I don’t know if you need to hear this, but if you do, please don’t hold it against me if I don’t tell it with humility. My teachers were vain. Back during their time it was a dishonor to the Sun, Earth, and Universe to fail to be as truthful and brilliant as possible at any moment. They used metaphor as a way of pulling history into focus. Looking at our blue paradise, as if from orbit, as if we were visitors from another galaxy. Seeing things that way, pretty soon you start to see human civilization as a type of comic book, where one event follows the next, and after contemplating it a decade or two, pretty soon the question emerges: what is the truth of our existence as a species of sapient beings? Is it just a bunch of haphazard events bumbling into the future, or the result of money and culture influencing things? Or is it all three? A bumbling along with helpings of haphazardness from both spheres? Is it the world’s banks and religions jousting for supremacy? A confluence at certain points? As a human I wanted to know. The rub is, the more you look into things, the more complicated things become—especially if you’re an artist and a scientist and your whole existence is a burning desire to identify the truth. I mean, how can you raise consciousness and advance humanity without knowing what’s true?
Panning out from a few details to lots of details—from a river, to a forrest, to a continent, to a planet—is a great metaphor for life itself. The older you get, the larger the frame becomes. The larger the frame, the more you see. The more you see, the more you know. A writer once said that all nature is nothing but metaphor to the mind. Meaning you could take our universe and anything in it, and use it to explain something. For instance, you decide to meet for a reconciliation with a family member, or you have an upcoming salary review with your employer, and the possibility exists, that unless there is some persuading on your part, things might not unfold the way you think they should. So you set about finding reasons to point out one thing and mention another. A metaphor for that might be how you are going to play the meeting, like a match of chess or game of golf. How are you going to counter the brother-in-law’s bishop with a knight? What club are you going to use on the approach to the green? Another metaphor describing existence is of the burning house, like if you’re part of a society and the structure that keeps cold reality at bay—your home and government—is on fire and in danger of being utterly destroyed. Of course the most famous metaphor of all time goes back to the Greeks, the one about a bunch of people in a cave looking at shadows on the wall, believing that to be reality, and the other people outside the cave, looking at the Sun and Universe as it is. It captures the truth of humans restricted to thinking shadows on cave walls are all there is, and then those living in the world as it actually is, which raises that same question again: as a human being, do you want to know the truth or not? There’s the old adage that ignorance is bliss, and that most people would much rather live in a cave of their making than contemplate and consciously exist in the truth outside it.
But if a story can help someone live a life where they make the transition from cave-dweller to non-cave-dweller, I’ll hold fast to the belief that it’s a good thing—as painful as it might be. I know the argument that some people just can’t handle the truth, but I reject that too. The capability of humans to lead other humans out of a cave and into sunlight—what the Greeks declared as the duty of artists and scientists—is proof and confirmation that the purpose of existence is to learn—and not learn just anything, but to learn the truth. Have you ever heard that before? That the purpose of your life is to learn the truth? Well it’s true. It’s why we’ve gotten this far. Our species would have perished long ago if not for the capability to enlighten our own kind.
After a number of years of watching the world, I knew I had to write a novel because the argument had always been made that the novel is the most important art form when you’re talking about leading fellow humans out of a cave. One good novel, one story artfully told—the right words in the right order—walk someone right out of the cave. Lots of people have a book that changed their life. And so for years I read novels, noting what other artists had done, and what I might try myself. I had to see if I could get some complex political ideas stowed away in an entertaining story.
Anyone says writing a novel is not the most difficult thing a human can do doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Meaning, a literary novel, a book that takes the past and the present, and combines it in a way that makes life relevant—that attempt to give meaning to us little monkeys who are sometimes warm, soft, and furry inside, and others as cold, cunning, and deadly as all the teeth and claws that have ever torn something apart. I was really struggling to finish my literary masterpiece, well aware that tens of millions of humans have attempted to write one, but never finished. I was losing steam, I needed inspiration, I needed a muse—someone beautiful and interested—maybe even doing something admirable with her life.
Life without art is incomprehensible, like Earth without ocean. And art, the type that can alter consciousness, the type that can move an entire society in one direction or another, requires an artist who is inspired. That’s why the relationship between the muse and artist is so sacred, because it can have such a profound effect on what art comes into being, and how powerful, and where we go from here, etcetera, etcetera ecsera. When someone inspires someone else to excel, or inspires any intention, invention, or act that creates a more truthful and beautiful world, that must be sacred, right? Unless you’d rather be a robot. Then maybe the artist/muse relationship isn’t all that sacred. Maybe the metaphor these days is not whether you’re living in a cave, but whether you’re more robot than human. More likely they’re two metaphors describing the same truth. I don’t want people to be robots because robots can only do what they’re programmed to do. It’s the difference between being told what to feel, and actually feeling. I refuse to be a robot. And if I’m really sincere, then naturally I care if future humans are in danger of becoming robots.
No comments:
Post a Comment