Tom's Life Bits

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===== Should We Bother With Art? =====

Watching the tragic events unfold in Haiti, I can’t help but wonder why we as human beings ever pursue things like art or literature when so many people lack things as basic as food and water.  Beyond Haiti, there are over one billion people on this Earth living in the same sort of crippling poverty, which kind of makes one scratch ones head as to why anyone would give a shit about a Picasso.  With such wide spread pain and suffering, I often find myself wondering, is art even important?  Are aesthetic creations merely misdirected ambition or do they serve a sort of higher purpose in the scheme of mankind?  Three decades on and I still can’t sort this one out.

As with any argument, one must first establish parameters and root definitions.  The first problem in considering the importance of art is defining it.  So much has been written and debated on this subject that it inspires little more than running as quickly as possible in the other direction.  For what it’s worth though, here’s my take:  art is anything of aesthetic human creation which attempts any degree of human connection.  It’s a pretty broad definition, but I think it is apt for such a broad topic.  Essentially, what we’re looking for from art is the chance to connect in some unspeakable way with both its creator and each other.   As David Foster Wallace defined literature, art attempts to assuage the inherent loneliness of being marooned in our own skull.

On the surface, this makes art seem noble enough, and it is a definition which has helped keep my own head in the game as I’ve labored on a first novel for the last year.  But then after seeing something so epically shattering as the destruction of Port au Prince over the last two weeks, one begins to doubt the importance of creating a salve for something as ethereal as human disconnect.  What about the physical pain of unattended medical needs, or the pain of starvation and dehydration?  Is art nothing more than the dilettantish hobby of the well fed?

As a writer, I’ve been able to find a sliver of validation in journalism because, although it isn’t often the case, the journalist has the opportunity to tell the stories of those without a voice.  I’m thinking here of a journalist like Nick Kristof of the New York Times whose column has brought worldwide attention to many of the world’s worst off.  As an example, thanks to the storytelling of Kristof and writer Dave Eggers, a Sudanese refugee by the name of Valentino Deng has been able to fund the construction of a school in his village of Marial Bai in Southern Sudan.  People read about Valentino and sent over $160,000 in donations.  To see writers use their skills to such effect is downright awe inspiring.  But then what about novelists or, God forbid, poets?  Journalism is about reporting the facts, but creative writing is about releasing some sort of inner life valve of the writer.  The nobility of journalism’s desire to shine a light on the voiceless often gets lost in the shuffle of literature’s deep self examination.

And then now what of capital ‘A’ art?  Let’s take for example Picasso’s Guernica, or Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamozov, or even Damien Hirst’s Shark Under Glass.  Certainly the first two have had a profound influence on my own inner life, but have they fed starving kids?  Another direction that this argument could take is that not everyone is here to save the world.  A middle manager in an air conditioning manufacturing firm probably doesn’t, on the surface at least, have the same impact as someone working with Doctors Without Borders.  But then that air conditioning firm could very well be using parts manufactured in Bangladesh, where the number of those living in extreme poverty, thanks to such manufacturing, has plummeted.  Just by being a cog in the system, that middle manager is helping people, not to mention performing the quiet nobility of a working life absent of a creative life’s deep focus on the self.

Art on the other hand doesn’t have that luxury.  Creating art is inherently solipsistic and is deeply averse to any sort of cog mentality.  The creator is mining deep within their own emotional/psychological/spiritual well to access things that are only really available to those not facing an immediate threat to their life.  Last year I wrote an essay where I basically concluded that depression--not the chemical/psychotic brand of course but the sort of modern ennui--is basically a gift to the privileged.  In a very similar way, so is art.  Those folks suffering in Haiti aren’t much concerned with the intense emotive coloring of Van Gogh’s Terrace Cafe right now.  Aside from the emotional release of music, I can’t imagine art is much on anyone’s mind in Port au Prince at all.

The question remains though, why, as a creative person, do I feel deep down that art is important?  The works of say Francesco Clemente or David Foster Wallace have profoundly effected me, and have in fact, as Wallace hypothesized, freed me in some small way from the prison of my own skull.  But it is an inner battle for me, to place so much importance on something that possibly has no meaning to 1/3 of this planet’s population.  I suppose it is a question that I have yet to answer and can only pose to the reader.  Is art important?  Or is it only so much solipsism in such a deeply fractured world?

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