A mad junky in the name of art

A mad junky in the name of art /

Preface

It so seems, that in the name of art many immoralities are unawarely excused or even outwardly exhibited, as some sort of triumph of the ego over God…Well, in the name of art, I say, we can also express beauty and love, true aesthetics and gentleness, consideration and depth. True depth, not that shallow scum swamp of gimmick called Modern Art.

When it concerns me, what would I do in the name of art? How much is “Art” really important to me? I don’t fool anyone: to me art is just a tool to achieve what I have been trying to achieve all my life: fortune and fame. Failing to achieve that will turn art into some auraless hobby, instead of a shining shrine, where dreams wake up and grow like children… and let’s be honest, I mean what other motives are there really? Deep down…really, what?
God and the benefit of humanity.

Triggering questions

Who said that art must gush from misery, struggle with God and misanthropy until the inevitable conclusion of insanity, catatonic apathy or a lonesome death in some filthy one-room apartment filled with dirty needles? Who said that art is a spring of all that which is incomplete, conflicted and chaotic? What is the value of art created by such artists? Is an artist who walks around whole and happy in the streets of Berlin (or Cairo for that matter) will create shallower art than one who sits all day long and occupies himself with forcefully finding reasons to cut off his ear, or one that lives a wild and hallucinate lifestyle, consequent of a morally unrestrained mind, swept away blindly by destructive instincts and urges?

Must an artist destroy himself in order to create art? And what’s the relationship between art and the essence of life? And who even said that art is a means for the realization of this essence?

Could it be Our inevitable roll, the unavoidable goal?

The purpose is destiny?

I believe that art is not a purpose and not even a means; it is simply another thing that one does in life, same as cleaning the house or eating an apple. There is a higher encompassing purpose to life, which can be attained (perhaps and no doubt) only by some sort of practice of spiritual awareness and lucid intent. From that trunk, when its roots are deep and healthy, may sprout all sorts of branches, twigs, leafs and fruits, as much as the imagination is capable of.

A good blacksmith is also an artist. Everyone whom is granted with inspiration based upon deep concentration with the base of morality is an artist. It could be that the life of the plasterer, who fixed the walls in my house, carried him to a position that in terms of the consensus and the acceptable stigmas, is lessened of that of Jim Morrison or Picasso, for supposedly there is no reason for his ego to bloat. But indeed this is merely a stigma, because an ego can be bloated for no “real” reason at all and it is indeed bloated as a balloon for no real reason, except for it being itself. That is the ego’s sole purpose: to distract from the real purpose.

The essentials of quality, The Artistry of Art

Façade of success

Jim Morrison, for example got a few successful years, which were merely a karmatic realization of the sub-conscious contents of his mind, and was captured in an abundantly sensitive and intelligent whirlpool of self-hatred. Out of this mental state he produced art – profound and intention-propelled words from the depths of the psyche, words that particularly in those days were a challenge over what was acceptable to say and how its acceptable to say it. He pondered in deep questions concerning death and turned his inability to find answers into a voyage of self-destruction, supposedly in the name of art, with the full realization that he is doing so.

I believe that even Morrison did not really believe Morrison’s bullshit and if he did than he was less sensitive and intelligent than that image that he bothered so to construct regarding his personality. Jean-Michel Basquiat is another fine example of a clearly intolerable relationship of a man with himself and with his place in the world.

The dawn of stigma

I sense that during the Renaissance era, when artists already started receiving a status of intellectuals rather than that of “plain laborers” or craftsmen at the most, a certain perception started to intensify within the collective sub-conscious, which defined the artist as a necessarily tormented creature, patently condescending, misanthropic, closed, hostile and captured in whirlpools of intense emotional outbursts. Of course as a result of all these he would necessarily be much deeper, extremely more sensitive and much more special than all others – The Chosen One. And of course the effect of that result the artist might probably be completely lonely, poor, miserable, dirty and dark.

For example, I don’t think that Van Gogh would have been less of an artist had he been less miserable and more optimistic and faith driven in the belief and recognition that art is not the purpose of his life and neither is his niece, his brother or his closest friend, but only Divinity and death, and that he among others, was chosen to become a lonely painter in this life, the same as his mom was chosen to become a housewife who makes great strudel and someone else in the Byzantine Roman empire – as a result of purification or defilement, ignorance or wisdom – was chosen to become a great archer or a mediocre tailor.

The joystick of attitude

When someone is established in a path of spiritual awareness, in faith, he realizes his essence and uses every daily doing as a lift to spiritual enhancement, to personal growth, to the aspiration to all that which is noble, pure and luminous. It’s a question of attitude and attitude is an expression of the freedom of choice which God gave us, Humans.

A deep and intense spiritual awareness to the existential suffering of oneself and of mankind is a gift, but awareness which is not accompanied with equilibrium of the mind begets fear which might result in hatred, rather than a balanced and aware mind which begets love and faith.

A person’s attitude manifests his weight balance of God, devil and the self-image

Love in the name of art

Art can also be created out of love and faith and it will be as deep, impressive, creative and colorful as art emerging from the darkness of the artist’s psyche. Again, it’s a question of choice and once you do believe that God indeed contains everything – including the devil – because everything is within the boundaries of His creation and His providence governs all with absolute and infinite awareness, than the logical outcome of that realization, is that art which is lofted by the creative forces of the mind can soar much higher and further than art which stems from the rotten roots of the destructive forces of the mind.

Asceticism

Those artists who choose to create art out of self-hatred and conflict do so on their own, but by no means because it is necessarily the way of nature. Perhaps they choose to believe that if and when they will stop suffering they will also stop being unique. Perhaps it is the rooted belief that being miserable is being deep and that happy people are superficial and stupid. But that depends on where from this happiness flows, and of course when I say happiness, I mean true and profound blissful joy and not that unaware vapid hypocritical charade posed by most of them “happy” people.

Now, the happiness of sensual pleasures may indeed be superficial and stupid, but nevertheless it is an expression of the human nature just as much as stubbornly uncompromising and haughtily pretentious debate concerning ‘deep’ philosophical issues. At the ultimate level of reality, enjoying a good steak like a beast isn’t more superficial than embittering your life with asceticism and self torture, as did certain artists of the past, since it does not indicate spiritual greatness but rather the greatness of the ego and it’s arrogance and the illusion that shields them and then turns them into a distorted and dangerous belief, that it is indeed for a higher cause – Art – nonsense.

I’m an artist, not a saint. So what if There is art in my Ego?

Happiness

But there is true joy, what which we call ‘Happiness’ – that which derives from the knowledge that in any situation and at all times there is something unfathomably bigger than us, which is aware of us into our entire depths, which knows the purpose of our existence and tries to guide us through a universal scene of illusions and misery which he created for us.

From within those short moments of the happiness of faith and the experience of the radiance of truth, art is born which is not the outcome of misery and indecisive conflict, but rather one that, for a start, expresses all those objectively and impartially. Perhaps at a later stage an art emerges that is all of the nature of radiance, happiness and faith – art which is the embodiment of the divine, the exalted and the complete.

Attraction of similarities

As an incidental remark to the above and as a side effect of the suffering human, the frequencies we generate draw to us those people who generate the same frequencies. A magnet will not be pulled to or by glass or wood but only to iron. It is the law of nature. A man – an artist, a cook, a teacher, a driver or a cashier – who generates frequencies of self destruction draws to himself other people of the same frequency.

Someone who, in the name of art and out of deep soul affinity for art, generates frequencies of self destruction, will attract ‘artists’ or those with ‘the soul of an artist’, who ruin the lives of themselves and of those who surround them, without any aware striving towards the origins of all phenomenon and the real solution to their personal despair. This is also a law of nature.

And that is all I had to say about that. Thank God for the wisdom, the insight, the pride, the journey and the conflict
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