See? What I'm getting at? As long as we think that we can operate outside of the forces of the universe (on the grand scale) or the forces of history, even, on the micro-scale (as believed our current political leaders when they trundled us into Iraq), then we are indeed ruled by blind hubris. When we believe that we, humans, define an "end" -- in any manner -- we have lost sight of what is truly important, and have narrowed our perspective to that of an ant.

I'm no scientist, but I believe that Chaos theory posits that there is a similar way in which systems connect and move, be it population distribution across geography and time, the stock market, weather patterns, dancers on a dance floor -- what have you. The whole system is completely interlinked, predictably unpredictable and perfect. It is a controlled, vast, chaotic contingency that underpins the movements of all systems, from the way that a family moves around the house on a Saturday morning to the manner in which elements ebb and collect throughout the universe.

Systems, not specific aspects therein, cannot be boxed and tied up, "understood" and explained without taking into account all other parts of the whole -- both known and unknown. And underpinning the whole thing, the Great Law Giver, that which searches for Itself through the unfolding of all of these systems in time (instead of outside of it),
the blind, unconscious mover desperately in search of "self" – a "force" defined by the whole, while everything else within the system can fool itself into believing that he/she/it is discrete somehow in itself (as we humans certainly do) -- this vast, encompassing force underpins all, even the Widmanstatten texture forming on the cooling cores of all planets. And only that force, that which defines the "whole," can have any true "perspective" on what is going on here, in this universe.

As such, I do contend that the Widmanstatten texture have far more to tell us than that they are created by a slow cooling core of nickel and iron, and their marks are entirely comprehensible within what we currently think of as "science." In my opinion, to box Widmanstatten texture into this small explanation represents a belief not unlike that naturalist who came to the Baal Shem, convinced that his calculations had ruled out the necessity of God.

I am, as ever, sorry for the length of this reply, as well as my own lack of humility, all while claiming that human hubris will ultimately do us all in.

If you find a certain offensive, pedantic and even patronizing tone to my reply -- you are certainly not alone. For some reason, people sometimes take me this way?

With perplexion,

Tom

On God and Suffering

2007-11-29T19:57:00.001-05:00

Dosteyevski said: “Suffering is the sole source of consciousness.” And suffering is, indeed, the single unifying factor in human experience. After all, we all suffer from something – and it is just this suffering that underpins the human experience. Pain is necessary for an awareness of “being” . . .
The only true vision of a universal “God” must move beyond the conception of “Good” and “Evil.” These are human constructs, and do nothing but provide humans a manner to blame some “other” for their problems. There is no good and evil in the universe; suffering, pain – these are absolutely necessary in the yearning towards consciousness, in God’s quest to become aware of Itself.
As difficult as it is, as much maturity it demands, we (humans) will never “understand” until we can move beyond the idea that God “knows” anything in the sense that we conceive of “knowing.” God created the universe, God created pain to know; so that It could know It. We are this yearning to know; we represent the painful growth towards God’s self-knowledge. Can God be slain? Can suffering do anything but lead to greater consciousness? Does our idea of “Good” as “pleasurable” have meaning to anyone other than a child, a spiritual infant?
I have no desire to suffer; but I also have absolutely no say in the matter. Pain comes in many forms and I have experienced some of them; there are many and much more powerful versions that I have never experienced and (God forbid!) I never will.
But what will be is what will be. Consciousness and Love (“agape,” that is) are born of the facts at hand, not wishes for different facts. Everything, absolutely everything must be viewed as the expression of an obligation; as if we have been leant something terribly important and must not only protect it, but increase it, quicken it. That “something” is our consciousness, our understanding – this is the understanding of God itself, unfolding. As the Sufis put it: “God sees through your eyes;” don’t you want God to have the clearest, most loving vision possible?

"Execution," charcoal on paper, 22" x 14", 2001

“Bad” – what is bad? That which disagrees with orthodoxy? That which George Bush calls evil? Actions that hurt another human being? Pedophilia? Drug abuse? Sheathing women in burkas? And what is “good,” for that matter? “Helping” people feel less pain? Tithing? Creating art? Running for the state legislature?
We just don’t know. We yearn towards an understanding of just what is “good” and what “bad” – and we should do this. But we are completely in the dark; our quest towards a moral vision is not towards something that is existent, but into the morass of the unknown. We are told many different things by human wisdom traditions, and can imagine even more in the dark of the night, when we are released from the bonds of the sun. But what is the answer?
This scrabbling about – this is God in search of Itself. And this scrabbling about is occasioned by the very existence of what we think of as “Bad.” That which is “bad” is absolutely necessary to growth; hence, disgusting as it is, it might not be bad at all, but incontrovertible. Completely.
So, where does this leave us? Are we to throw up our hands and thank God for mass murder and Multiple Sclerosis? “Thank God for visiting this hell upon us. Amen.” I don’t think so! But we must accept that which is – this represents understanding; this is mystical realization. Accept, but not submit. Struggle to operate within the human realm to bring consciousness of morality and love into our existence, for if it expands in the human realm, it emerges into the universal realm, as well. Suffering will not be conquered, though current paradigms hold out such hope. If you haven’t noticed, we are hardly lessening suffering; we are only growing more impatient with it. And it might be just this impatience – this lack of acceptance – that makes the suffering all the more acute.
Odd, isn’t it?

More or Less

2007-11-24T21:43:00.000-05:00

I am reminded of a story:
A man shows up at the door one day, a strange little box-like mechanism, with a small handle on top of it in his hands. “Here,” he says, insinuating the small apparatus into the world of an otherwise normal homeowner (Read: “you” or “me”). “It’s really quite easy; all you have to do is push this button,” and he points out a small red dimple on the handle atop the box, “and I will return with one million dollars. Voila.”
Of course, there is a catch; there always is, so our friend, standing unsurely in the doorway asks, “And?”
“Well of course,” says the man, in that knowing sort of way that certain men in ties can so easily affect, “Yes, of course. If you are of the mind to hit the button, well, someone, somewhere in the world will die. Like that; unexpectedly.” And here he kind of smiles. “But after all . . .”
“Who will it be?” asks the homeowner, suddenly horrified by the little device.
“I don’t know,” says the man, shrugging. “But we’re all to die, someday. No?”
“What a horrible little gadget,” says the one without the tie, shuddering.
“Be that as it may, I’ll just leave it here,” and he quickly places the little thing inside the door, “until you’re done with it.”
“But,” responds the other, “What if I never push the button?”
Alas, the suit has somehow disappeared and the homeowner is left alone with his quandary.
Of course, we all know how the story ends.

"Wish for Everything," acrylic and ink on paper, 10" x 8", 2005

It is played out again and again in households and parlors around the world on a daily basis. The price to seduce each of us into pushing that button rises and falls with all the vagaries of the stock market, but there is always a price that is barely enough, and we are always able to act with a delicious dozy indifference to that person “out there” who might well be effected by our actions. And so, push we do . . .
The greatest fib of all is that we can somehow inure ourselves to charges of malfeasance by “taking the fifth” in life. Not asking too many questions; turning a blind eye, sucking up to those who hold the Big Keys, taking a job where one delegates their moral choices to a “higher power” (i.e. their boss; not God), pushing that button anonymously and then putting the consequences out of mind. This common mental gymnastic allows us to pass the vast majority of our time operating in a complete moral void, while comforting ourselves that we have no responsibility other than to our family, our job or our “State.”
There is no such thing as neutrality.
The absurdity of Switzerland aside, every non-decision is a decision in and of itself; every abstention from taking a truly moral course of action is a descent into indifference, and amorality. Amorality and immorality are only separated by their prefix – not at all in their ultimate meaning. And it is just this indifference that is truly the opposite of Good. (“Your indifference makes of you an accomplice.”)
Albert (Einstein) had this to say – and it would behoove more of us to listen to that zany old genius:

“All of us who are concerned for peace and the triumph of reason and justice must today be keenly aware of how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. But however that may be, and whatever fate may have in store for all of us, we may rest assured that without the tireless efforts of those who are concerned with the welfare of humanity as a whole, the lot of mankind would be still worse that in fact it even now is.”

How many “buttons” – annihilating some anonymous person out there – do we push everyday, with our job choice, our purchasing choices, our driving choices, even flushing a toilet overfilled with precious water?
No, no – of course, after all, how can we really be held responsible for any of this? They’re not really our choices, after all – for God’s sakes! What kind of realist would expect that we could take charge of our actions in such as way as to become truly moral actors in this world gone to the dogs?
(Succumb . . .)
We drift through our days, doing our jobs, taking care of our friends, certainly giving of ourselves to charity and trying to make the world a better place (within reasonable bounds, of course!), sending holiday cards that demand: “World Peace,” and then checking “Destroy” in the ballot box; going to a house of worship on the weekend and then blissfully forgetting it all the vast majority of the time.
And we feel more or less certain that we are more or less good and moral people.

Three Legislative Proposals to Make the World a Better Place

2007-11-21T22:29:00.000-05:00

1. War: We could do much to stem war as being a viable and even easy option for politicians by passing one simple law. If politicians were forced to vote a single member from their own family into war at the head of the army – from Chelsea Clinton to one of the little Bush twins – we would do much to stem the rush to use war as a political option. Imagine, if each legislator knew that they would be condemning a member of their own family to psychological destruction, physical injury or potential death when they voted for war. This simple law would certainly make them appreciate in its entirety what it means to go to war. Not to say that all wars would be stemmed – World War II, for instance, might well have been fought under these pretenses – but that the succession of wars of choice that we have fought over the past 75 years, making use the absolute most war-like nation over this time, would be stemmed.
Even the most hateful and narrow of Southern Republicans would have a difficult time voting their own family member into war, and the noxious tide of our own self-destructive impulses would be curtailed.

2. National Service: everyone under 30 is a little narcissistic snot who is essentially untrustworthy and out only for their own remunerative gain. The upper classes are over-indulgent with their kids (I should know; I’m both one of those kids and one of those parents!) and the children coming from struggling families are made to feel worthless. They either make it on their own, at all costs, or they’re out: society will in little way help them, or honor their struggle for success in our post-modern world.
As such, we must have a democratizing event that brings the whole of society together when there is still hope – when people are out of high school but before they start down their career path. The idea of the individual worth and democracy for all are the best aspects of our contemporary milieu; with the draft gone, however, this aspect has slipped from the specific awareness of our youth.
A year of national service that concentrates on good work and is funded by the state, where all peoples are moshed together in working for some common good (whether it is cleaning up destitute areas, mentoring at-risk kids, planting trees or other) in the tradition of Roosevelt’s WPA, would do a tremendous amount to knit this heterogeneous society together. Not only would young adults at a tremendously formative time in their lives come to feel the warmth of working for the common good (instead of their own narcissistic little desires), they would also be forced to work with and perhaps even befriend “the other,” people from other geographical areas, religions, ethnicities, backgrounds etc.
This would add tremendously to the positive impetus in our American culture, and do much to combat sectarian, economic and racial rifts that have yet to be healed (and sometimes seem to be on the rise) in our society.

"Moses Maimonides," acrylic, ink & collage on canvas, 72" x 30", 2007

3. Moral Ombudsman: A little more complicated, perhaps, but an idea that would attempt to insert a moral center into the Machiavellian, power-driven politics of today’s America. I am calling for the creation of a group whose natural constituency would be all Americans - that would ignore political affiliation or economic clout when dissecting current events in the political field. This would be a non-profit group consisting of members from a variety of religions and political views that would dissect from a moral point of view the specific proposals sludging out of our legislative bodies.
Issuing its decisions in policy papers, op-ed articles, press releases, scorecards on the votes of public servants and reaching out in other like manners, this non-profit watchdog would finally offer a true moral center from which to judge the legislation and the public actions of our elected leaders. By developing and implementing an agreed upon moral matrix - developed by a wide collection of religious and political leaders - through which to view current events and, most importantly, the slurry of noxious legislation emitting from our various legislative bodies, a Moral Ombudsman could begin to turn the political discussion away from what is most politically expedient and/or monetarily remunerative for a lucky few and towards a view that is morally correct and helpful to the greatest number of our fellow citizens. 
By injecting a moral center into the public scrum, the whole context within which we see the political process, which is currently limned by political advertising and the press, would be changed for the better, proffering a center that would not move with the political winds. By setting up and hewing to a moral reference point, the Moral Ombudsman would help to change the public discourse and, at its very best, lead our country out of the wilderness of competing, personal and corporate interests towards a politics where the true constituency would be the people themselves.
Difficult? Sure. Impossible? Perhaps – but nonetheless, something well-worth trying, regardless of the nay-sayers and practicians that populate the public square . . .

Letters to a Mystic

2007-11-20T18:21:00.001-05:00

Yes, indeed, unrequited love as the condition for true, mystical love. Easy to see even in our small, personal lives -- for instance, if we give a cup of coffee or a Danish to a homeless person and they treat us with disdain, how do we feel? This is indeed the mystical question -- threaded into our everyday life. After all, love with the expectation of anything in return isn't love at all, but barter.
This ideal of love entered into Jewish mysticism, via the Kabbalah and then Hasidism, originating, of course, in Sufism. Here is a passage concerning the Kabbalah:

"God contracted Himself because He, non-dual and relation-less unity, wanted to allow relation to emerge; because He wanted to be known, loved, wanted; because He wanted to allow to arise from his primal one Being, in which thinking and thought are one, the otherness that strives to unity. So there radiated from Him the spheres (Sephirot): separation, creation, formation, making, the world of ideas, the forces, the forms, the material, the kingdom of genius, of spirit, of soul, of life."

God willed into being a separate consciousness (that of all sentient beings) so that this consciousness could perceive and love God. Ultimately, however, human love of God represents an act of self-knowledge, self-love, as humans ultimately exist within God. And this, so say the Jewish mystics, Sufis and others, was the purpose of creation, to bring knowledge of God to God.
This explains the divine purpose of love -- and the fact that love alone is the ultimate goal, and not a manner of achieving something more. This ideal stemmed directly from earlier Sufis and, certainly the female saint Rabia, who was one of the first and most ardent to propose this manner of mystical realization – a love beyond desire.
Start small -- you don't want to burn up like a small pebble entering the Earth's atmosphere.
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Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you -- I am at a show, finishing up a very nice couple of days of talks, reception, meetings with students etc.

In a general sense, the idea of relevance is antithetical to Sufism. "Sufism is about degradations and anonymities." As well, "The true Sufi is like a small ball of dust that, when lightly moistened, neither muddies the sole of the shoe when trod upon, nor bruises."
Indeed, Sufism, pointing as it does towards unity -- everything, every action, all individually perceived moments and objects are all arrows pointing towards The One -- does not prioritize actions or outcomes. Nor does Sufism believe in the cause and effect relationship.
However, what it does posit (and in this, it had a profound influence on Jewish mysticism) is a deep respect for every moment and each action undertaken by an individual. "Look to what you do, for that is what you are worth." As such, it offers a definite and vital road-map for social and communal behavior. With the kind of profound respect that Sufism offers (and demands) acting as a basis for private and public action (the Sufi, after all, has no "public face" -- they are the same in public or private), the idea of respect for all peoples and their needs becomes a driving force. For instance, Sufis believe that all prophets from all religions take their energy from the same source -- God -- and as such, that all religions offer valid spiritual responses for those that follow those paths. In Sufism, we can find a bedrock philosophy for responding to the world and working for the public good.
The details must be worked out in each individual's life and milieu, however the motivation, stemming from the Sufi doctrines, will help the actor infuse their actions and beliefs with the deep respect of these gentle mystics.
Let me add, however, that Sufis are often viewed (still) as heretical within Islam; it is a problem that they have had for more than 1000 years. In fact, a Saudi Muslim man set up a museum of religions in Japan (I don't remember the name of the museum) that highlights the similarities between all religions -- with one stipulation, that Sufism never be included in the museum. This was the only religious practice excluded, pointing to the somewhat unstable relationship between certain facets of Islam and Sufism.

Ultimately, Sufism becomes socially relevant through the actions of Sufis themselves. Not offering a "creed" in the normal sense, that is to say a list of rules or specific rituals, the practice simply suffuses a person's actions with awareness and respect, thereby helping to positively color the world around that person. It is the most relevant manner of acting in the world, as it is based on complete respect and an appreciation for the unity of all things and beings. Additionally, unlike Buddhism, a passionate love is yearned towards, and a sense of appreciation for the world as it is, including the world of the five senses.
I hope that this helps in some way; I'll see you tomorrow!
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"Rabia," acrylic, ink and collage on canvas, 72" x 30", 2007

"Love to be pure, must be unrequited" -- don't get too excited, though, they're not talking about human love, just the Big Love.
Unrequited human love does not equal mystical realization.
The Sufis absolutely are contained within the vessel of Islam -- though non-Islamic Sufis have recently popped up in the West; but they are really of the New Age variety, and no different than crystal-worshippers and oregano smokers. And the Jewish/Sufis about whom I am incessantly prattling, actually considered themselves to be recapturing lost Jewish worship practices, which actually has some truth to it, if you look into the influences on early Islamic mysticism (i.e. the Jewish prophets and Talmudic Hasidim).
However, mainstream, normative Islam has always had an uncomfortable relationship with the Sufis, as they (the Sufis) have never subjected themselves to the rule of orthodox Islam, the law of the Imams etc.
For this reason, I think that normative Islamic scholars and practitioners would be very open to the message of my show -- as in "The Jews can have the Sufis, and Good Riddance!"
I think that Sufism is an exciting direction for you, though you must be careful -- a too open mind can lead to libertinism (as you suggested) and perhaps even worse. Beware the Qalander Sufis, and stay away from active Hookahs.
I might note, on another topic, that I highlighted my painting of Rabia in the Coffee House interview, and spent almost a minute talking about the work, during which time the painting was on the screen. A bit of a nod in your direction, I think -- you latter day Rabia.
Remember, though, she believed in neither heaven nor hell. Which kind of leaves us adrift, if you think of it in the certain manner . . .
As my grandfather used to say, everything in moderation, including moderation. Something the Sufis could agree with, I'm almost certain . . .
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I'm sorry that you found my opening comment from the last e-missive "patronizing" -- I simply meant to be obnoxious and inappropriate. But still, a trifecta -- who can argue?
Let me add, while we are on the subject of sensual desire, that both Jewish and Sufi mystics held that phenomenological love and desire could open to the doorway to mystical love. Rabbi Isaac of Acre (13th century C.E.) said that a man who didn't love women was no better than a donkey. Ibn Arabi wrote intensely sensual poetry, so desirous and sexual that his son had to issue an "apologia." And this Hasidic tale (18th century) illustrates that all aspects of "profane" behavior could be seen as entryways towards a divine appreciation:

"The Gamblers
A Hasid complained to Rabbi Wolf of Zbarazh that certain persons were turning night into day, playing cards. "That is good," said the tzaddik. "Like all people, they want to serve God and don't know how.
But now they are learning to stay awake and persist in doing something. When they have become perfect in this, all they need to do is turn to God – and what excellent servants they will make for Him then!""

Al-Ghazali, of course, was the "Renovator of Islam" and (much like Maimonides for Judaism), brought together the mystical and orthodox aspects. Still, it is hard to say in this day and age how easily reconcilable these two impetuses are -- after all, religion is often (I would even hazard "always") about the temporal power-needs of the religious leaders, while mysticism is about the personal spiritual experience of the individual. These two are by their very nature not reconcilable.
And, after all, if we look at the spectrum of "Muslim" countries, how much of their public policy and political worlds are truly influenced by the Hadith, or the heart and soul of the Koran? Not much different than American politics' relation to Christianity, I would say – or Jewish law and ideas of respect, and the manner in which Israel is treating the Palestinian people. As Machiavelli said, a prophet without an army is a LOSER -- and most self-proclaimed "prophets" today are well armed and angry . . .
Worrying about the "common good" is left to the Dalai Lama (a prophet without an army) and under-funded international bodies, who remain either horribly venal, or completely de-fanged.
The intersection of spirituality and the public square is absolutely the most vital question of our times -- or any other time, really.
Soon, evolution will have made these issues moot, but we must still struggle with them for now. After all, the unfolding universe is simply the process of God's self-discovery, and we struggle to comprehend for reasons far greater than we can ever understand or appreciate.
Keep at it; and never lose the twinkle or the jaundice in your gaze -- both are vital.
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So now you get to it! Of course, the intersection of the political/social reality (false and absurd though it may be) with the mystical reality is the most important aspect of this whole conversation. You mentioned Mandela -- he is one of three great spiritual actors who operated in the political realm in the last century, the other two being Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi (note: no white men; no women). There were many lesser lights, some of whom even were able to change policy, some who weren't, and then pure prophets like Thomas Merton and Simone Weil.
The most important question, of course, is how to insert Sufi and/or mystical awareness and actions into the public square. I attempt to do this (in a kind of sad, hopeless way) with my art. Not easy, since the public square is generally peopled by the least spiritually mature among us, as they enter into it to find existential meaning from exterior achievement, unlike the spiritually realized, who find their meaning in other realities.
I am not really qualified to get into a conversation about Islam, radical or otherwise, though I think that the growth of the Muslim community in the United States can only help open that religion achieve new possibilities. It certainly did just this for Judaism, and I suspect as more and more Muslims like yourself and Karim find their way out of the Islamic world, the religion will have no choice but to stretch itself.
Also, political issues (dictators in much of the Islamic world, though the religion itself espouses a much more egalitarian social structure) and the battle over a piece of dust hard-by the Mediterranean (masquerading as a thousand-year long religious struggle) are hard to overcome, when the "public square" always accepts political realities over other possibilities, including real history, spiritual (immanent) realities etc. The binary, conflict oriented reality sells newspapers, after all, and makes heroes out of spiritual midgets.
Ultimately, what will be is what will be (Sufi!). Perhaps the Stoic attitude (oddly similar to the Sufi posture) makes the most sense. As Epictetus said: "Wish for things to happen exactly as they do happen, and your life will be serene." A recent Sufi tale told by the living Sheikh, al-Haqqani, had a very similar message, though the tale itself is too long to beleaguer you with here.
Shalom/Salaam or whatever.
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In terms of politics, the true Sufi would never get involved. I found the important piece of that Sufi tale that I told you about in my last emissive; here it is (and it gives a good sense about why the true Sufi would never get involved with politics):

A Sufi dervish was asked: "If you were the lord of this world, and had the
reigns of divine power in your hands, what would you do, what decrees would
you issue?"
"Oh, my master, if I were in that position, I would have everything continue
upon the course that it is presently on. I would never intervene to altar
the forces of destiny." ("In the Mystic Footsteps of Saints," Sheikh
Nazim Adil al-Haqqani, Naqshabandi Haqqani Sufi Order, Fenton, MI,
2002, pg. 90-91)

This was in the context of an aging Sufi master looking for a student to replace him. The other students had various suggestions to make the world a "better" place (though some of their responses were of dubious quality, in my opinion), and this answer took the day.
Not to say that I entirely believe this point of view, mind you, but the point is that once one gets involved in the public square, the personal ego gets involved, and no matter how we slice it up, this is not a good thing. I think that the best we can do is hope to ally the narcissistic energy of the driving, desirous personal ego with the thrust towards the "common good," though even this idea (common good) is so fraught with personal interpretation that maybe, in the end, the Sufis really do have it right.
I struggle with the idea of morality -- a friend of mine just wrote and basically said that morality is not more or less important or noteworthy than mitosis, and that both are simply representative of an evolutionary stage. Can I honestly disagree with her? After all, I am unshackled by religious faith, relying instead on the simple energy of the universe to give my movements meaning.
Please, whatever you do, keep your wits about you!

Letter to a Mentor

2007-11-09T09:34:00.000-05:00

Well, well, well – so you reappear. A voice from the wilderness, replete with quotes and references, interspersed with personal observation and gentle rebuttals. Reminds me of . . . myself! Except for the “gentle” part, of course.
My grandmother, rest her soul, used to refer to me as an “againster.” And so I am – and I will, once again, aspire to this designation in this, my response to your most recent response to my work.
From the top:
I was honored that you would think I might enclose a singular body part in my packet, which would be, given the size of the shipping tube that I sent you, something of a size between the forearm and a penis. Needless to say, I enclosed no such thing – simply an installation version of my current painting series. Let me add that including a body part in this submission might be shocking to you, but artistically it would be trite. And I do my best to stay away from being “trite.” So, no need to worry – maybe a dildo or a rubber chicken, but no live body parts on the way. (Not to say that dildos and rubber chickens aren’t trite, just that they are a lot less painful. And I am a coward when it comes to physical pain . . .)
Now, ritual. Here is what I think of ritual, which makes it difficult for me to think in terms of using it for artistic purposes:

“When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.” (Lao Tzu)

Of course, when your friend says, “Desire for ritual comes with the absence of moral guidance,” he is just paraphrasing my dear old friend, Lao. The thing about ritual is that it offers the participant the opportunity to shut off their highest sentient aspects – and dissolve themselves into the known. For personal, meditative transformation, this might have real meaning. The chanting of a mantra; the sense of belonging when participating in religious ritual, the feeling of solidity that one gets from participating in the known, over and over again. But for the majority of people, ritual just represents another manner of abdicating personal responsibility, sinking from realm of possibility into normalcy.
Ultimately, ritual allows people not to think, but to become part of Kierkegaard’s process of “leveling,” which, as Thomas Merton noted:

“is that by which the individual person loses himself in the vast emptiness of a public mind. Because he identifies with this abstractions with objective reality, or simply with the ‘Truth,’ he abdicates his own experience and intuition.”

Ritual is the very manifestation of this “vast emptiness of a public mind,” and the surest way to achieve it. Ritual, you see, draws the individual into a public agreement, and this is diametrically (and diabolically) opposed to individual realization, transformation and the severing of the personal from the public mind.
I believe more in the words of Simone Weil, who said:

“If our present suffering ever leads to a revival, this will not be brought about by slogans (or imposition), but in silence and moral loneliness, through pain, misery and terror, in the profoundest depths of each man’s spirit.”

See? Do you get it?

"Into the Singularity" (installation view). acrylic, ink & collage on canvas, 6' x 72', 2006

I want an art that will not only inspire “silence and moral loneliness,” the real land of transformation, but also inspire in the viewer, the courage to face this desolate horror. With a series of paintings like those of which we are talking, the black and white “In the Garden of the Mystical Redoubt” pieces, I am trying to ally myself philosophically with the sense of terror that a true mystical path engenders in most people – and point a way out, back to a profound belief not in ritual, but in personal action pointed towards making the world a better place, towards transformation of our public square.
How this all jibes with my Christmas homeless project, I can’t really say. Each individual undertaking of mine, from the homeless project to the Human Rights Painting Project to Shalom/Salaam has a different set of demands, expectations and limits as to what it can and cannot do, as far as the creator (moi) is concerned. I could devote my life to any one of these projects, but I find the place where the most is squeezed out of the project for the least amount of energy (though this might be quite a bit of energy, it is the least necessary for the particular project) and then leave it at that. To transform the homeless project would be to make of myself a social worker, and I will not do that. Nor will I devote my creative abilities to solving the homeless problem in the United States. Mitch Snyder already tried that and he is now dead and gone because of it.
You go on to propose that ritual can help “re-order” the status – but this doesn’t represent “transformation” for me. It is just a reshuffling of the cards – and let’s not forget the end of Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” when the more things had changed, the more they stayed the same.
We are all – all 6 billion of us – susceptible to the very same need for power, hence “reordering the status” of earth’s inhabitants will do nothing to stem the noxious tide of our collective illness. Transformation through ritual is impossible; my role, as a shamanic priest, is to reach into the society not with an “us and them” proposition, but simply an “us” response, not standing in opposition to anything, nor utilizing the horrors of ritual towards any “end,” but simply to stand for peace and understanding, in specific manners, addressing particular aspects of the manifestation of human illness (i.e., human rights violations, Jewish/Muslim hatred, the lie that sits like a black hole at the core of every religion etc.)
That’s it. I’m out --

A Few Musings Inspired by the Mid Atlantic Popular Culture Association Convention

2007-11-04T17:06:00.000-05:00

I had the fortune -- either "good" or "bad," I'm not sure -- of presenting a paper at this conference in Philadelphia, this weekend. And I jotted a few notes down . . .

When we turn to “God” for help and sustenance – we are really turning to ourselves. For it is the “god” within that we call upon; it is this interior force that we must ultimately rely on. It is here – in the small spot of eternity that resides deep within each of us – that faith resides.
The fact that we know, somewhere, deep down in the abscesses of our semi-conscious understanding, that it is within us, that is us, is absolutely terrifying. For a conscious acknowledgement of this fact would mean that we are saddled with the ultimate in self-determination, and responsibility. This is the last thing for which humanity yearns – ultimate accountability.
We want to be indemnified, man, not liable!
As such, we yearn for nothing so much as a parent – the kind we never had, one that is all knowing, all loving and indefatigably patient. A parentless life is far too demanding; even moreso where we (humans) define the outer edges of comprehension and responsibility in our universe.
Existential needs demand that we imagine something outside of ourselves; that we can imagine something outside of our cranium that is in control, and can be called upon. After all, if we are ultimately “in charge” – if we must truly rely on ourselves and nothing else – where does that leave us? We don’t “know” anything – and this horrifies us. We can’t see into the future, or understand this world in which we have found ourselves. If our experience is the manifestation of God in a time and place, then what worth is God?
After all, if God is nothing more than a huge question mark, what does that make us? But a question, from God to God? If so, how can we go on – with a center made of nothing more than the ultimate yearning to understand – a yearning that is insatiable, because there is no decisive, single answer, but a myriad kaleidoscope of individual questions that somehow weave together into a whole, that remains forever incomprehensible to the individual, yet defines the view of God, an ultimate question that never becomes answered, but simply evolves with the passage of universal time.
No wonder we have fabricated the god of religion! It is with a teary sigh of relief that we turn to religion’s absurd strictures – far better than taking responsibility for this mess, ourselves . . .
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"Mina Keshwar Kamal," oil on canvas, 20" x 10", 2006

It must be noted that that which defines “popular” or “mass culture” in an era, inevitably becomes marginalized and overlooked in retrospect. The lasting aspects, the defining marks of an epoch can be discerned in what is happening around the edges of culture, that which is ignored or overlooked by the “normal” contemporary majority. That which is historically memorable is not the most popular of its own time. The popular, the mainstream, the profitable – these simply represent the most successful of the mediocre, the stolidity of the norm.
Around the edges in any time are the prophets and seekers, the contemplatives and outliers that can embrace their era, yet somehow move beyond it just enough to comment on it, from some outside, though umbilically attached point. It is there, in the small hotel rooms or seedy districts, where someone like a Pessoa or Melville, a Merton or Simone Weil can be found, easily overlooked until “they” are gone, and their words ring with a truth that was easy to ignore in the thrumming hysteria of their age.
The popular culture of the late 19th century has been completely subsumed beneath the beginnings of the Modern Era, which is what we see when we look backwards. Eckhart, Ibn Gabirol, Abulafia, the Sufis – certainly marginalized in the 13th century, yet now defining one of the most important and fecund spiritual eras in the history of humanity.
To be famous and successful within the narrow confines of an era simply means that one has nothing truly creative to say. The novel is incomprehensible and irrelevant to the middling denizens of their own time, yet stands out in relief when seen from the future, where it can be sifted out from the chaff of normalcy that is forgotten, while the prophetic voices rise, defining the era, though having never truly been a part of it, contemporaneously.
So, what is history? What is culture? And what is the truth?
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An interesting concept: “Looking for oneself.”
What is this? What is this “self” in which we are in search? After all, the true “I” is the void at the center of existence, the Great Nothingness, the thrum of the energy that is God slowly, inexorably unfolding into time. This is the center of you and me.
However, there is, of course, something else, that which is mistaken as the underpinning reality of the “I.” These are the attributes and whispers, the moans and psychoses of being human – our humanity itself. Of course, each of us experiences this “humanity” in a particular manner, and it is in unearthing our unique manner of experiencing the universe – that is to say, the attributes that make up our personality and tendencies – as humans set into a specific place and time, that defines the “self” for which we are in search.
So, how to go about this, this quest for “self?” Where is it hidden? In exterior experiences, leaving us careening from church to bar, from university to yoga class, to see which of these “selfs” fits best? Or perhaps we can, in this particular time and place, define ourselves by what we purchase, which car or toaster oven or technological devices. Or might it be that we can actually get an inkling of ourselves by delving thinly into someplace within, found on the couch of a psychologists office, and in the textbooks lining their study?
Thusly it is – we can’t even understand the parameters of the search for self, let alone what it is (exactly) that we are looking for. How can we find this thing, if we don’t know the rules, nor what “it” (that is to say, “I”) will look like, if we even find it? Do we mistake “happiness” or “satisfaction” for success in unearthing a solid being within? What if we are the “type of person” that must yearn, and in this yearning we are complete? What if we are hopeless deviants, and can do nothing to stem the tide of our error? What if all we want to do is stop searching, and read and eat and screw? Is this a viable “me” in our time and place?
Hmmmmmm.
To what extent are the acceptable limits of this interior “I” defined from without, and meaningful only to the keeping of social order, and having nothing to do with the true expression of an individual personality?
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Please.
Take away all of my identifiers – scrub me clean. Not white or Jewish, American or Post-Modern. Oh, I’m not saying that I’m not influenced by these things; I am! But I certainly don’t want to be representative of any of them, or judged as coming immediately and directly from their lineage.
Is it possible?
To come clean, I mean – to denature oneself of those scrubbly little bits that glom onto us, take us over and take us so far from God, ourselves and (most importantly, as a creator?) our audience? How to do so? To come clean. In a culture fixated on packaging, on the sound-bit, on the easy identifier, on 15-seconds of fame, based on nothing so much as “being known?” We don’t have much time to give to understanding – both you and I are horribly busy – so it is only reasonable that we should sum someone up (a person who lives “out there,” on the other side of our oculars) quickly, using on the barest of essential signifiers, like “Jew,” “Black,” “Republican,” or simply, “worth my (precious) time.”
There is no space here for humanity, is there? That messy and sometimes incomprehensible thing that defines us, but only in perpetuity. Our definition within society, to the audience, to ourselves must stem from the most obvious, and least meaningful.
I don’t like it . . .

Letters to a Professor at a Dying University

2007-10-29T10:46:00.000-04:00

There is much that I have thought about concerning our conversations, and much I want to share -- but not wanting to bore you with the re-contextualization of bathing oneself (re: the unwashed students at your university) or by sharing further horror stories concerning Goddard College, I will hope to satisfy you with a couple of excerpts from a friend's paper that I told you about -- Jo Pumphrey, of Brevard College (Brevard, NC), who opened my eyes to a possible impending future for humanity.
I'll quote a few passages:
"In this century, we will likely witness an unprecedented phenomenon as a species -- that we are the only life form intentionally engineering its own evolution. Ray Kurzweil (recipient of the National Medal of Technology) says that by 2029, computer intelligence will surpass human intelligence. Soon, he and others believe, the integration of human and machine will be such that we will be part machine, and machines will be part us. Within 50 to 100 years, Kurzweil and other technological leaders are confident that not only will machines be vastly more intelligent than humans, but that this technological brilliance will accelerate in such a way that physicality, including mortality will be redefined, and that we will likely become so integrated with technology that we will qualify for categorization in the post-human era. This inflection point will be comparable to that in which humans arose from lower animals."
Her paper is, of course, fascinating -- and I consider Jo a true 21st century prophet. The question becomes, what can we do to insert a moral center into this exponential growth in the human (and post-human) experience? Is it possible? Or could it be that even as we advance technologically, we will remain spiritually at war, with the dark and light sides of the human character (or post-human character) in a balance that careens between the hopeless and the just-barely forgivable?
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I'll ask your forgiveness right up front for the length of this reply; please do not interpret it as compensation for other, slighter aspects of my character! For me, writing my thoughts down is absolutely primary, as it gives me a basis to move my thinking forward, and my "thinking" is the inspiration for my art. After all, thinking is the ultimate creative act; some mystical systems posit that the universe itself is nothing but God's thought process, as it unfolds.
Your proposal that technological advances will "scrub" the human experience of morality caught me out, a bit. This conception runs counter to my own beliefs about the meaning of our human journey. When I give my little five-minute talk at the openings of my Human Rights Painting Project (from which you were saved by my 45-minute lecture the night before), I always state that the highest human ideals -- those which most represent the evanescent possibility inherent (and often dormant) in the human being -- such as a belief in the unity of human experience; human rights for all people as equals; democracy that works for the common good (instead of bleeding into oligarchy); a true, peaceful activism etc. are all ONLY words, until someone, somewhere holds that these ideals are more important than their own personal safety. It is in this risk by individuals that these ideals come to life, and that they take on meaning as more than sound bits to be used to start wars and torture the "other" to make “us” feel safe.
All thinkers must have bedrock assumptions -- and these can never be more than arbitrary expressions of how one hopes things might actually be. My bedrock assumption is that the human being is an in-between species -- a satyr, half human (as exemplified by the possibilities of our neo-cortex, and our greatest thinkers and actors) and half animal (the thrum of instinctual fear/emotion/survival impulses that pour unconscious impetuses into our higher cortical structures). The further that individual reaction gets from the instinctual, selfish desires of a lower life form (and I know that you are chafing at this designation of "animals" as "lower," but this is another philosophical position that I have taken: that the human brain it the highest evolutionary expression on this earth, if only in complexity), the more "human" is the reaction. Ultimately, the true purpose of the human being is to develop a nuanced and caring moral point of view, one which is represented by some of the figures in the Human Rights Painting Project; one which is consciously dedicated to the common good, and conceives of success as how a society or people treats its "lesser" figures, not its most powerful.
Another bedrock assumption is that the universe is nothing but the process of God's self-discovery. Each and every facet is as important as any other; all of it blends into the whole, which is simply "God's thought process." However, I also believe that each particular aspect of this universe has something unique to offer, to move the thinking of the universe "forward" (though not to some end, simply as part of the ongoing process of self-discovery), and that a “moral” vision, the idea of working from out of the narcissistic, animal aspects of our human character towards understanding and interaction based in a commonality and a true appreciation for the universality of the human experience, defines our calling. Although the evolutionary movement into the next, cyborgian aspect of our growth may well bleed morality out of the experience here on this Earth, I hold that this would not represent the highest possibility of the human evolutionary path.
(Understanding, of course, that I could be completely wrong about everything. As Epictetus said, "Wish for everything to happen exactly as it does happen, and your life will be serene." Perhaps only complete acceptance has any philosophical meaning, and the rest simply stems from ego.)
Anyway, I'll jump ahead to your question about "what can we do?" The prophetic activist response is to propose specific, quantifiable activist responses to this conundrum (how to insert morality into an evolutionary process spiraling rapidly in new directions). I hope to do just this with an art/thinking/activist project I will start in the next couple of years entitled "Neurospiritualism." In a nutshell, this theory posits that the human brain is the most advanced evolutionary creation currently on this earth (though this could certainly change in our lifetimes!), and as such, the traces of universal meaning and thought can most readily be found in its interstices and processes. The project will be based on devising specific neurological tests to look for the residue of the universal spirit in our brains and experience. The theory posits that the grossest physical attributes and the most ethereal, mystical meaning exist along a continuum -- and that through looking in specific and creative manners at the brain through testing, we can move the conversation along towards the more ethereal, spiritual aspects that are dormant or overlooked in the dross of human experience.
Far-fetched? You bet -- but after all, I am an ARTIST, not a philosopher or scientist. I just propose the ideas -- what happens to them after that, I can't be held responsible for!
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"Oxymoron," oil on canvas, 24" x 20", 2004

Many questions here -- first of all, how you can be an "ethicist," yet believe that morality might represent but a human stage of evolution, something to be sloughed off as we head onto the next level of our growth? Of course, we are all but a mass of contradictions, so that is to be understood. Truth exists out there beyond cognition – and certainly beyond our ability to comprehend it.
But still.
Morality, present but rudimentary in animals, seems to have evolved (at least the possibility of it) in humans; it seems unlike evolution to begin evolving something, only to let off, as it would seem you are suggesting. Then again, like the pinky toe, "morality" (an idea of good and evil), might well be counter-productive in the end. Instead of the dark and the light, perhaps a simple shade of gray awaits. . .
(No, wait -- isn't struggle “The Point?!” Entropy demands nothing less! After all, in another paradoxical read on the whole thing, entropy is the energy that drives all movement -- for movement only takes place in opposition to something, and entropy is the opposition that drives the universe. Right?)
As for your conception “running directly contrary to my bedrock beliefs,” I'm finding out that I don't know what my bedrock beliefs are -- so running directly contrary to them is difficult. When asked this past week at Franklin College (where I was holding forth yet again) what, ultimately, inspired me to paint, and to paint as an activist that believed that art might make the world a better place through a specific visual/activist impulse, I replied that I was like the priest in Graham Greene's "The Power and the Glory" (if you know that one). To make a long story short, he didn't believe in God, though he believed (in a slightly drunken, dyspeptic kind of way) in exercising his office, due to other people's beliefs, or his own pledge or something unknowable. Ultimately, living in a place that was virulently anti-religious (Mexico in the early 1900s, I think), he sacrificed his life for his belief in what he did, though what exactly he believed in so strongly never became entirely clear.
Thusly, I paint.
I'm off to a conference next week that I think you would like, entitled: "Rethinking Resistance," at Emory University. I'm presenting a paper entitled: "Machiavellian Resistance: A Muscular Response to a World in Crisis." Can theory and activism come together? And in a world where George W. Bush is still considered a leader (in any sense of the word), can a dent even be made?
Well, I suppose that we should always remember the words of Albert Einstein, who said (and I paraphrase): No matter how bad you think things are, they would be a hell of a lot worse if people weren't working to make them better.
So there.
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You are an elegant thinker! No wonder those old white men didn't want anything to do with you; you probably scared the shit out of them. And soon enough, when I am an old white man, you will scare the shit out of me.
I struggle with absolutism, perhaps -- but I hope that I am not one at the core. Mine is a search for meaning (operative word "search"), and I try on various responses like a doyenne trying on fur coats at Saks Fifth Avenue. None fit quite right (for either of us), but nor do we ever leave empty handed.
Ultimately, though, I find myself returning again and again to the spiritual plane, where the human search for meaning does ultimately involve God, teleological purpose (obscure though it may be) and some "meaning" for every being and action.
The Sufis say (and I repeat, ad nauseum): "We are but a message from God to God." To go back to my original contention, the universe is the process of God's self-discovery -- not exactly a post-modern position, but one that I am trying (through my work and despite my lack of understanding of either God or post-modernism) to square with our contemporary intellectual worldview. Isn't a prophet, after all, always reactionary?
Now: let's go back to the beginning. Suppose that universal "reality" is the sum total of the inner experiences of every single existent thing in the universe at each particular time. The closer that any "conscious" being can get to appreciating this reality, the more that
God Itself has a conscious experience of its own creation. "God sees with our eyes and hears with our ears." (Yes- the Sufis.) Even Jung posited that the purpose of creation was so that God, the unconscious creator, could experience consciousness, and self-awareness. And consciousness is represented, not just by the interior experience of beings and objects in the universe, but by the conscious awareness of these interior experiences.
Redundant? Incomprehensible?
Anyway: in this equation, the human growth in self-awareness becomes a mystical necessity. It is God in search of Itself. It removes our actions from out of the personal, into the universal -- as it does for all other beings (by the way). It just so happens that we, on this earth, represent one of the possibilities of greatest conscious, and therefore our obligation is greater.
Obligation to do what, you might ask? To plumb the depths of our own interior experience; to develop not only moral behavior, but also a manner of understanding this behavior, passing it along, using it in service to the common good, and not simply in service to the personal ego. To continue the human exploration of understanding and growth as an expression of our Godliness.
After all, God “is” -- but the adjectives after the verb can only be added by existent things in the universe. For God to represent a moral force, we must act morally. And while your assertion that morality may be a stage of evolution like the pinky toe or a too-hairy tongue, I believe (for no good reason), that moral behavior (think Gandhi, Merton, King Jr., Mandela, Simone Weil et. al.) represents the highest that we humans have to offer.
Let me add here, that I have no problem with the human experiment being a dead end -- if "we" go the way of the dinosaurs or the spotted owl, so be it! But quantum energy fields and David Bohm (physicist; mystic) both imply that there is a literal
interrelatedness to all; that the universe is literally a brain, and each of us, each thing, a neuron therein. As such, each and every action does "matter;" it affects the course of the universe, the waves of energy coursing through the physical, quantum and perhaps even
sub-quantum universe. We are writing the history of the universe as we live and breathe!
As Gandhi averred, realize that you are completely insignificant, but absolutely vital -- and thus it is with human experience. For the sake of God and Humanity, we must maximize our highest aspects and minimize our lowest ones, not because we are "better" or even "different" than any other object or being in the universe, only because it is the task before us.
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I am perhaps too influenced by the medieval mystics that have suckled me (mommy/birth reference here). But my goal as a thinker is to bring together these ideals with a post-modern worldview (whether I truly understand post-modern philosophy is irrelevant; I firmly believe that we inculcate by osmosis the worldview of our era. I am a "post-modern thinker" because I live during the post-modern era and, sporadically, at least, I "think"). I admit that there is a certain immaturity to the kind of belief that I posit; it is also sincere -- and immaturity and sincerity are closely linked. As Lao Tzu said: "The greatest wisdom appears childish." Not that I exhibit great wisdom, but I am working on "childish," at least.
Contradiction, the paradox, the oxymoron – these represent postmodernism "in the best sense of the word.” Here can be found the highest aspects of understanding and nuance. In this we are agreed.
Truth is found in experience; experience is found in the emotions. But how to quantify this intellectually? The intellect is but an uncomfortable veneer lain atop the roiling mass of the incomprehensible. And thus the uncomfortable veracity of things such as the paradox, the truth shoved into the interstice between contradiction.
William James said:
"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in their completeness."
And my job, as an artist, is to attempt to apply the "requisite stimulus" to unlock the oxymoron of “consciousness.”
That's it; I'm out --

Dayton, Ohio

2007-10-23T08:35:00.000-04:00

Even the river is hidden behind concrete blocks, flowing pointlessly and ignored through the center of town. Little Dayton has none of the majesty of disintegrating Detroit, or the tenacity of Cleveland or Pittsburgh. In Dayton, forgotten people are blown together in corners and up against the side of buildings like crumbly leaves, brought thither by an errant zephyr, and left to eddy in the silent day.
The buildings stand strong, stolid and empty; a person can walk alone and in safe confidence along the downtown streets at night. There is no faded glory here – all of the 19th and early 20th century sepulchers represent a competent American architecture, but little more. The history here is curious, but its passing is no tragedy; it is just further proof that all things, even the pimple of a hey-day in Dayton, will, too, pass. When you remark of the quiet nature of this Dayton, to those who serve you eggs in the empty restaurant or who are entombed for an evening in the hotel bar, the locals just shrug their shoulders and smile. “So, go to the suburbs,” they respond, satisfied to have virtually anything within their reach. Never having been much, the loss of everything that Dayton was, represents very little at all.
Dayton is indifference jumbled up into a passable city and then forgotten. It’s hard, even – in meandering through the gridded downtown – to say with certainty which buildings still house vibrant offices and businesses, and which are entirely abandoned. The city is nothing so much as a yawn, captured and then promptly passed over on the way to better things.
And it is here that I awoke this morning with tears in my eyes (again).

"Deputy Understudy of Misinformation," oil on canvas, 62" x 42", 2004

Last night, just before going to bed, from the television or an overheard conversation or perhaps simply by osmosis, I caught wind of President George W. Bush’s statement that Iran’s actions might “force” him to begin World War III. And Dick Cheney, either presaging or seconding these comments, averred: “The (Iranian) regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time. We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
Look, just because something is unbelievable doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. Don’t look at the world through the meaningless scrim of sanity; these people are broken and grand, true nihilists who actually have the power to make their fantasies into realities. There is no hope when one simply assures themselves that the unbelievable cannot happen.
Thomas Merton said this: “The language of escalation is the language of naked power, a language that is all the more persuasive because it accepts, as realistic, the basic irrationality of its own tactics. The language of escalation is a superb mixture of banality and the apocalypse, science and unreason – the expression of a massive death wish. We can only hope that this death wish is simply that of a decaying Western Civilization, and not common to the whole human race. Yet the language itself is given universal currency by the mass media. It can quickly contaminate the thinking of everybody.”
And thusly it is.
The most terrifying humans remain steadfast and tenacious in their beliefs and their ability to make them into a reality, while those with honest questions or even more respectful wishes to the contrary, are either too impotent or too mealy to do anything to stop the others.
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.” (W. B. Yeats)
What are we to do? Are we little more than Dayton itself, indifferent and alive (though barely), with little to indicate which of us (humans) are actually sentient, and which simply the husk of a being, ingesting the meaningless images of advertising and TV reality shows, then mimicking these back to the world as the “considered positions” of a “right-thinking citizen?”
Is Merton right? Or is he only half right? Is even fear subsumed beneath indifference, or must we all be held hostage by the “great:” those with the true pathological inability to move beyond the small “i” into the reaches of the universal “I?”
If you care, you must remain tearful.
If you truly want to effect positive change in the world, you must either convince yourself of things that do not exist (the power of love; the reality of karmic waves; some far-off and positive future that we are heading inexorably towards) or simply pull your hair out, one-by-one, with a pair of tweezers. If you yearn for transformation and then read sober reportages soberly reporting the death-wishes of our leaders, sounding verbatim like the same words from the same leaders before the last failed war that is still ongoing, then you must realize that your own sanity is, in fact, a form of insanity.
If everyone around has submitted quietly and perfectly – worried about little so much as Bob Dylan’s recent advertisement for the Cadillac Escalade or who will be the biggest fattie to become the “Biggest Loser” on the latest lose-your-weight reality TV show – but you are unwilling to go that route, then you must indeed satisfy yourself with very little – very little indeed.
But insodoing – in satisfying yourself with little but the knowledge that you are not part of the grosser problem; in resting on the laurels of the local interfaith gathering that brings 10 Christians together to talk about Hinduism, or in talking into a balky microphone to 35 people that are in perfect agreement with yourself – you are doing little more than simply getting out of the way. Insignificant, guilty, hopeless and teary-eyed, you simply watch the rising catastrophe of history until it finally encroaches on your little 15/hundredths of an acre, and swallows you up like a Volkswagen into a sinkhole.
And as you disappear into the abyss, your final thought will be the question: did I do enough? What more could I have done? Or is it simply just the human destiny to eat its own flesh, a dance of death where the last rat, after having eaten all of the other rats, finishes itself off in an astounding display of agility and determination . . .

Reality – or Something Similar

2007-10-15T09:41:00.000-04:00

The chimera of objective reality represents nothing more than the shared will to not look deeper – to accept political reality and the fantasy of the powerful as a given, objective reality. This, however, is not the reality that God sees – it is a vague hologram that is born from our collective neurosis, and which will die along with us.
So what is lasting reality? What offers the truest vision of “what God sees” – the only thing that is truly important in the human experience? What, pray tell, will reality look like to each of us individuals, as the human daydream fades at death and we head alone into the world of Truth?
Quite simple, really, but something so difficult to conceive that it will never be activated by our species as the underpinning structure for a shared reality. For the reality that God sees is nothing more or less than the sum total of every person’s interior experience at the same time. THIS is reality; this defines the most important human creation: the interior experience of each individual and, taken together, of the human being.
About this, you will never read in the newspapers. We will always mistakenly build reality out of the exterior experience that our bodies trundle through; the news as it is reported, the states that go to war, the mass groups of refugees or percentage of Americans without health care. But the only thing of any true, spiritual relevance is what each individual is experiencing from within their “I” – this is “what God sees;” this is God’s experience.
Simone Weil said: “The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to them: ‘What are you going through?’”

"Running Mystic," acrylic, ink and collage on canvas, 48" x 24", 2005

She also stated: “If our present suffering ever leads to a revival, this will not be brought about by slogans (or imposition), but in silence and moral loneliness, through pain, misery and terror, in the profoundest depths of each person’s spirit.”
But this “real” reality – God’s reality – terrifies us. We don’t want to know what other people are truly going through; we run and hide behind the bleeps and jangles of our ever more hysterical technological culture; “reality” becomes buried in the chimerical garbage sludging out of our television sets and from off the front pages of newspapers.
To suggest, in any serious way or any “respectable” venue, that the common human vision of “reality” is completely wrong, and perhaps even irrelevant not only to human experience, but to God itself, would be to elicit a profound indifference. After all, we’ve spent many good millennia building the absurd structure of our latest Tower of Babel; how could we change out collective points of view to accept the true vulnerability implied by God’s reality? Everything that we have been taught and believed would be seen from the perspective of the World of Truth – and our error and pain would overwhelm us. Wars would grind to a halt; the spiritual necessity of working for the common good would become more important than winning the American Idol TV show; the politicians would be unmasked as pathetic charlatans, some of the lowest expressions of human fear and spiritual frailty.
No.
The human being was meant to wait until the very last minute before they are to discover the true meaning of reality, and God. This is saved for the brief eternity between life and death; when the individual human personality is stripped of all illusion and fear, and just before that moment when it dissolves (again) into the universal ether . . .
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There is the story about the renowned Rabbi Zusya, who, as he was dying began softly to weep as his disciples gathered around his bed.
"Why do you weep?" they asked. "Because I am afraid," said Rabbi Zusya. "I am afraid of what God will ask me when I die. I know God will not ask me, 'Why were you not like Abraham?' – for who am I next to the man who first recognized the Almighty? And I know God will not ask me 'Why were you not like Moses? – after all, I am not a great prophet or leader. But when God looks upon me and says, 'Zusya, my child – why were you not Zusya?' What shall I say then?"
And isn’t this just the point? What do we say when we enter the world of Truth, and realize that we have been following the wrong reality; that the spiritual reality – those whispers that come to us in the night and then dissipate in the thrum of the hot sunny day – is the true reality? That how we treated those around us – stranger and known alike – what we did to remake the world in God’s image, how we fought for the highest ideals of truth, justice, human and economic rights represent the true worth of our being, and not the supposed respectability or money that we attained in life?
Rabbi Yitzhak Meir of Ger stated: “Why is man afraid of dying? For does he not then go to his Father? What man fears is the moment he will survey from the other world everything that he has experienced on this earth.”
So how then, for God’s sakes, are we to live yearning for the highest reality while still alive, instead of drowning in the shared reality at the lowest rung of human interaction, that of politics, war and sport? This is the ultimate conundrum: how to be a spiritual being in among a dying species. To attempt to raise one’s own actions towards the eternal, into that place where the actor will not be embarrassed when viewed from the World of Truth, one must indeed find equanimity. One must be certain that the approbation of the general society, in the form of honor and money, is only secondary, and that each and every moment is where God and Truth exist, and it is in correct action in these moments of a life where faith is truly found.
“Soon after the death of Rabbi Moshe, Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk asked one of his disciples: ‘What was the most important thing to your teacher?’ The disciple thought a moment and then replied: ‘Whatever he happened to be doing at the moment.’”
Do you see!? The way out! For when a person is focused on attaining and retaining money, power and social position, he or she is a teleological arrow pointed to some indeterminate point of time in the future (which never arrives), where they have satisfied their unquenchable desire for importance in this world. This represents the attainment within the lower aspects of human reality. But when one is able to overcome the chimerical vision of reality forced down our throats like food into a foie grois goose, then they can move beyond the future and become actors in the present; they can retake their life and live it as it should be lived: with an eye always on the World of Truth, where a truer, yet subtler reality awaits.
It is in the complete devotion to the moment that the absolute truth of an individual life can be found; here is the “Zusya” in Rabbi Zusya, and here is the “I” in you, my dear reader. When action and the moment are linked, then the actor can begin to move beyond the constrictions of the objective reality as it is limned in the newspapers and the confident voices of Vodka advertisements. When faith and the moment are married, the person begins to raise themselves into the higher reaches of the human spirit, and becomes an actor at least grazing along the underbelly of the World of Truth.
And do not be concerned that those around you do not note your actions, nor are those yearning towards this reality well compensated within the world of money and position. As the Rabbi Yehudah Zevi of Rozdol related:
“God remembers only that which man forgets. When someone does a good deed and it slips his mind, then God remembers his service. But when a man’s heart swells with pride and he says to himself: ‘How well I spoke! How well I learned!’ then nothing of all of this persists in the eyes of God. When a man falls into sin and later dwells upon it and repents, God forgets. But he remembers sins which are lightly thrust aside.”

Beating a Dead Horse

2007-10-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

Interesting thing: I had a proposal accepted recently for presentation at the Southeast College Art Conference, to empanel a session on activist art. When the organizer called to clue me in, he said that over half the proposals he had received were about pedagogy – how to teach art, and theories of how to teach art. Fewer than half (of the 90 or so proposals) were about the actual practice of art – and only two of them even considered activism and art.
He found it curious, that there was so much energy devoted to teaching, and less-so to the practice of art. But I said I didn’t really find it surprising; I found this symptomatic of a malaise in the art world. For artists aren’t stupid, you know – we are well aware that we have generally de-linked our concerns from those of the greater society. You would have to be a pretty stupid artist to not realize that the general person “out there” couldn’t give a rat’s ass (or rat’s enema, depending on your personal predilection) about art, artists and whatever “message” is currently being proposed in the art butcheries of the Lower East Side sausage mill.
As such, it isn’t surprising (to me) at all that there is a certain “circling of the wagons” in the art world, as represented by the preponderance of panel ideas submitted concerning pedagogy. If we can’t talk to the greater society, after all, we must talk to each other – and being that we (contemporary artists) don’t actually have that much to say, we will end by talking about talking about art.
See?
The malaise?
Personally, I am only interested in theory insofar as it can be applied to real work and real life. Additionally, I am only about art that can reach outside of the little dog-bites-its-tail art world. Theory for theory’s sake is simply a less satisfying form of masturbation – although it may well land you a plum professorship and a series of major grants, it will in no way effect the real world. To make a difference, we must think in terms of applied theory. Examining the ills of the world makes you nothing more than a disinterested observer; figuring out ways to solve the ills of the world makes you a soul doctor.
Hannah Arendt said of Walter Benjamin that he was a “clumsy theorist,” one who was only concerned with theory that could actually be applied to the real world. And thus it is with me (though without the imprimatur of a Hannah Arendt, surely!).
And so I try to take my clumsy little steps into the airy world of high art. The SECAC conference was, indeed, my first foray into the world of high, pedagogical college art. Until recently, I steered clear of this world – the snake-bites-its-tail-and-declares-it-good universe of artists talking to each other about art, and giving each other standing ovations. I would rather flail about desperately in the real world, touching but a few “outsiders” and garnering no high-art attention, than sink into the sloggy sump of artspeak and the art world.

"All of us Who are Concerned," mixed media on wood, canvas, 43" x 38", 2003

Indeed, in the context of my career, the International Peace Research Association conference last summer in Calgary, where I presented a paper on activist art, makes much more sense, as this conference and others like it allows me to reach out into the world of peace activists, hoping to meld my vision with their work, adding together our energy and using my art to thrust the ideas of peace ever deeper into the society. However, before I can completely write off the art world (which, of course, I yearn to do, at the same time that I want desperately to master it), I need to see the whole thing up close. Personal, like; in my face.
The problem is that perspective is so easily lost when we surround ourselves with a group of like-minded friends. But perhaps by attempting to inject my ideas – unusual, I hope, within the context of the current art-school world – I can bring some fresh air and new thinking into this world, attempting to return some of the historical utopian and modernist energy to the staid pedagogy of today’s masturbatory art programs.
As I have seen at Goddard College, however, it might be just another instance where people like things exactly as they are. We humans will often choose safety over risk, the known over the possible. I was ostracized right out of Goddard not only because of my malodorous personality, but also because I challenged the unspoken pedagogy of the acceptance of mediocrity, of “process” (whatever the hell that means) as an end, of a standard-less world where criteria means using the correct, number 2 pencil and lined sheet, though what you actually do with those materials is irrelevant.
In a larger sense, I fear that the art world is in the same fettle; that Goddard College is but a microcosm of a larger, art-world illness. If we pat each other on the backs hard enough, maybe we can convince each other that what we’re doing really matters. Or at least knock each other senseless . . .
But I don’t buy it; I will not be so self indulgent as to accept art-world approbation as ultimately meaningful. It isn’t. I will fight the battle for greater social relevance at the colleges and conferences and if I lose, I will simply spend more time melding my activities with peace activists and human rights groups, and worry not a whit about the pedagogy of a lost cause . . .

On Truth, Fate and Other

2007-10-03T09:50:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts from the Peace and Justice Studies Association conference, September 27-29, 2007

“Forgiveness” in and of itself must not be the “end” – it can represent a beginning or a middle, but never the final word. We must learn to forgive, no doubt, but only after the objective is gained; forgiveness can become too quickly yet another reason why not to act.
This is not to say that one must pass through revenge on the road to forgiveness. Heavens, no! But a clear, non-violent or social justice position must be staked out and then all moral means must be applied to achieving this goal. If someone has behaved in an immoral or devious manner in upsetting the balance of justice, then forgiveness of them as an end – thereby hindering, ultimately, the road to justice – must not be mistaken for an application of justice. It is imperative to understand that certain unjust or amoral actions undertaken by a person cause him or her to forfeit their right to immediate, post-facto forgiveness. The end goal must be to restore the field for justice, the equilibrium of justice, even at the risk of ‘hurting’ the person who initiated the unjust action.
Truth, not forgiveness must be the lodestar of the justice worker. Truth sometimes hurts (especially those who have first abused it); truth is never objective. It is after the truth has come out and played out its course, that forgiveness can be entertained.
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“Humility” must never be mistaken for “acquiescence.” Contrariwise, it should be understood as “to be humbled before the truth,” as in: “obligated to the truth” (and beholden to no other force, be it human or religious). By this, I mean that an activist must consider his or her own social “standing” and personal desires as secondary to the truth. They must be willing to see their own needs as subservient to undertaking actions in service to the truth. Here is the beginning of true humility.
A humility before truth can appear quite muscular. Far from meaning that a person meekly accepts their fate (as the “humble” would never dare to make waves) – it might actually mean that humility might lead one to undertake the most socially convulsive behavior they possibly can (within the bounds of non-violent, justice centered activity). In this way, truth is served, though the social status quo might be upset.
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"Carnie Mystic," acrylic and ink on canvas, 48" x 24", 2005

Let us judge ourselves only by our adherence to truth – and nothing else. What’s more, activists must base their public actions in the same; after all, politicians and the media (the guardians of “objective” reality) wouldn’t know “truth” if they had it stuffed inside their nether regions. The first is obligated only to political victory, while the second must do everything in its power not to anger the first. How many people’s “good name” within the community is based on simply giving the appearance of conforming to some public role, while in no way being devoted to the truth in their actions, public or private?
As dear Machiavelli averred: “The great majority of humans are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.”
Activities based in truth, in point of fact, will often put the “actor” at odds with the will of the community, or the general public opinion (as evinced in the latest polling data). Sadly, truth plays almost no role within the public square, nor in the creation of “objective reality,” as this last is created by the media, politicians, “history” books and advertisers, all in response to the semi-conscious fears and wishes of the narcotized public.
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“Destiny” – the idea of God’s plan or will – is incoherent. After the fact, of course, whatever took place will appear as if it was a person’s “destiny.” But each action, each outcome simply represents the collapse of energies that preceded any single action, like turning a quantum element from a wave into a particle. Life is but a series of perceived moments, that are really little more than points along an undulating wave of life movement. In this scenario, it makes more sense to think of “fate” in terms of the outcome of collected “Karma;” the energies and actions that precede a specific course of events coalesce into the actual moment when the “destiny” is unveiled.
To understand this idea of “destiny,” which is little more than the outcome of all previous actions undertaken in a life, we must leave off with human ideas of “good” and “evil” – and the vision of reality that underlies normative religions. “Destiny” simply represents a moment captured from the never-ending cascade of time and events, and must be viewed as the natural outcome of all of our previous actions, even if we don’t like or understand the event in question, or how/why it naturally followed all of our previous actions.
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When religion galvanizes positive feelings or responses, is it really necessary? I feel strongly that the negative energies that religion focuses would not be as bad without the religious impetus, and the patina of God’s “will.” Religion, by attaching the negative human impetuses to God, releases individuals to visit all of their frustrations and emotional instabilities on the “other,” in the form of physical violence, while cowering beneath the umbrella of “God’s will.”
However, the positive spiritual impulse is by its nature private and individual – a personal effort to bring the highest aspects of humanity to life in this world, through action. As such, individuals – following their own interior ineffable impulse – are not necessarily made better by the religion that they may practice; all they are doing is mitigating the negativity of human religious practice, and making religion look the better for it.
Religion – collecting people together into a mob, under the banner of “God” and the various and sundry absurd laws representative of God’s Great Hazing Ritual – helps evince the worst aspects of the human character. As Simone Weil averred: “There is a natural tendency of every form of collectivism, without exception, to abuse power.”
And there is nothing more frightening than the abuse of power in the name of God. As the historian Arthur Schlessinger, Jr. noted: “There is no one more dangerous than someone who is absolutely certain that they are doing the will of God.”
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“The metaphysics of violence” – we are steeped in the idea that violence can and will solve the most intractable problems. When things feel absolutely hopeless (feel that way, not necessarily are that way), we turn to violence with a fury and desperation bespeaking the end of time itself.
Why is this? Why does violence stand as the surest manner in which to ease the anxiety produced by the emotional experience of being at a “dead end?” Clearly, the option of violence is easy and immediate – at least in the original, offensive act. It explodes the logjam of emotions, the unremitting, pounding necessity of action – it gives the appearance of “taking control” of one’s own destiny, by aggressively moving onto the offensive.
Ultimately, dedicating oneself to the much more difficult task of working towards consensus and resolution will not immediately mitigate the anxiety of “being,” nor will it give one a sense of being in or taking control of one’s own fate. Non-violent resolution forces an actor to feel subservient to the energies that surround us; it forces one to feel as if they are abdicating ultimate responsibility as “master” of their own destiny. It stems from an attitude of acceptance, not control.
To have true faith in “something greater” is to view oneself as under an obligation, instead of simply a free agent actor, in service only to one’s own needs and the personal necessity to mitigate one’s existential anxiety through action, “confident” action. Violent action.
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Must the “common good” represent little more than post-modern utilitarianism? The tyranny of a spare majority? Is the “common good” simply defined as freedom from fear – or, more likely, an enforced homogeneity, set up in opposition to the existential fear of existence?
Sadly – not understanding exactly what it is that we fear – the “boogey-man” is defined by the interior anxiety produced by entertainment, the media and the political class. It is from this interior emotional knot that we attempt to run; as Thomas Merton poses the question: “Are we so psychologically constituted and determined that we find real comfort in a daily score of bombed bridges and burned villages?”
To achieve the perceived security of even a spare majority, there is much to be sacrificed in terms of beauty, difference, social texture, justice – all the things that define a complex and healthy system based on balancing many different variables.
So, what defines, what can define a “common good,” that impossible place where a large majority of people can not only feel “secure,” but also challenged and truly free to follow the cant of their own personal path? Is such a delicate equilibrium even possible? When immediate “state interests” so often run contrary to long-term security interests? When the actions of the present – so often crisis driven – simply pave the way for more insecurity in the future?
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To be human means to create one’s own destiny. This is surely what the exercise of violence offers, the impression that one has taken control of their own destiny. We mistake the taking of action – even violent action – with taking control; sadly, what it really shows is a lack of control, a lack of being influenced by the highest possibilities of the human soul, a lack of self-awareness and the ability to stick with a course of action, and follow through over years and even decades.
Thomas Merton (dear Thomas!) said this: “The real bravery is of a patient, humble, persevering labor to effect, step by step, through honest negotiation, a gradual understanding that can eventually relieve tensions and bring about some agreement upon which serious (peace) measures can be based.” As such, violence undoubtedly represents the ultimate loss of control, of an explosion of energy spiraling away from us, all while giving the hopeless impression that through this aggressive action, “confident action” (George w. Bush), we have indeed wrestled our destiny back from the winds of fate and into our own hands.
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The existential meaning of violence – fertilized in the peaty loam of the horror and anxiety of not being able to simply accept that the universe’s will be done. We rattle the chains the entomb our little “consciousness,” turning to violence to give us the sense of self that is always, somehow, in question.
“Everyday we shout and plead in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Thy will be done!” – and when God’s will is done, we grumble and are not pleased with it.” (Eckhart)
The central problem is existential – a lack of appreciation for a “self” that truly has no definition or characteristics, that does not suffer attachments to feel whole, or simply existent . As Eckhart (again!) averred: “Ego, the word ‘I,’ is proper to no one but God, alone in Its uniqueness.” As the spiral of narrow, humano-centric searching gathers speed, anxiety rises and the need for action to help define the interior sense of “I” becomes an imperative to prove one’s existence. Violence can become the clearest expression and proof of a narrow, existential self.

(The following is based on a true story.)

2007-09-24T09:59:00.000-04:00

So.
I’m standing in line the other evening at the local Safeway supermarket, my package of twin Fleet 4.5 oz salty enemas tucked discretely under my arm, when my friend Joanna walks up and stands in line right behind me.
Obvious, right? What with me and the enemas in the express line at 6 pm. That I would run into someone that I know? Who else would I run into?
So she sets up. She’s got her new three-week old baby girl in the Baby Bjorn, slung to her front, and she has a single package of lollipops in her right hand. And of course, there I am, what with the enemas well-hidden under the crotch of my arm. Not wanting to run scared, and always opting to tempt fate until it melts into my arms (or bashes me over the head or whatever), I point to her lollipops and say, “Dinner?”

"Portrait of the Artist with a Towel on his Head," photo by Debbie Spielberg

“Oh, no,” she says, “We’re going to bribes.” For Jacob, her oldest, who is 3 and some months. “He picked up a curse word somewhere and now he’s going around the house shouting it all the time. We want to get him to stop. So I said that if he can go through a full day without using the word, he can have a lollipop.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, a tired grin playing about her lips. “And what do you have there?” she asks, pointing to the green and white minty looking box under my arm. “Cookies for a bribe?” For my seven year-old daughter.
“Oh, no,” I say, bringing out the cookie-looking box. “We have a different theory of crowd control in our house.”

Pre-Mortem

2007-09-18T09:45:00.000-04:00

“There is no other remedy for death than to look death constantly in the face. We are all born to die; life will not stay with us. We must submit.” - Attar

This is the point, right? I mean, of life, of understanding, of realization? To keep death forever in our sights; to understand at every moment that our time is but the briefest wisp of rising cigarette exhaust, blown into oblivion with the first zephyr passing through the chamber of our life?
How else can we live to our absolute fullest potential, unless we are constantly, desperately aware of the onrushing abyss of our own demise? And this, after all, is the true purpose of life: to live to the absolute potential of that interior “I,” however that may be defined for each of us.
Remembrance of death is the thing that can most steady us, bring us closest to our dreams and drive us onward out of the banal and narcissistic, towards a deeper appreciation of our own true worth. Of course, God hides in the stench of death, so it is towards God as well that scrabble (on hands and knee, over broken glass) when keeping death squarely in our sites.
Marcus Aurelius had this to say (dear Marcus!): “Do everything as if it were the last thing you were going to do in your life.”
(Of course, this is the answer to that scream of desperation, “Why?”)
But how to do this? In a world filled with hysterical children and backaches, friends in need and various failed professional ventures, how to keep the specter of death in front of one, not necessarily like a vulture, but like the window into the magical, incomprehensible universe that death surely is. And, of course, like the doorway to God that it is . . . for, as Rumi said, “death is the doorway whereby the lover rejoins the beloved.”
For the last ten years, until quite recently, I have been driving a route every Wednesday for a local group called “Food and Friends.” At first, they came into being to bring food to dying, homebound AIDS sufferers – and this is to whom I delivered food. Later on, as new AIDS drugs started making inroads into the ceaseless march of AIDS-related deaths, they expanded their mission to include any home-bound person in need of food, and my clients expanded from mostly gay men, to the gamut of the human dying being.
For the most part, I had little interaction with the clients on my route. I took the bag of food to the house or apartment, rang on the doorbell, handed the bag in and went on my way. But at virtually all times throughout the decade of service, I had a more personal interaction with one or two of the men or women. For instance, many years ago, there was a man nearing death who always answered the door completely naked. He was in terrible shape; he could barely walk, and he would stumble down the couple of steps to the entrance hall, where he would open the door and take the food. A couple of times, after a loud report on the other side of the door, he opened the portal to reveal a bloodied face, injured from the fall that he had just taken into the wall.
As he neared his end, I would always ask him if he needed anything; he invariably said no. One time, however, he asked me to come in. Oddly enough, he showed me proudly, though very slowly, around his immaculate apartment. Most surprising, his bedroom was still set up as an S/M chamber, replete with hanging handcuffs and chains, leather whips, the all-black décor of paint on the wall, furry black bed sheets, made up as if awaiting that night’s visitor. A mausoleum to the cause of his own early death.
Finally, he took me back into his living room and sat me down among the books and architectural instruments of his erstwhile life. “I’m ready,” he said. He was ready to die. I called hospice for him and set up a visit from them, to move him to his final abode in this life. After the call was made and appointment set up, he told me about his lover, a married army man who had to remain discrete. He told me about how these days all he did was sleep for about 20 hours, eat and watch Judge Judy. He loved Judge Judy.
The next week, he was no longer on the manifest, and I sped right past his apartment on Columbia Road.
More recently, my route always ended at Eddie’s house, where I invariably spent a half-hour or so chatting. Larry had MS and was quite close to death when I first started delivering to him about four years ago; he fattened up, though, moved his bed into the living room and, with round the clock nursing, stabilized enough to talk, watch TV, use the computer and carry on some of his old friendships.
Eddie was an old 60s radical, had a file as thick as a Vogue magazine in J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, including a letter declaring him a national security risk and spent time in Jessup medium security prison for some 60s-style faux-pas. He almost married a French woman once and biked to the Arctic Circle; he would have been $3 million richer if he had let his uncle bugger him one time many years ago (his brother got the money but not the buggering, somehow) and Eddie was declared a Great Revolutionary when he was younger but ended up making his money in bikes; he had a girlfriend for eight years, but she slept with his best friend and is now dead. Larry was at Woodstock, slept in a barn there and didn’t get laid. He walked around naked after a woman called him a prude, though when he dropped his towel, she shrugged and said that she just wanted to see it. She didn’t want to touch it.
Now, Eddie wonders if he had spent more time exercising his hands, if his fingers wouldn’t curl up so mightily. To void himself, sometimes his nurse has to give him an enema; other times, he just calls out and she brings a bedpan. He gets little dribs of liquid in a mug, so as not to spill, and he uses a child’s spoon to feed himself. A couple years ago, a Christian started sitting with Larry as part of his own giving practice, waiting for him to die, but when Larry got a little better, he stopped coming. There were other, more terminal people to sit with.
A couple of weeks ago, it was Eddie’s birthday. He is probably 55 or so; he was quite sad that day when I went in. Usually though, he is in excellent spirits. “I always figured that when I got to this point, I would want to die; I would want to kill myself,” he told me once. “But now, I kind of like being taken care of like this. Go figure.”

You see, everything makes me think of food

2007-09-10T15:20:00.000-04:00

“I went to see a man, and we sat talking.
There was a camel plodding past, and I said to him: ‘What does that make you think of?’
He said: ‘Food.’
‘But you are not an Arab; since when was camel meat meant for food?’
‘No, it’s not like that,’ responded the man. ‘You see, everything makes me think of food.’” - Suhrawardi

Recently I read a book called, “Saints and Madmen.” It discussed the overlap between what we consider mystical thinking and what is, these days, thought of as mental illness. In the book, a tale is related about an epileptic in some clinic out in California, who thought of nothing else but God. When his doctor queried him about this matter, he replied: “But what else is there?”
And isn’t this the point? Although “God” has become completely devalued to just another four-lettered bludgeon by Christian and Islamic jihadists, not to mention the Jewish state, this in no way denigrates God Itself; it only shows our society’s true madness.
How so, you might ask? Well – that the “epileptic” who can think only of God is in a hospital, while George Bush is leader of the free world.
(Hint: there is nothing else but God.)

"Al-Ghazali," acrylic, ink & collage on canvas, 6' x 2.5', 2007

God must be central to every search, to every act – or the act has no ultimate mooring. For as the contemporary Sufi scholar Dr. S. H. Nasr averred: “The spiritual act is none other than the process of disentangling the roots of the soul from the psycho-spiritual world to which they are attached and plunging into the divine.” Any act not so moored will simply stem from ego and ignorance.
Look – it is us that have the obligation to God, to find this spiritual connection, and not vice versa. God’s job is done, now it’s our passion to take over. Unfortunately, we are a weak and immature species as currently constituted; we don’t want obligation so much as parenting and protection.
But we must grow up. God yearns through us for the ultimate best that human beings can offer. God yearns through us for true Justice, Truth, Love, Beauty and Peace. And yet, what do we offer as our sacrifice these days, instead of fatted calves and incense in the Temple? Listen to something that I read recently (Washington Post, March 15, 2006 A5, by Dan Eggen), over my raisin bran and surrounding familial hysteria:

“An FBI report from November 2002 indicates that an agent photographed members of the Thomas Merton Center as they handed out leaflets opposing the impending war in Iraq. This report called the group a ‘left-wing organization advocating, among many other political causes, pacifism.’”

Look, I’m not making this up. And I would wager that this “report” was penned by a God-fearing, damn-the-torpedoes, damn-the-Mooselims American New Rome Christian. I mean – pacifism is subversive? I THOUGHT THAT PACIFISM WAS CHRIST HIMSELF.
Of course, pacifism is Christ himself. As was Merton, by the way, which only heightens the irony of this notice. But does that mean that we should blame God for the absurdity of Christians declaring pacifism un-American? Or does it mean that we should redouble our efforts to wrest God from these lunatics, not for God’s sake, but for our own?
Until someone is willing to risk everything for the ideals of Truth, Justice, Democracy, Love – until this moment, they are but words and God, if not dead, is dormant. Risking everything for “God” – as in the lesser Jihad of the Muslims or “my-god-is-bigger-than-your-god” Christianity is nothing but vanity plus ignorance visited upon an innocent world.
Wei Jinghseng spent 18 years in a fetid Chinese prison simply because he advocated Democracy in a totalitarian state. We all owe him for making true Democracy a reality. George W. Bush tries to impose Democracy at the tip of the sword in far-off worlds, while “fudging” elections here at home to make sure that he retains power. What do we owe him?
Richard Wurmbrand spent more than a dozen years in a freezing hole 30 feet below the ground in Romania, because he would not renounce God and Faith. Karl Rove uses God as a bludgeon to assure himself a spare majority in the legislature so he can sludge his horrid program through the congress and rain destruction on the world both domestically and internationally.
Who honors God more?
Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Merton, Simone Weil – these thin, spare voices are God begging us to listen. But who does? You and I must – and we must act accordingly. Give over everything and attach your actions to your deepest beliefs. You might then be bringing God to life in ways that too few are. Believe in yourself; believe that your next public action is meaningless, unless the intention of the action is attached to the deepest held place within your soul. This place is God Itself.
You needn’t even utter the word “God;” that utterance is irrelevant. Action is everything; Wei Jingsheng never beat anyone over the head with the four-lettered word of some power-mad God; he simply set himself grimly to the task of risking everything in the name of an ideal – and that ideal happened to be God Itself, trying to birth Its way into human affairs, through our actions.
Let’s not get lost in semantics. Who cares what you call all of this? Food, God, an epileptic seizure – the verbiage is irrelevant. Work, though, and risk. For you or I, it might simply be risking some vague dream of celebrity; for others, it is risking family and life. How much, we must ask ourselves, would we be willing, ultimately, to risk in the name of God and peace? The more that we are truly willing to risk, the more can we truly bring God to life in this world.
After all, there are many more who will risk everything for war and country – i.e., the heathen ideal of human narcissism.
I hope to someday be willing to risk everything in the name of Peace and nothing in the name of State. I am not there – but as I work towards this goal, I am comforted by the fact that the stronger my voice gets, the more I hew to the interior iron will within that is God struggling to be heard above the din, the more will I honor my responsibility, and insodoing, honor God Itself.

Inspiration?

2007-09-03T09:05:00.000-04:00

It’s like the rotator cuff for a major league baseball pitcher, or the ability to lie to oneself for the politician. Inspiration is at the heart of the artist’s quest – his or her muse, their engine, their motivation, their magic.
Typically, non-artists, and maybe some artists themselves, think of inspiration in the sense of prophetic inspiration, as most artists – whether true or not – think of themselves as prophets, and of their own work as positively divine. To that end, here’s what the great medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides said about prophetic inspiration, and I would wager that many contemporary artists and even non-artists would agree that it holds true, right now, for artistic inspiration:

“We are like someone in a very dark night over whom lightening flashes again and again. Among us there is one for whom the lightening flashes time and time again, so that he is always, as it were, in unceasing light. There are others between whose lightening flashes are of greater or shorter intervals. It is in accord with these states that the degrees of the perfect vary.”

This is certainly the romantic notion: inspiration as something that comes from outside of the self, a flash of light and understanding, mimicking or directly relational to a certain type of God consciousness, and which can be torn from the artist at a moment’s notice, with the same finality of the final lightening flash of a summer shower. For some artists – de Kooning throughout the 40s and 50s – the lightening flashes almost constantly; for others, Jeff Koons comes to mind, the lightening never flashes.

"The Limits of Advice," acrylic, ink & collage on canvas, 49" x 48", 2000

Romantic, exciting, mysterious – but to be perfectly honest with you, it has absolutely nothing to do with my working method or my art. This type of inspiration – the “3 AM” kind – leaves me cold.
(Please) allow me to share a line from an article that was written about me more than a decade ago, when I lived in a small town in western Spain called Caceres:

“At thirty, this tall, creative affable American decided to turn his back on journalism, with which he earned his living, preferring to submerge himself in the exhilarating whirlwind of painting, a passion to which he dedicates a good few hours a day, ‘like a civil servant,’ as he jokingly put it.” (Hoy, June 27, 1993)

“Like a civil servant.” The opposite of the romantic conception of inspiration, no? And yet, this is exactly how I paint – methodically, laboriously, grimly, blindly. Every day, I find my way into the studio at virtually the same time of day, paint for about the same amount of time and then put my brushes down. Sometimes, I hate it; sometimes I love it – sometimes I am simply numb. But I paint, because that’s what painters do. Picture the damned JuneBug, its head quashed into the dirt by a passing child’s sneaker, with the body still attempting to walk, testament to some greater life-force, and nothing more.
And so it is with my writing, as well. Every morning, I sit down at this very computer with a cup of coffee by my side and say something. If I have nothing to say, I think for a moment and then, from the vast, tangled jungle of my mind, I alight on a small red flower or anthill abscess and set to, unraveling its mysteries in dark blotches on pseudo white-paper appearance screen.
I have learned over the years that how I feel while working on something has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the finished product. I have finished paintings that I hated, which have become signature pieces of well-known series of mine. I have sweated blood for months over other works, falling in love with the object and then watching (horrified?) as the painting never came to a successful conclusion. I have learned that all of this – my likes and dislikes, my emotions, my “inspiration” – all of it is irrelevant to creation. A creator creates, period. After that, the chips will fall where they may.
Look, it’s no different than a marriage, right? I mean, we have many different reasons for first getting married and then staying in a marriage – but these reasons change, develop, die away, metamorphose over time. Creating is no different – the original reasons for starting to create so many years ago are by now long extinct; only the act itself remains the same.
Artistic inspiration is the residue that remains when all of the excitement and hope, all of the novelty and heroic feelings, the love and wonder burn off; that small, oily liquid collected in the corner of my studio, a filth composed of the four vital fluids (scotch, semen, coffee and blood) – today, that is all that is left of my original “inspiration.”
The true artist moves beyond inspiration, in much the same way the true mystic moves beyond desire; the artist creates. Period.

I put on a coat and tie and did something vile last night.

2007-08-27T09:08:00.000-04:00

I put on a coat and tie and did something vile last night.
Sunday night – and unusually warm evening; we drove down into the dirty city and parked in front of an idling bus. The homeless, the stench, the discarded winter coats, grimy sidewalks, young lovers, even a couple out for a stroll with their baby, who took a wrong turn in life and ended up at 15th and K. Debbie and I entered the famed Capitol Hilton, behind a couple of General Motors’ shareholders, who were going to some other, equally vile activity.
The “Gridiron Reprise” show.
That’s what we were coming to see and we made our way upstairs to the Presidential Ballroom, where the Gridiron show, put on by the vaunted Press for the vaunted Political Class (including the President, Vice President, Barack Obama, Madeline Albright and other Truly Luminaries) had taken place the night before. We had been invited to see the same show, put on the Sunday afternoon after the big event, for those who couldn’t score a ticket to the real thing to watch President George W. Bush gently poke fun at himself for the “foibles” he has displayed in office (i.e. lying a country into war, stoking racism, mass genocide, eviscerating the Constitution, attempting to rule as an dictator, etc.) Our friend, Dave, is a “ringer” in the Gridiron Club, a professional singer/actor who is hired to add a bit of professional class to the cast of journalists that runs the event, and mostly acts in it.
Look, many of the big-wigs were there – even on day two of this exercise in pandering. The asshole David Broder produced and introduced the Democratic skit; Mark Shields gave a reprise of the speeches that the Four Truly Luminaries (Lynn Cheney, Barack Obama, President Bush and the president of the Gridiron Club, John Hall) had given the previous evening; Helen Thomas acted as Hilary Clinton, Clarence Page did a song and dance, Haynes Johnson had a role and other journalists that I didn’t know, but we certainly “well-known,” were all present and accounted for, this Sunday afternoon.
I was sickened.
As the song and dance routines played out, playfully playing on the latest news, such as the Hurricane Katrina disaster, NSA spying, the disintegration of Iraq, our torture policies and other events, I couldn’t help but feel like vomiting. After all, the subtext was that even though we may have our little disagreements, we can all agree on one thing: power and celebrity are Good! And we got it!!
It was like seeing the innards of a disgusting club, where people’s “dearest held principles” are really only methods of gaining and retaining entree; the truth is that Democrat or Republican, fascist, socialist or journalist, the only thing that truly mattered was being part of the club. And these were the club members!
Truth is dead. God is fine; don’t weep for God. It’s us that I am worried about. When Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, George Bush, John Kerry, David Broder (eminence gris of the Washington journalist corps) all fall over each other to prove their own worth to each other, what hope can there be? The whole thing is a sham – all anyone cares about is their own celebrity; do a little good, do a little bad, who cares? As long as we’re skewered by the Gridiron Club, we know that we matter!
Vomit? Not really, just metaphorically. And after all, my friend Dave had two starring roles, one as the NSA and one as new judge Sam Alito. Pretty good, huh? A duet here, a constitutional Evisceration there; a slice of roast beef, a song about torture to the tune of Fiddler on the Roof. A nice bit of irony there, too, don’t you think? Since so many of our vital torture advances are based on consultations with Mossad? After all, they’re torturing A-rabs and we’re torturing A-rabs – so that makes them our friends and mentors, right?
But God? Truth? Oh, sure, it was all incredibly fair and objective; the vaunted press was just as funny and cutting about the Democrats as the Republicans and vice versa, going right up to that line of good taste but having the good sense not to cross it (no one accused our Dear Leader of Lying or Murder, for instance, just prevarication and rendition). After all, it’s all in good fun, right?
Let me tell you something – it’s not all in good fun.
The thing of it is, God is not watching and judging on high; God is cowering in corners down the street from the Presidential Ballroom; God is lying in his own alcohol vomit in Lafayette Square, across from the White house (but never entering therein). Nelson Mandela said: “Do not judge a country by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” As usual, I think that Mandela didn’t go far enough – I would hold that you should judge a species by how it treats its lowest citizens, not by how it can come together under the banner of Power, checking principles and Truth itself at the door and yearning towards a meaningless “objectivity.”

"Do Not Judge a Nation," acrylic, ink on paper, 10" x 7", 2007

I’m going to let you in on a little secret here: we humans have a lot more responsibility than we know. Not to ourselves, mind you – but to God. For you see, we are an image of God – and even moreso, an image that has nominally been “graced” with free will. As such, we decide not for ourselves, but for God Itself.
Hear me out,: you see, God is actually nothing more than the process of “becoming.” The universe itself – the physical, time-based manifestation of God – is nothing but the respiration of the eternal entity. Evolution is God; and humans have a unique responsibility in taking on a certain aspect of evolution: morality, love, understanding, wisdom. It is the human obligation to scrabble (like a Salmon up the Columbia River) to an appreciation and application of Truth, God, Love and a human consciousness that reaches far out beyond the boundaries of ‘tribe’ towards a sense of true, human togetherness.
See?
Ideals such as Truth, Love and Justice exist only as ideas until someone is willing to risk everything for them. For true universal Human Rights, Truth, God, Love – we must thank Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wurmbrand, Nelson Mandela, Sowore Omoyele, Wei Jingsheng, Simone Weil – indeed, any person that is willing to risk everything for the highest ideals achievable within the human realm. This represents God’s work – this is answering the true human responsibility of not only bringing God to life in this world, but of bringing Truth, Justice and Love to life in God, in the evolving universe.
As such, an event such as the Gridiron Dinner, where all ideals (whatever they might be) are equally valid and ultimately only viewed as tickets into the “club” (of power), is one of the clearest examples of our shared human illness. It is an illness of ignorance and “objectivity,” of yearning for personal power instead of towards God and Truth, of the sweet taste of roast beef in the company of other ignoramuses, while God cowers down the street in the dark, covered in a thin sheet of plastic to attempt to stem the incessant drizzle . . .

Art Activism, Oppositionality and Sadness

2007-08-23T20:06:00.000-04:00

I finished, “But is it Art: The Spirit of Art as Activism,” (Nina Felshin) and it left me a bit sad. This book, and the vision of activist art that it limns, makes me think that we need to completely reconfigure our ideas of activist art, as those of the recent past have done nothing more than pick at the scab of the society’s wounds.
Act Up, Guerilla Girls, WAC (Women's Activist Collective) and others who used shock methods, "appropriation" of the mass media and other normative "activist" methods to raise awareness of issues were outlined. Undoubtedly, they made quite a stir -- and perhaps in some cases (Act Up comes to mind), they actually had some relevance within the greater American social consciousness and society. But as I put the book down, I couldn't help but feel sad.
After all, these groups used creative methods to raise important issues, reaching as deep as they could into the culture. However, due to their often outlandish methods of delivery (here’s where the “creative” part comes in) they grew quickly to become almost parodies of themselves, through their extreme use of performance art, shock imagery, banging on drums, puppets, nipplery etc. And while they certainly received press and, in some cases, personal fame and fortune through their efforts, ultimately they did little more than scratch at the scab of the various wounds that scarify our current society. By setting themselves up so much in “opposition” to something, they ultimately created a negative energy that, I think, has ultimately come back to haunt the very issues that these activists worked so hard to mitigate.
I know you’ll probably just think this is sour grapes, written by one unsuccessful, self-identified “activist artist” about other, more successful activist artists, but ultimately, it strikes me that all of this “activist,” drum thrumming energy expended in the late 80s and early 90s has actually come back to haunt us, and given recent right-wing political leaders a bunch of "nuts" to point to as exactly what We (Americans) don't want. The visuals so lovingly produced by these groups can easily be used to point to as an example of who “we” aren’t – and used to scare otherwise benign people into thinking and voting in a certain (incorrect) manner. It could be further argued that many of the social issues that these groups fought about 15 years ago have actually become aggravated -- and the situation now is worse than it was at the end of the Reagan era.
Unfortunately, most of these groups measured their own success in small, pyrrhic victories and numbers of posters wheat-pasted in the Lower East Side, or appearances on college stages. While successful for the artists themselves, did these actions really “make a difference” within the context of the greater culture?
The ultimate problem with the majority of the activist projects outlined in this book was that they started from a position of oppositionality – us v. them. Insodoing, a dynamic was set up whereby the very people that they were trying to reach became immediately turned off to the message, as they knew damned well that “they” were the “them,” and as such, they hardened their hearts, gave more money to Jesse Helms/Dennis Hastert/Karl Rove etc., just to prove they were not nipple ring puppet bangers. If they figured one thing out by watching bra-less lesbians with huge puppets trotting across their televisions, it was that they definitely were not one of “those,” so they must, by logic, be one of “them.”
You see, this is the problem with oppositionality – it sets up a false choice between “us” and “them.” In point of fact, beliefs and desires, though often expressed in the public square as toggle decisions (you are with us or agin’ us), actually are far more refined and indefinable, as they take place within the private and interior personality. The only way to reach into the confidential world of an audience is by infiltration, not through oppositionality and visual threats (“we might be your daughter!”).
A True Activist Art must be viral, infecting people without them actually knowing that they are being infected. In this way, they will mull the actual ideas proposed by the artist, and not be immediately shut out by the damned drums, placards and hysteria. Although politicians often operate on the “bludgeon” theory – and, in the short term, it often appears to work – inertia demands that all of this negative energy snap back. And indeed it does, in the form of ultimate election losses for the ruling party, in the form of planes flying into buildings at 9 am on a workday, in the form of a growing poverty class underpinning the richest economy in the world, in the form of murders and cultural mayhem. All of this is just the negative energy stored in our culture from J. Edgar Hoover, Reagan, Clinton, Bushes etc. snapping back at us, twisted and untraceable, perhaps, but very real, nonetheless.
And thusly it is with all of that glorious folklore of “activist artists” swinging bras and chaining themselves to city halls: all they really succeed in doing is assuring that positions harden, oppositionalities are set up and wonderful images are produced to scare Phyllis Schlafly into running to the nearest TV playing reruns of Ozzie and Harriet.
Using shock art to raise awareness of issues is not productive, and perhaps even detrimental to the cause itself (though, like politics, individual artists might fare quite well in the offing).
A true activist art must move beyond "raising awareness" to a more subtle understanding of the psychology of the human being, to using beauty, education, a gentle hand and an even a beautiful aesthetic to insert the Trojan Horse of hope deep into the infected abscess known as "American Culture." Obviously, each artist must choose their own issues and methods, but billboards, puppets and handcuffing activists to city halls is officially a non-starter. The artist must become a student of his or her issue -- and move to proposing actual, real life creative responses to the ills that he or she sees in the world.

But is it Art? And who cares?

2007-07-27T12:56:00.001-04:00

So another month grinds to an end. But where to begin?
In reading recently through the book, “But is it Art” (by Nina Felshin), I must say that I really began to question just what the hell art is. And this isn’t such a bad thing, is it? I mean: it should probably be a question that crosses my mind every now and again.
Obviously, Duchamp eviscerated classical meanings of the definition of art. After Duchamp, anything could be art; whether or not it really was, however, was another story. And certainly, in the context of “activist art,” which includes billboards, community-involved art projects (which I personally dislike, actually), mass mailings, walks onto beaches, messages on milk cartons, “performative moments” (whatever the hell that means) and any other flotsam and jetsam that the human creative mind can imagine. The line between “art” and “not art,” at least in terms of many of the activists discussed by Felshin, has much more to do with reaching the audience than the sublime quality of the product.
As for me, I thought that I always had a very clear idea of what was or wasn’t art. Art was a creative product that stemmed from the artist’s highest respect for God, human history and the interaction of the two. It demanded the absolute visual best from the creator and, hopefully, could reach out into an ever-widening audience through its sublime beauty. Additionally, true art caused the audience to question, instead of just validating some known emotion or issue of social concern. For me, art had never been a moment, a happening or a situation. These were something, certainly, but not “art” in the sense that I define it.

"Strange Face," digital print on paper, 8.5" x 5.5", 2005

I admit that in my definition of art, I was hopelessly backward – stuck with a modern sensibility and bourgeois worldview that shackled me to a bygone era of respect for the object. As far as “process” went, it is necessary and personal, like morning ablutions or masturbation. “Process,” on its own, was not art.
But still, after reading through a bit more than half of this book, I was forced to re-imagine the boundaries of art and, while changing absolutely nothing about my working methods. It really just caused me to re-conceive some aspects of my “performative life” as art.
Example: I began a project 11 years ago (this next Christmas Day will be my twelfth year) entitled, “Fothoc:” Friends of the Homeless on Christmas. I began this in response to my attempts to spend Christmas Day 1995 volunteering to help the homeless, the needy, the friendless, whomever. I attempted to work with a local charitable organization. But what I found when I called around to organizations was that it was very hard to get a space – apparently, Christmas Day was the single day in the year when there were more helpers than needy.
Or were there?
It struck me that there must be people out there, in the streets, who weren’t getting served; who didn’t have the wherewithal to find the correct places to be “helped,” where the armies of Christmas-day do-gooders were going to help the needy. So on my own, I purchased 33 stockings, various goods (gloves, hats, foodstuffs etc.) and, on Christmas Day, with my father and a couple of other people, loaded the stockings into the car and set off to find people on the streets that might be in need, but un-helped.
Well, we gave those stockings away in a matter of minutes; there was, indeed, an unfulfilled need. The next year, I asked some people to help out monetarily, I expanded to 100 bags (larger and easier to use for the homeless recipients throughout the year) and sent three cars out, driving around the streets of Washington D.C., handing out bags.
Over the years, the project has solidified and grown. So many people have been so generous with money and time, that our bags are now bigger, and stuffed with such things as upper and lower thermals, a fleece blanket, walkman, gloves, hats, magnetic game board, plates, cups, can openers, foodstuffs, fresh fruit, candy, baked goods and much more. 25 people or so gather on Christmas Eve day to collate all the materials and set up in an assembly line to pack the bags. On Christmas Morning, 4 cars come to my house to load 25 bags each and head off into the city along pre-decided routes, looking for homeless men and women who aren’t accessing city services, trying to give them a small moment of joy, and a bit of warmth. After the bags are given away, we gather in a downtown Chinese restaurant and swap stories from the years’ giveaway and generally feel pretty much holier-than-thou-and-everyone-else.
Over the years, a couple of things have occurred to me. First of all, I have wondered if this isn’t really just charity for the rich, for a bunch of suburban rich folk to feel good about themselves. 364 days a year can be spent looking at the stock tables, but on Christmas Day, damn-it, we give a crap about humanity! In fact, around Christmas time, I have taken to answering the phone: “FOROC world headquarters; friends of the rich on Christmas.” This has been a constant dilemma and conversation that I have had with the participants over the past few years – one that most people disagree with.
Not only do the vast majority of homeless that we find in doorways and behind alleyways seem genuinely touched that we searched them out on Christmas, but there are now quite a few children participating, which causes them to appreciate the idea of “have” and “have not,” of helping, of need, of good fortune etc. For these reasons – and these two reasons are enough – I am currently convinced that what we are doing has worth beyond making the suburban participants feel good.
And now, after reading into this most recent book, I am left to wonder, “Is it art?” After all, not only am I directly affecting the lives of the participants, both the rich and the poor, but I have also accessed the mass media to reach into the society at large with my message. On December 26, 2000, there was a front-page article (replete with picture of me handing a bag to a homeless man on a grate) in the Washington Post detailing my project. The next year, the local Fox affiliate ran a two or three minute reportage about the event on the local news. And isn’t this the most important aspect of a successful activist art project, to reach deeply into the general culture through the use of the mass media? So I am left to wonder, while I thought that I have been involved in a personal, charitable event every Christmas for the past eleven years, perhaps it is an activist performative ongoing art spectacular.
Ultimately, though, I must force myself to move beyond these absurd definitions. After all, who cares what its called? The only important thing is whether people are being helped or not; whether the message is reaching deeply into the general public. The named of the vector is irrelevant; outcome is everything.

Into the Conflagration

2007-07-24T10:08:00.000-04:00

My voice is trembling, because I think I never found it.
I am desperately searching for a WRITING voice, but I can’t come to grips with one. Too hysterical, too needy, too pedantic, too obscure – where is the damned happy medium? And why should anyone care??
This struggle – just why should anyone care? For someone with so much coming out of me – extruding, hurling, spilling, dripping, bleeding – shouldn’t I have some idea of a receptacle? A place where all of this bilious liquid should run to, downhill to, towards, a place – a home?
You’ve gotta help me! You must provide this service; I am serious and I am at the end of a rope – a certain type of rope, granted, but a rope nonetheless.
Do you know, that recently, as I have given myself over more completely and now completely completely to my art, that the desperation with which I found myself scratching at the canvas with my sticks (literally; I am painting with sticks) and pounding into the computer keyboard with my deadening digits, do you know that this frantic explosion had me feeling almost convinced that I must absolutely positively be on the verge of an untimely death, for otherwise why the hell would I be so desperately (that word again!) trying to vomit my guts onto canvas and paper, and to the detriment of the environment, no less!

"Actions Exist," acrylic, ink on paper, 10" x 7", 2007

But lately, as the hysteria refuses to cool, but grows to ardor and on to conflagration, I feel that this, finally, this is a natural state. Here is my people; here is where I live finally in the swirling whirlwind of expression with nary a backward glance, damned to sticks and canvasses but looking, peering into some void, a blind mouse with no whiskers and the only thing to prove that I am really and truly alive is the detritus spilling from my fingers, spilling into the void of this world.
Be still!
Listen!
That’s my heart that you hear pounding against the fragile cage that contains it. See? But let it beat! As long as it is beating, there will be something, anything coming from out of my fingers. I can’t stop! I mustn’t stop! This is beyond stopping, into the blind world of faith; this is the place where I belong. Here at last?
A home?
Don’t be so maudlin! “Creation” and “home” are the same thing; home is not a place, but something coming out of someone. This delicious feeling must come forth, but in doing so simply regenerates. To the canvas! To the barricades! As long as there is breath within, the fear must be sloughed like a raincoat on a sunny day, the doubts discarded like a sullied condom. All thrown over– and forgotten.
This is not the people’s work – damn the people. They will get what they want on Court TV – this is God’s work. And for God alone – then something, at least, something with a bit of Truth mixed in can be found, maybe. There, beyond the reaches of the burbling brook of voices, in the airy reaches of the dead and dying, there is the Creative Product that awaits.
If I speak to no one, so be it; the voice must be authentic. If it is a language to which no one is privy, then SO BE IT: it is my language. I can sit in rooms where people advise me to be more this or that, more meaningful or understandable, less “mystical” (out, this season, after all) and quite a bit less pedantic or passionate, maybe a bit more realistic or pragmatic. I can sit in these rooms, but it is only more grist for the mill, more fuel on the fire and let the flames lick into the air, towards the sky; let the flames of my compulsion devour me because now, at least, I begin to understand – I do not become devoured, I become alive, glowing, Attar’s moth attached by the legs to the flame, glowing red, an incandescent scream into God’s blind maw.
Here is Truth!
In the basement of my studio or small office off of the small bedroom, it doesn’t matter. The universe knows no boundaries; this is the same air that expelled the All in the single word that must continue to be repeated, repeated proffering for all of us the ignorance to hold ourselves in the night, in terror and then lie about it during the day.
Into the conflagration!
I must give in; I have given in – and like Pessoa, a conscribed volcano at certain times and then all the fuel that must sustain it. And like Pessoa, walking the fine line between mysticism and nihilism – and then falling in . . .

A Quick Story

2007-07-12T08:03:00.000-04:00

A man. About the age that I was when I still believed in dreams and Love and the full moon; a summer between college years. A summer job.
This was “back in the day,” the 1950s, when wisdom came cheap. The young man got a job, working just for the summer, laying railway ties along some rural spur out in some far-away square state. He was going to be a Man, at least until the air cooled and he headed back East to become a lawyer or journalist, instead.
The first morning on the job, full of life and expectation, dreams and bile and everything else that makes a young man a young man. He hoisted the heavy, iron cudgel over his head to pound it down into a spike, a movement that he was to repeat over and over again that day, that week, that month, that summer. But the first one, the second one – the movement was still new, fresh, tainted by myth. Next to him, the old African-American men who had done this forever and would do it until they no longer could, smiled to each other. They watched the thin young buck pound into the ties, once, twice, thrice and then move on to the next. Again, faster still, as if there might be a prize for pounding the most ties in an hour, a day.
Within a half hour, the young man was exhausted. Tuckered completely, sweat running freely on his face, iron cudgel hanging at his side. One of the old hands walked over to him, smile spread across his lined face and said this: “Young man, never start the day moving any faster than you intend to end the day. Slow, steady and solid.”
And thus it is with anything.

"Secret Garden Panel," acrylic & ink on canvas, 7" x 5", 1999

Never begin any task with more energy than you intend to finish with, and you will finish many projects. Though anger, bile, hysteria and desperation might well be the impetus to begin, the only emotion that will help you finish the job will be grim determination and a blind tenacity. Mix the two liberally from start to finish, and you might stand a chance.