Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe write to resolve the mistinto a darling gleamso that all that so tiresomely ismay most marvelously seem.
What is the allure of art? Why do some of us need it, as we do nourishment, and others not? Why for me does a shapely rhyme matter more than wealth or rank? Why do I revere the most gifted makers as nearest the angels?
The question is not new. Why do I feel bereft, even panicky, without my books? Even for an overnight I pack four or five “just in case.” In case of what?
Utilitarians may shy from this puzzle. Humans do things for a reason. We eat and sleep to survive. We compete for the rewards of eminence. We embrace to perpetuate our genes. Everything we do makes a sort of sense if you dig into a deed’s roots. But this helpless avidity for beauty makes no obvious sense. From music or poetry or painting, I derive no measurable benefit. I do not read to teach or write to sell. I will share these words with you, but you are not my reason for writing them. I know this because I write many words for no one’s eyes but my own – or, more precisely, for no present eyes; for like many a scribbler in the throes of composition, I fantasize an eventual fan, who perfectly comprehends and passionately appreciates what I have made, a sort of holographic projection of myself, a writer’s wet dream. I write and read and listen and gaze for some sweet sustenance without which I’m persuaded I’d shrivel into dust. But what is this energy drink? What are its “active ingredients”? How might we label it to protect consumers?
Confronted with such mysteries, it is tempting to default to the divine. Whatever we cannot comprehend we attribute to gods, the infinite and impenetrable “beats me.” I will never know when God visited me three years ago whether His palpable presence was physical or an emanation of my need. He could not have been more real, but I’m doubtful you’d have seen Him if you’d been with me that night – doubtful, but not certain.
No doubt, my God is the source of beauty, truth, kindness, grace, humility, all things good, and the enemy of their opponents. But that is a tautology, which, though it may inspire, does not instruct. Art is not optional in the human equation; it’s essential and always has been. Why?
The reason, I surmise, is existence would disappoint without it. Disappointment arises from a comparison between two realms: what is and what might be. Dog-pal Henry doesn’t need art because he and all other non-human creatures inhabit a single realm, the here and now, to which nowhere could be preferable. True, some days are better than others, but that’s just how things are in his eternal present, no cause for regret. A three-legged dog does not sigh for his fourth. He has three and that’s that.
The human imagination, which gives us power over earth, bedevils us with possibilities. We can be so much better than we are! Art envisions a moment cleansed of actuality’s imperfections. Even if art’s subject is grim, it’s a grimness we can manage, that fits within its frame, and thus consoles. Hieronymus Bosch’s hell isn’t actually hell, it’s humorous, we can live with it.
The more vivid the imagination, the more painful the comparison between what is and what might be. We need art, as the poet puts it,
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedso that all that so tiresomely ismay most marvelously seem.