Apologies for those who cannot bear more than a moment’s glance ( perhaps I should add in adverts for peanut butter and carpet cleaners, spread thereby the attention load). This piece came around and about from considering the general squirming embarrassment our culture seems to feel about art, and poetry in general, and the inability of educators to enthuse or value creativity in any heartfelt way. ( there are, of course, exceptions ( but are they waving or drowning?))
There is a weaving of voices and opinions here, quite knotted in places, but the thread moves on around dark corners….
SPINE AND SPINELESS, THIS ART
What is this form, this fashion, so disregarded, so fey? Why should one choice of words, one pattern, one rhythm be slighted, thought spineless, out of date? Difficult, too difficult are the equations, obscurity built on subtle shadow play, and hide and seek. Do not seek. It dives without breath. Without breathing, get lost, translate sound to blood, to surge, to weeping. It is not blood, though it moves in pumping tumbled capillaries. It is not tears but can move as oceans move, and salt fills all taste, all airs.
We so long for clarity
For surcease of thought,
Abandonment of care,
Cradled and lulled by voices of nonsense,
Nurture that asks nothing but for existence and smiles,
Asks no questions that require anything but joy.
Imprisoned in the walls of language. Right and wrong, skill and ignorance, affront and glib approval. We move from oceans to estuaries. From the far banks of expectation we flow upstream our own thoughts to praise neat canals and cultured meadow parklands. And soon that flow becomes stream, that stream a slight rill, a line of dribble, a small pool, a puddle, a gurgle, an empty dry openness, windswept, parched, a nothing but thirst, a certainty of sorts – enough to become harsh-voiced, enough to become rigid, narrow-eyed, suspicious of movement.
We have clambered upwards
Through hills,
Taught sinews to strive on
Regardless,
The goal of
Excellent knowing,
Of knowing enough,
Of getting by on seeming.
A false economy, a slavery of usefulness, a sharing of all petty failures, a payment of sorts. Nothing but payment for maintaining existence, right to live, no right to live. Show yourself worthy, a useful member of society, citizen, tied down, voiceless.
For what do we have to pay?
Shaped air,
Wasted time,
Distraction from the climb
To singular goals.
Those ambiguities that allow doubt,
That resonate with no logical cause,
That no science can measure
No statistics analyse
No financier weigh or assay.
Rile and rise, rebel and foment. Sound, mad sound as catalyst for new memory, old memory, new sight, old view. A way to push through. Slogans against polite propaganda, jewels to blind the bland normal levelling, the levelling of passion into cattle quietude.
Dismiss the fools,
Dismiss the jokers,
Their bladder alarms,
Their jingled bells.
The emperor is clothed,
Fully clothed, adorned,
Effulgent in power and glory.
We need no wonder, no alternate glances, no doubts to shadow our mighty ordained progress. No worm words to eat sweet certainty. No slick lyric to stir loins, to bring sly smiles, to bring to boil,
To question the inept, sinking boat.
Cast them over,
Let them drown-
These voicers of fancy,
The shapers of satire
And subjectivity.
For we have chosen our palette. It is harmless, dull and bland. Trained and wired to climb no great heights nor to topple or destroy. The boat will not be rocked by winds of word. Mind not belittled by sharp, pointing laughter.
For there is no alternative, no dreaming worthwhile. We strive for a limit, a judicious, paid-for maintenance of time and space. Rough edges removed.
Fists can be padlocks,
Rebellious reasons shot down.
Mindless violence is a world without eloquence.
Hate screams is a world without song.
Wasteland of arrogance is a world without satire.
Stalking mass dreams of broadcast conditioning is a world divorced from the ocean of time dream.
Kill poetry and quieten the spirit,
Quieten the voice. Quieten the voice and kill the soul. For it is reckless, antiquated irrelevance. Old dust gathered into monsters in the vents of air-conditioned rooms. Refrigerated, vacuum-packed, pre-formed, conveniently stackable, endlessly expendible.
These new nursemaids
Are our murderers.
The window left cracked open,
Unbolted.
The knifeman’s long shadows
In the dark.
Murderer of dreams, of futures,
Of roads unseen,
Of magnificent sound.
Silence will descend
And the fast, bright blood
Congeal and pool.
The endless buzzing
Of blowflies.
simonhlilly 
“Art”, in whatever form it takes, will live as long as does the human species.
No matter how commodified it becomes there will always be those who create for the sake of creating, for no one, for everyone, for anyone who chooses to see or hear.
Only human extinction will bring an end to human creativity and that may be not far off.
Just my opinion.
i nod in agreement and thank you for your devotion to the making Simon
My concern is not so much about continuation of creativity, which is a biological factor, but the wastefulness and misunderstanding of the intrinsic, eductional, developmental, evolutionary and cultural value of what is generally perceived as non-productive, elitist ephemera….
i, for one, hope they continue to marginalize and brutalize human creativity or ‘art’ in it’s learned form until it becomes an algorithm of serialized numbers. then and only then can we proceed with the frightening task of emotional art created by intellectually derelict monsters.
-v.t.s.
One could say that everyone living breathes without thinking. But there is also the skilled use of breath that can do much more than just maintain our existence. It is the same with creativity (‘the Arts’). ‘art’, ‘craft’, ‘skill’ all derive from the same perception of consciously directed activity. Random emotional catharsis may be manifested skillfully, but of itself is a biological response to stress and is rarely a self-reflective act. My thoughts as they emerged here were in no way focused on the ‘art world’ or on elitist commercialism, quite the reverse. The alienation of the mainstream media is largely a reflection of the general discomfort both with the forms and proceeses and purpose of art ( in contrast to the issues of the ‘real world’). There is plenty of evidence that brain function, real intelligence, adaptability, inventiveness, original and evolutionary thought patterns, as well as personal contentment and fulfilment derive from holistic,global integration of mind-body coordination and imaginative constructive thought. Art therefore is not an elitist, aristocratic pursuit. It is skilful communication with self and others. An absolute requirement for the positive evolution of humans as an aware, compassionate and viable species.
There is a line somewhere that divides an “artist” from a crafts-person or mechanic who produces things that are lifeless, without character, however technically “beautiful” they may be.
As a self-taught musician I often regret that I never took any formal training because I feel that, if I’d become an “educated” musician, I might have been better able to bring my creative ideas to realisation.
Then, on the other hand, I’m glad I was never “trained” in music because I always feared that such training might “contaminate” or limit my spontaneous or “natural” creative abilities.
I think the commodification of art forms, for the purpose of generating “profit”, has severely distorted the creative impulse in that it has largely replaced the instinctive, natural motive with a quest for “fame” and “fortune”.
Ostensible artists are often more concerned with what “sells” than with what emotes, inspires and communicates.
Just my opinion.
The division between art and craft is a relatively modern one, and I think, may be more cultural than actual ( the ‘useful’, ‘non-useful’ distinction a red herring, again based on misconceptions of what is necessary and what is luxury). I expect the flow within the act of involvement in creative acts are pretty indistinguishable from each other, regardless of end product. Also, it may be that the apparent contrast between the ‘natural’ artist and the ‘trained’ artist has nothing to do with being free from orthodox practices or constrained by them. Original thinkers may be no more outsiders than insiders. In all fields technical competancy is regarded as inferior to original genius, but competancy is not a limiting factor. Learning the rules gives freedom to go beyond them. Not knowing the rules can seem liberating, but may just be an arrogant lack of perspective…..we are human after all, and so excel at justifying our whims and misconception!
“Competency” may not be a limiting factor or, in some cases it may very well be. I expect that a person with the mental fortitude and very good motor skills could become a highly competent violinist without ever evidencing a shred of “creativity”.
Another person, with equal or better motor skills, a deep Love of or even obsession with violin could become an incredibly skillful performer and yet never even learn to read music.
I, perhaps being an idiot but not a “savant”, feel I have limited myself by not taking formal training in music. On the other hand, given my nature and my problems with authority, I might have abandoned music altogether had I done so. Then I would have missed what were probably the most personally fulfilling years of my Life as an amateur performer.
The relativism intrinsic in defining “beauty” and “art” make if very difficult to apply any absolute codification to creative endeavours. What is deeply moving and meaningful music to one may be utter cacophony to another, a visual “masterpiece” or a meaningless smear of colour.
Because someone with years of training and a collection of suffixes after their name pronounces something a great work of art doesn’t mean I have to agree. In the end, the only thing that matters is whether or not it touches me in some way, pushes a button that makes me smile, laugh, cry, makes me feel something.
True enough! And my motivation for this piece, I suppose, was just to prevent the ghettoisation of ‘art’ ( poetry and speech, in particular) as a weird, elitist aberation by emphasising its potential for productive power within an educational setting for everyone, not just for those with a ‘natural aptitude’ and/or an inability to take ‘practical’ subjects like sciences.
That the strangeness of poetry, its otherness, sometimes its random rules, are a something to get to do for oneself, to savour, to enjoy, to make use of, to feel changing the way the mind works, to stretch awareness, to be a compost for new growth of self. And that this, like all new ways of looking at things, can seem clumsy and silly to begin with…