THE ARTIST’S JOURNEY
THE ARTIST’S JOURNEY
When a child, Black Elk had a dream. When an adolescent, the dream haunted him and he sought advice from a medicine man: “For a person who has had a vision,” he was told, “you do not get the power of your vision until you perform it on earth for the people to see.”
More on Black Elk at http://www.blackelkspeaks.unl.edu/
THE ARTIST
James Baldwin (1962) wrote, “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone. That all men are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality — a banality because it is very frequently stated, but very rarely, on the evidence, believed. Most of us are not compelled to linger with the knowledge of our aloneness, for it is a knowledge that can paralyze all action in this world. There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed. None of these things can be done alone. But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”—James Baldwin, 1962.
THE ARTIST. “BEING ALONE” is, I think, James Baldwin’s analogy for being so deeply into one’s consciousness that it is unique and uncommunicable, even to one’s self, at least in words.[i] This belief in one’s ultimate, existential aloneness can, as Baldwin correctly observed, be paralyzing. One can be hopelessly lost in “the great wilderness” of one’s self (Is this Dante’s “dark wood?” – (he wrote, “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there.”).[ii]
Dante took the artist’s path. He found that speaking of it (one’s expressive art)[iii] mitigates the paralyzing hopelessness. This is when we discover that other crucial level of organization of which we are co-constituted and too often scarcely aware: we move from the naked organism to the family, the community. (This is an existential issue when one realizes that the ideality we might aspire to when alone is too distant for any mortal and the reality of everyday life is unsatisfying. Choices must be made.) Discovering that one exists in that middle state between alternative states known to Aristotle (He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god)[iv] and of which Alexander Pope wrote (“… in doubt to act or rest, In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer…)[v]
A DEEP analogy: Cells (such as hard working neurons or starving slime molds) under stress do not “reach out” for help until they come close to their existential limit. Is this Dante? Forced into expressive artistry by his own crisis? is this why it is darkest before the dawn?[vi]
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READ A&O notes on ARTISTS
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STRESS? ART meets needs, often recognizable because of STRESS –inferred in the artist or explicit in the feelings evoked by the artifact: https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-art/ https://neilgreenberg.com/the-artist/ but the artist can prosper under stress–in moderation https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-deep-stress-defined/
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The “Artist’s Journey” resonates with “The Hero’s Journey” of self-actualization … But also with the sense of the itinerant poet, the bard … reaching deeply into our shared consciousness and humanity, by travels that weave together isolated individuals and islands of cultures, mitigating the chance of misunderstanding exaggerated as it always must be by wariness for dangers long before appreciation of shared needs and aspirations. But remain mindful: “The Journey is the Destination.”
The expressive aspect of art emphasizes the artist’s needs. The audience’s contribution, the receptive aspect, is less urgent… but in the spirit of Black Elk and the Hero of mythology, the complete journey involves in the spirit of Delacroix, all humanity, accessed by means of insight and understanding that are not amenable to any form of communication that cannot penetrate to those ineffible, maybe inexplicable, depths one’s being.
(There are no art forms which have not–do not–benefit from bridging cultures, but music may be the most amenable, for example, the ensemble, Constantinople performing TRAVERSÉES or La Canella or a Roots Revival group’s concert in Vienna ., amongst many others)
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[i] Tod Freeberg forwarded a quote he liked (3/30/2023): “Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone. That all men are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality — a banality because it is very frequently stated, but very rarely, on the evidence, believed. Most of us are not compelled to linger with the knowledge of our aloneness, for it is a knowledge that can paralyze all action in this world. There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed. None of these things can be done alone. But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”—James Baldwin, 1962
[iii] As a heuristic convenience in my seminar Art & Organism, I take the ethologist’s eye to art and describe the hell out of it… or at least parts of it, and I start with the assumption that a complete view of ART must invove the viewer as wellas the creator. To avoid the baggage of famiiar vocabulary, I adopted the clinical vocabuary of the brain-based communications disorders known as APHASIAS, the terms EXPRESSIVE and RECEPTIVE. Expressive aphasia (when you know what you want to say, but you have trouble saying or writing it) is associated with Broca’s area (near the motor cortex in the inferior frontal gyrus). Receptive aphasia (when you hear what people say or see words on a page, but have trouble making sense of what they mean) is associated with Wernicke’s Area (near the auditory cortex). … The question is whether creation and perception of art compares to language, known to be dependent on two distinctive sites in the brain (FYI: impaired language skills range from subtle to profound and the neurological bases are known mainly from damage seen in specific areas: in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere this includes Broca’s area; in the superior temporal gyrus of the dominant hemisphere it includes Wernicke’s area . “Dominant hemisphere” is the left hemisphere in about 95% of right-handed individuals and 60% of left-handed individuals. Also, Broca’s area is not uniform: Part of it has more general functions and seems “… to be part of a larger network sometimes called the multiple demand network, which is active when the brain is tackling a challenging task that requires a great deal of focus. This network is distributed across frontal and parietal lobes in both hemispheres of the brain, and all of its components appear to communicate with one another. The language-selective section of Broca’s area also appears to be part of a larger network devoted to language processing, spread throughout the brain’s left hemisphere.” [MIT news , PubMed] (from A&O notes on “what is Art”)
[iv] (He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god ) (Aristotle 384-322 BC, Politics bk. 1, 1253a 27-9). (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster (rather than Boris Karloff’s) became a beast because he was deprived of sociality: “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy—and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture, such as you cannot even imagine. . . . I was nourished with high thoughts of honor and devotion. But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. . . . “ And his vice? His appearance invited fear and unjust rejection, shunned and unbearably lonely, the nineteen year old Shelley’s monster was born. (See Steve Gould’s “The Monster’s Human Nature” in Dinosaur in a Haystack).
[v] Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much.
(Alexander Pope 1733, An Essay on Man, Epistle 2 (1733) l. 1.)
[vi] Thus, as it is always darkest just before the day dawneth, so God useth to visit His servants with greatest afflictions when he intendeth their speedy advancement. Thomas Fuller – Wikiquote
