I was recently directed to this video by two Christian artists who conclude, "Jesus is the hero. You're not. This is the best news you'll hear all day." Their simplification of creativity and warnings against thinking wrongly about the nature of art clarify some of my anxious thoughts.
First of all, they speak insistently against making art as sacrifice. This surprised me at first (I couldn't possibly be seeing writing as sacrifice, could I?) but upon reflection it was a good word. Especially since I have been reading Hebrews for the past two weeks. In chapter nine Paul describes pre-Christ sacrifices as inadequate, even powerless, obsolete -- mere reminders of sin (and of the shedding of blood that was to come) rather than true cleansers of it. But Jesus is a faultless high priest who lives forever, and so can always intercede for us, and a truly perfect lamb, better than any and all sacrifices combined.
So what does this mean for my anxieties about writing? I think most importantly it means I cannot heal a guilty conscience or a fearful heart with the sacrifice of my time and effort and talent. I can't use writing to earn God's attention or favor. I can't produce "good works" (hehe) to earn significance or to make up for all the ways I've been lazy, unfruitful, unloving, and selfish in my life. My purity, my strength, and my significance must all come straight from my Master and Redeemer. Otherwise I'll be like those people Jesus talked about who call him "Lord, Lord" with great affection -- but don't do as he says.
The artists in the video described the two purposes of art and two common misuses. The first purpose: worship ("love the Lord your God with all your strength, mind, heart, and soul"). Worship thanks and enjoys the Creator, the Giver of creativity. It is the opposite of sacrificing to Him, since your status in His eyes does not change, only the level of your pleasure in and awareness of His goodness.
The second purpose: mission, by which we image-bearers reflect the character of God out toward others ("love your neighbor as yourself").
If we aren't loving God or loving people in these ways through art, we will fall into one of two traps: religion or hedonism. Religion creates a bubble around Christians and God (or Artists and Genius, in the case of people who worship art), excluding the world at large. This puffs people up and produces a small, tightly-knit subculture, but does nothing for God, who prefers a humble heart to the best created things any day. Hedonism creates a bubble around the individual and makes everything for and about Me -- production only for the sake of my own consumption, sacrifice only for self-satisfaction.
The speakers, who have been in the arts for many years, were ultimately very blunt and very helpful. "You're gonna make work, it's going to suck, it's going to not honor God sometimes, because you're going to be fallen and screw up, so you repent and you keep going. What you don't do is quit and go live like a monk somewhere and start a Christian Hollywood... You go back on mission, you repent and apologize, and you know that Jesus loves you, and you make good stuff. And that stuff won't be your god."
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
My Journey So Far
I don't have a lot to say on this. Despite growing concerns I've managed to put out several short stories and plays and collect and edit (even print out and send) a manuscript of poetry. Sometimes I even like these things I have written. But generally, and especially on submission deadline days, the time I have spent writing and thinking about writing have been of a half-productive and half-my-life-is-completely-meaningless-please-someone-just-give-me-a-regular-job kind. At times, like two weeks ago, this causes me to cry uncontrollably for long periods of time. Other times, like today, it causes me to watch back-to-back episodes of The Office at home while my friends and family are out doing worthwhile things like auditioning for NBC, teaching America's youth, and attending conferences in the Middle East. Sometimes, when the light falls gently through my basement-apartment window and there seems to be some hope for my little wilting potted plant after all, I'll even cozy up happily and write two-thirds of a story I've been both desperate to get out and preemptively already a little bored with.
Despite my maddening ambivalence, I've more or less stuck to a schedule of daily writing (including planning and editing and submitting) for the past three-ish months. I believe anything, right down to beating your head against a wall, can teach you something if you'll do it for an extended period of time. Even if that something is how very good it feels not to beat your head against a wall. So in this time, though I have not consciously been aware of or tried to solve the question of Writing's Purpose, I have picked some helpful tidbits along the way.
1. Writing has to be communal.
You know that movie with Emile Hirsch and the Twilight girl about the guy who moves to Alaska to escape society's ills (I always confuse it with Grizzly Man but it's something with "wild" in the title)? At the end of the movie Emile's character writes "happiness is only real when shared" in his journal -- an epic quote they show either right before or right after his (spoiler alert!) tragic death. That line has come back to me a lot these past few months. Sure, I haven't suffered months of total isolation and the poisoning of my starving body with deceptive vegetation. But I too know now that anything undertaken without external support and external motivation is doomed. I don't care how fun or satisfying or valuable it seems at first.
2. Revision is important.
I have always been of the do-it-right-do-it-once mentality. If something's not worth spending a lot of time on the first time around, it's probably not worth spending three or four times longer than that improving it, right? Well, I disagree. With myself. I realize that my primary reason for holding that attitude was fear. I was afraid of doing my absolute best, of putting so much time into something that I had no excuse for failing to make it exactly the way I intended, to my utmost ability. Offering my 80% of effort up to judging eyes is way less intimidating than offering my 100% and saying, in essence, This is it -- this is literally all I've got. But fear is a terrible motivator, able to accomplish only a few good things, and always at the cost of much better things. Conclusion being: when I know the Why of writing, I will not shortchange my knowledge of How with stubborn attitudes.
3. Writings merely about me are boring, but it's impossible to exclude myself from anything I write.
Here's a tricksy bugger. A lot of the tension I feel in writing is between wanting to say something important and feeling my own insignificance at the same time. I want very badly to communicate truth (not the silly kind of fact-truth that condemns fiction as lies, but a deeper kind), but who am I to discern what is right and good, let alone give voice to it? Haven't thousands of others tried already? And if they've succeeded, what value could my addition have; and if they haven't, what makes me think I could do what so many others couldn't?
On a more practical level the same questions arise. Just chronicling my inner and outer experiences, my observations, my body's movements, my mind's random excursions, the outlines and details of my brief life, is tedious for me. How much more so for the people ignorantly or unwillingly subjected to listen to that sort of thing? But if I create characters that aren't like me, or speak from a mindset I've never experienced, how can I possibly expect to express anything even vaguely true (let alone enlightening) of the kinds of people I've conjured up or the kind of worlds they inhabit?
The closest I've come to resolving these difficulties is by writing about topics and characters I am very passionate about without worrying about how close or far from my reality they are. Often this results in an unprecedented order of familiar situations involving novel personalities made up of traits I've seen in both myself and people around me. This balance of new and old -- or, more accurately, this new ordering of the old -- has a very specific feel to it of something I swear I can remember but that couldn't possibly have experienced, like a dream. That space between new/fiction and old/fact has the most potential for expressing the kind of truth I hope to express.
In conclusion, sorry for saying "I don't have a lot to say." I also realize the absurdity of writing "I am so conflicted and in the dark about writing that I can't write" -- and taking so long and so many words to do it in! -- but the fact of the matter* is that I don't quite know what I'm doing and you might as well have the option of watching me go through the process of either finding out or finding out I will never find out.
* Besides being a vague but funny allusion to my discussion on fact/fiction earlier, this phrase is doubly meaningful to me as one used by a speaker I recently heard who answered every second question posed to them by starting "Well, the fact of the matter is..." which seriously irked me, especially because what followed tended not to answer the question directly, making the already vague words "fact" and "matter" even more impossible to understand. Unfortunately the speaker was famous and for good reasons sympathetically received by the audience, so I couldn't express my irritation. (While I'm not sure whether I can or will ever express anything profound or helpful, I might as well get out meaningless and petty thoughts while I have the chance.)
Despite my maddening ambivalence, I've more or less stuck to a schedule of daily writing (including planning and editing and submitting) for the past three-ish months. I believe anything, right down to beating your head against a wall, can teach you something if you'll do it for an extended period of time. Even if that something is how very good it feels not to beat your head against a wall. So in this time, though I have not consciously been aware of or tried to solve the question of Writing's Purpose, I have picked some helpful tidbits along the way.
1. Writing has to be communal.
You know that movie with Emile Hirsch and the Twilight girl about the guy who moves to Alaska to escape society's ills (I always confuse it with Grizzly Man but it's something with "wild" in the title)? At the end of the movie Emile's character writes "happiness is only real when shared" in his journal -- an epic quote they show either right before or right after his (spoiler alert!) tragic death. That line has come back to me a lot these past few months. Sure, I haven't suffered months of total isolation and the poisoning of my starving body with deceptive vegetation. But I too know now that anything undertaken without external support and external motivation is doomed. I don't care how fun or satisfying or valuable it seems at first.
2. Revision is important.
I have always been of the do-it-right-do-it-once mentality. If something's not worth spending a lot of time on the first time around, it's probably not worth spending three or four times longer than that improving it, right? Well, I disagree. With myself. I realize that my primary reason for holding that attitude was fear. I was afraid of doing my absolute best, of putting so much time into something that I had no excuse for failing to make it exactly the way I intended, to my utmost ability. Offering my 80% of effort up to judging eyes is way less intimidating than offering my 100% and saying, in essence, This is it -- this is literally all I've got. But fear is a terrible motivator, able to accomplish only a few good things, and always at the cost of much better things. Conclusion being: when I know the Why of writing, I will not shortchange my knowledge of How with stubborn attitudes.
3. Writings merely about me are boring, but it's impossible to exclude myself from anything I write.
Here's a tricksy bugger. A lot of the tension I feel in writing is between wanting to say something important and feeling my own insignificance at the same time. I want very badly to communicate truth (not the silly kind of fact-truth that condemns fiction as lies, but a deeper kind), but who am I to discern what is right and good, let alone give voice to it? Haven't thousands of others tried already? And if they've succeeded, what value could my addition have; and if they haven't, what makes me think I could do what so many others couldn't?
On a more practical level the same questions arise. Just chronicling my inner and outer experiences, my observations, my body's movements, my mind's random excursions, the outlines and details of my brief life, is tedious for me. How much more so for the people ignorantly or unwillingly subjected to listen to that sort of thing? But if I create characters that aren't like me, or speak from a mindset I've never experienced, how can I possibly expect to express anything even vaguely true (let alone enlightening) of the kinds of people I've conjured up or the kind of worlds they inhabit?
The closest I've come to resolving these difficulties is by writing about topics and characters I am very passionate about without worrying about how close or far from my reality they are. Often this results in an unprecedented order of familiar situations involving novel personalities made up of traits I've seen in both myself and people around me. This balance of new and old -- or, more accurately, this new ordering of the old -- has a very specific feel to it of something I swear I can remember but that couldn't possibly have experienced, like a dream. That space between new/fiction and old/fact has the most potential for expressing the kind of truth I hope to express.
In conclusion, sorry for saying "I don't have a lot to say." I also realize the absurdity of writing "I am so conflicted and in the dark about writing that I can't write" -- and taking so long and so many words to do it in! -- but the fact of the matter* is that I don't quite know what I'm doing and you might as well have the option of watching me go through the process of either finding out or finding out I will never find out.
* Besides being a vague but funny allusion to my discussion on fact/fiction earlier, this phrase is doubly meaningful to me as one used by a speaker I recently heard who answered every second question posed to them by starting "Well, the fact of the matter is..." which seriously irked me, especially because what followed tended not to answer the question directly, making the already vague words "fact" and "matter" even more impossible to understand. Unfortunately the speaker was famous and for good reasons sympathetically received by the audience, so I couldn't express my irritation. (While I'm not sure whether I can or will ever express anything profound or helpful, I might as well get out meaningless and petty thoughts while I have the chance.)
The Paradoxical Reason I Decided to Start This Blog
...in other words, its raison d'être. (I've always wanted to use that phrase!) The reason I am writing right now is that I am unsure about writing. I don't know anymore what the point of it is; I don't know if I can do it well; I don't know if I should do it at all. Yet this conflict is driving me to passionately expound on why lately I feel I can't, shouldn't, or don't want to write. Hence the "paradoxical" part.
This is a big hairy problem, the kind that chokes cats and clogs drains so you can't do dishes or take showers and everything just smells. It's big to me because I am passionate about very few things. Very, very few things. I am not the kind of person who throws themselves into a million initiatives with a dozen confident talents and boundless energy. A passion for writing is something I just can't afford to lose. In some ways, it's all I've got. You see, before meeting the One, I had experienced only three loves in my life: literature (starting before I could read and deepening at age 12), visual art (begun age 8), and a boy (starting age 15). Literature was the only pre-biggest-event-of-my-life passion that made it through the nonstop bumpy transitions of a 17-through-22 year old's life.
My faith in art was rocked halfway through high school, when at a summer arts program I began to wonder if Creativity wasn't just some kind of salesman-demon enticing consumer-worshippers with promises of a meaningful and everlasting life it could never fulfill. (You might think I'm exaggerating but have you seen Black Swan? Well I wasn't about to try to dance even the most beautiful dance of all time with any glass sticking in my gut, thank you but no thank you sir!) This doubt permeated everything I touched until I could barely stand to even look at my own work. My art teachers didn't know what to do with their moody disciple, and though I was voted Most Artistic senior year (the only superlative I stood any chance at winning), I think they knew their dreams for my shining career were dead.
Faith in my third love, the boy, took absurdly long to die, given that it was inherently suicidal and unstable. You know those relationships your one strange friend always seems to get into that are somehow borderline-everything -- borderline crazy-passionate, crazy-stupid, crazy-abusive? Yup.
What had always set apart my love of literature was its seeming permanence. Anything that began before my memory and hasn't yet ended has a quality of eternal existence. Just like anything that began before my memory and ended before this very day seems eternally ancient: bell-bottoms, dial-up internet, my parents' youth, Genghis Khan. It's all in the same category as far as I'm concerned. History-book stuff. But refrigerators! dentists! my body! literature! these things have the feel of forever. They will never become obsolete, never cease to exist.
I can't remember ever previously questioning the purpose of writing. There have certainly been a few pamphlets, livejournal entries, and mindless novels I wish had never been written. But literature as a whole? Words? The compass of culture? The glue of all peoples? The softener, detergent, and heater of hearts?? The clothespins of history???
Before a few months ago, I would have stooped to any level to defend words against mockers, doubters, and the willfully illiterate. Then something happened. I was given time. Time to do the thing I most respected and most desired. College was over and several full-time jobs had come to their ends. The stormy demands of performing for teachers and professors and employers faded in the clear, hopeful morning of a part-time lifestyle. I could finally Write.
And that's when it happened. Old doubts started sullying my pristine thoughts of that eternally enjoyable, unfailingly valuable and unquestionably respectable undertaking. Increasingly my mind rang with a single question: What the heck am I doing?
This is a big hairy problem, the kind that chokes cats and clogs drains so you can't do dishes or take showers and everything just smells. It's big to me because I am passionate about very few things. Very, very few things. I am not the kind of person who throws themselves into a million initiatives with a dozen confident talents and boundless energy. A passion for writing is something I just can't afford to lose. In some ways, it's all I've got. You see, before meeting the One, I had experienced only three loves in my life: literature (starting before I could read and deepening at age 12), visual art (begun age 8), and a boy (starting age 15). Literature was the only pre-biggest-event-of-my-life passion that made it through the nonstop bumpy transitions of a 17-through-22 year old's life.
My faith in art was rocked halfway through high school, when at a summer arts program I began to wonder if Creativity wasn't just some kind of salesman-demon enticing consumer-worshippers with promises of a meaningful and everlasting life it could never fulfill. (You might think I'm exaggerating but have you seen Black Swan? Well I wasn't about to try to dance even the most beautiful dance of all time with any glass sticking in my gut, thank you but no thank you sir!) This doubt permeated everything I touched until I could barely stand to even look at my own work. My art teachers didn't know what to do with their moody disciple, and though I was voted Most Artistic senior year (the only superlative I stood any chance at winning), I think they knew their dreams for my shining career were dead.
Faith in my third love, the boy, took absurdly long to die, given that it was inherently suicidal and unstable. You know those relationships your one strange friend always seems to get into that are somehow borderline-everything -- borderline crazy-passionate, crazy-stupid, crazy-abusive? Yup.
What had always set apart my love of literature was its seeming permanence. Anything that began before my memory and hasn't yet ended has a quality of eternal existence. Just like anything that began before my memory and ended before this very day seems eternally ancient: bell-bottoms, dial-up internet, my parents' youth, Genghis Khan. It's all in the same category as far as I'm concerned. History-book stuff. But refrigerators! dentists! my body! literature! these things have the feel of forever. They will never become obsolete, never cease to exist.
I can't remember ever previously questioning the purpose of writing. There have certainly been a few pamphlets, livejournal entries, and mindless novels I wish had never been written. But literature as a whole? Words? The compass of culture? The glue of all peoples? The softener, detergent, and heater of hearts?? The clothespins of history???
Before a few months ago, I would have stooped to any level to defend words against mockers, doubters, and the willfully illiterate. Then something happened. I was given time. Time to do the thing I most respected and most desired. College was over and several full-time jobs had come to their ends. The stormy demands of performing for teachers and professors and employers faded in the clear, hopeful morning of a part-time lifestyle. I could finally Write.
And that's when it happened. Old doubts started sullying my pristine thoughts of that eternally enjoyable, unfailingly valuable and unquestionably respectable undertaking. Increasingly my mind rang with a single question: What the heck am I doing?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)