Love’s Inefficient Products

If possible, try to read this with a straightforward, lighthearted tone. I do not intend to be dramatic, but parts will read that way. Just imagine we are in a conversation, smiling and nodding back and forth with the clink of forks on plates in the background.

I come from a place where art does not matter. It isn’t a job, it doesn’t pay bills, it won’t keep you fed or warm or protect your children. It won’t give respect.

So when our little community tries to raise money to help pay for an investment that could be the seed my county needs to normalize seeing and talking about art - to raise money by auctioning local art -

it is a struggle.

There are not many of us makers around here and most are just hobbyists. Asking for money - even a little money - for a painted rock or a literal stick figure is always depressing.

Usually, the people who run the organization end up being the buyers. This is not sustainable. I did my part by giving two paintings and by buying a dog portrait commission. (He’s a good boy…)

After the event and before bed, I reflected on my own experience in beginning to paint and farther back to when I was a boy.

I recalled everyone around me working all the time. When they were not at their jobs, they worked on other things, like small farms, cars, and raising kids with sports.

No one ever thought twice about spending their time and money on trailers, hay, animals, fencing, sheds, home interior decorations, satellite dishes and the t.v. bill that goes with them, four-wheelers (all-terrain vehicles), hunting boots and coveralls, or new rifles.

These things were normal.

But painting? Photography? Drawing? What is this, second grade?

What a waste of time. What a dumb thing to do. This was so deeply held (and still is by many) that it didn’t even need to be spoken. It didn’t even need to be brought up and discussed, so…it never was. (One exception is that of the portrait/wedding photographer. They are spoken of when needed and judged sharply after the fact depending on how well they translated the psychic will of the one paying.)

What else would someone want in the home besides practical things and decorations? Family pictures. For some reason, they were in an in-between world. It’s like we knew they were important, but couldn’t say why.

And so I come to my point.

Once the body is protected, once the body is warm and fed, once the bills are paid and the children are safe -

then what?

Do we not move to comfort and from comfort to entertainment? Comfort for the body, entertainment for the mental release? What is beyond entertainment? Is that the pinnacle of our experience?

Remember your parent(s) coming home and just wanting to sit down and watch the news and after that, a couple of sitcoms? The body in a chair, the mind somewhere else?

This rested the body and the mind a little, and this is where most people stay.

There are a few of us, however, that sense something inside that has not been rested. Perhaps it was during the commercials when we found ourselves staring at the television unaware of what was being pitched. Perhaps it was thinking back over the work day and replaying interactions. Perhaps it was opening the mail to a new bill. Perhaps it was listening to parents fight again or seeing the facade of the “good family” break. Perhaps it was the way the branches moved silently outside the window or a shadow stretched along the wall. At some point for a few of us, a blip appears on our inner radar and begins to slowly pulse. What, though? What is it? A voice? Whatever it is, this restlessness is bothersome because it cannot be satisfied with food or warmth or information and so, we search.

In fact, the search intisifies when we are suffering in some way. That should be a cue.

Those of us who push through the eye rolling and smirks and whispers, occasionally find ourselves in spheres of a peculiar quiet wherein we begin to hear a distant sound. Muted, unclear, but definitely there, just out of sight. Something is definitely there. Or is it “here...?”

We stand at windows. We go out at dusk. We get up early. We doodle. We “play”. We return to the childish teachings to pick them up again (love your neighbor, forgive, pray…), seeing in them a fullness we previously had no capacity to contain.

While at the window or out watching bats hunt as the world turns purple, we hear the distant sound and come to realize what it is:

fighting.

Groans and gargles, screams and rumbles - loud, angry, all-or-nothing conflict.

Our bodies sheltered and fed, our responsibilities met and being entertained, we face the fact that the physical battle was the picket line, and the real battle for our humanity lies with the undiscovered country of the soul.

But…art?

Art isn’t another form of entertainment, though it may be decorative. Art isn’t just philosophical food or intellectual freedom. It isn’t a shelter or hospital for the body.

Art - creating - making - is the affirmative action taken to bring the soul into our normal reality and the drawing of a sword in a stand against nihilism. It is the acknowledgement of another world and another battle. It is what we put on the fire-lit walls to record, to re-tell, yes, but also to search out. It is the most practical thing humans can do once the body is safe.

It is questioning, wondering, seeking, and listening.

What is more practical than to enter the peculiar quiet to join in the fight against nothingness? To say that the fullness of reality easily overflows the box of natural science? To engage the part of us that needs not food, but still hungers? To explore the revelatory relationship between truth and beauty?

Nobody is running back inside a burning building for their “Live, Laugh, Love” sign or their television or their tax documents.

Protestors do not deface BestBuy. They deface Van Gogh.

No one gathers to pull down statues only because it is easier than a McDonald’s sign.

But seemingly everyone will, on their own cave wall, put their hand print outlined in ochres even if the hunt brought no food and the winds howl at the cave entrance while the fire whips. We will all put shell beads on our clothes and carve onto our arrows. We will make songs about loss. We will teach them to others, and they will sing in their own night.

We all know without saying it that the destruction of an ancient library, temple, or even a modern museum or language is a greater loss and the uncovering of an old mosaic from beneath the sand is a greater gain to our world than a strip mall or featureless building of an unknown generic business with a professionally designed forgettable logo on the corner. We know what matters. Inherently.

We all sense that there is a battle, but some know it’s for humanity’s core and that that core is not contained within our bodies or minds.

This is why art matters.

It matters to the individual who is searching, who wants to learn and who is listening. It also matters to those who are only observing the maker’s path, sensing that there is more to the story.

It matters in the same way a seed matters. It matters in the way a trail matters. It matters in the way hope matters. It matters in the way prayer matters.

Math and physics can guide us in building satellites and fiber optics, but they cannot inform humanity as to why we should continue at all. Is there such a thing as advancement without imagination? And what is the origin of imagination? What is the purpose of advancement without hope? Hope and imagination are crucial to our humanity, but these are just parts of a greater whole.

Art may not always give us the clean answer or a pragmatic solution to a problem, but creation - making - isn’t always about finding answers. Sometimes it is about knowing there is something else - something very real - worth fighting towards.

All of our bad paintings and stick figures, all of our quilts and plates and mugs, all of our fashions and faux pas, all of our porch pumpkins and Christmas lights - all of it - every small act we do is a little fire in the night, choice to live on purpose, a way of saying, “We are alive,” and “Life matters.” Can you see how much this sounds like, “I love you”?

This is what monks and mothers know: the beginning and end is love.

Love - and its inefficient products - is the sword we draw against nihilism, chaos and despair.

Sounds dramatic, I know. Ask Bill Murray if it is. Click here to hear him talk about it. Alternatively, here is Jordan Peterson talking about “why art.” Ask someone you know why they make stuff, why they do what they do. I bet, once the struggle to spit it out is over, the stammered, mangled sentences will touch on the topics mentioned here.

It is hard to say why art matters, but - like hope - once it is gone, we are just scavengers.

(The event did well for itself, raising over $8,000. My two paintings - both done on location in North Georgia - brought over 400 a piece. Modest, but good for my area. Both went to other painters. What an honor. $80,000 more to go…)