Embryonic Coalescences

The Third Dimension

All the world’s a stage has changed to All the world’s a film.  It was a stage and all us talking bipeds merely players, strutting and fretting, signifying nothing (blending Jaques and Macbeth is smooth).  It has become a film and all us talking bipeds still merely players, still strutting, still fretting, still signifying nothing.  Sure.  But beyond the perpetual maw of nothingness, what can we make this shift mean and what might it signify on the bed of nothingness, between the sheets of time?

Since art adumbrates life (which is not to say that life does not also adumbrate art), an engaging task for the curious human is to look for historical evidence for such adumbration.  Shakespeare, naturally (as Mr. Bloom—the one from Yale, not the one from Dublin—made a point of making, albeit in over 700 pages), foreshadows in his world-stage metaphor (which he did us the service of living also) the modern participant-observer and, through this, the Internet:  the present center stage (or film) of our global community.

But the stage qua stage—think the Globe in 1600, think  back to the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus in 409BCE—was both more and less distant than the modern cinematic experience (and by cinema I am including TV and the Internet; by cinema I mean any human-manufactured artifact that appears in two dimensions and appears animate or appears to have the idea of animation behind it [this latter convolution is due to those like Andy Warhol who make films like Empire]).  Less distant, because of the very real physical possibility of the actors moving into the audience, the audience moving onto the stage (Artaud of course was the consummation of this idea, of trying to eradicate distance), of belching or farting or fire distracting or disrupting the antics on stage.  More distant, because the entire enterprise operated with—was predicated upon—the unquestioned assumption of a three-dimensional world, which, in its plural dimensionality, allowed for more overall space.

But cinema eliminates a dimension; we are left with only two.  (Cinema achieves what Artaud futilely strove for on the stage, which is perhaps a good part of his madness.)  The stage is cinema’s most proximate art form but the latter is the begetting of simulacra.  (Again, art precedes the name, cinema advents Baudrillard.)  This is its seduction, its disorientation, its horror.

So cinema, in its radical simulation, subverts the stage by being (or becoming) more and less distant than it.  Less, in that we can stroke Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour and she remains utterly indifferent (while this is her typical screen persona, presumably in three-dimensional life, she would have some response).  More, in that the third dimension has to be created by us, the supposed viewer, and, as is sometimes the case with the Internet, the intervener and manipulator.  But the thought of us being the third dimension, of us having become a necessary part of sustaining the physical universe, is a thought potentially too great for much of humanity.  We retreat to acquisitiveness, commercial cloisters, and clichés.

Nevertheless.

Assuming the burden of the third dimension of art—all of us, collectively, not simply the “artists”—is a new existential challenge for humanity, although only new in its present form, as so-called primitive societies were sophisticated in their complete integration of art into their communities.  So, there and then, art did not exist for it was everywhere, even as our present task may be to once again eradicate art—the only difference is that this time we have travelled around the circle as a species and are attempting a return; we attempt to consciously eradicate art.  All the frequently facile blab about the death of art is really about this.  All the frequently facile blab about myth is really about this, for myth is nothing other than a reduction of dimensionality to two in order to animatedly encapsulate the ineffable plenitude of life.

Various discourses of the mystics—I think particularly of Marguerite Porete's concept of the far-near—inevitably come to mind.  With cinema, are we in fact stretching the diameter of the circle or reducing it?  The question surely is linked to a (the?) basic question in physics:  is the universe expanding or shrinking?  Perhaps, to borrow from Yeats’ The Vision, it is doing both, in which case cinema (which is to say, humanity) is simultaneously expanding and shrinking dimensionality; yet, as we are now cinema ourselves, we ourselves are expanding and shrinking, choreographing the unseen and seen (god and physics, to speak crassly) in new forms.

I have left numerous related issues unexplored—for example, the still very rudimentary use of 3D technology in cinema; the dimensionality of other art forms (is literature one dimension? music zero?) and the relationship of this dimensionality (or lack) to cinema (we could conveniently [or inconveniently] argue that cinema accommodates, assimilates, the other forms but they are unable to as commodiously return the favor, for example); the relationship between this modern discourse about cinema and past and present discourses about god; the relationship with memory and prosthetics; etc.

Art, Psyche, and Society

The face in the mirror seems to bear (bare?) no relationship with the face in the soul.  Is it that the former has a visible face, the latter does not?  That each has eyes of a different nature?  But as we all know, the longer one stares in the physical mirror at oneself, the more one disappears.  (What disappears?  One's face?  One's self?)  The more one becomes the face in the soul.  Perhaps the reason they seem different is that we simply don’t look long enough, for to see the face disappear, to see the no-face, is the unfortunate central terror of humanity.

In order to function as an artist in society, without undue murder or suicide, one requires one content skill and one form skill:  in terms of content, one must possess a significant wardrobe; in terms of form, one must be able to rapidly change.

One pays debt in life not death.  One makes mistakes, one doesn’t make the mistake of attempting to eliminate mistakes.  This shift (from debt in death to death in life, from mistake to mistakes) indicates a shift from a Christian to a pagan morality.

Sex, frequently damaging and stupid because too psychically autonomous, is best recognized as something a member of the council of the psyche requires.  (Think of the council as a well-functioning board of governance, in which each member has specific interests, skills, and experiences but also affirms the diverse interests, skills, and experiences of the other members:  I call this psychic council the Council of I—in my case, we meet regularly and, after decades of rancorous and almost deadly fighting, seem to be functioning fairly well most days).  Thus Sex, as a member of the Council, must be accomplished to keep the Council in order.  But it must also be accomplished in such a way as to keep the other members from rebelling.  This is not a moral issue (morality is based on the fear of various members of the Council, of a lack of proper listening), but one of psychic cohesion.  Ethics begins with such cohesion.  But how can one recognize, name, and affirm the plurality of external voices in society until one has recognized, named, and affirmed the plurality of inner voices?

My vocation has always been to develop inner power (I might say energy, but both words have their drawbacks:  power because it’s too associated with tyranny, energy because it’s too associated with a certain kind of utility or a new-age flakiness) at the cost of outer power--to focus on creating, as it were, rather than the products of creation (moving them into society and the consequences [fame, money, the lack of fame money, it makes little difference]).  Society is based on the institutionalization of inner power (that is, the assumption of inner power by external power).  So most priests aren’t priestly, most therapists aren’t therapeutic, most professors aren’t knowledgeable, etc.  The sham priests, therapists and professors aren’t more to blame than anybody else—society prefers (through indolence, fear) to identify spirit and object, this ease of identification being society’s seed and egg.  This ease, however, gives me dis-ease; it is the source of all authentic spiritual nausea and the seed and egg of art.

The violence of Blood Meridian is central to McCarthy’s aesthetic and existential vision.  As all the best art, it transforms existential violence into aesthetic violence.  It calmly recognizes that the human animal is inextricably, eternally, irredeemably violent and silently mocks the puerile blab of peace and unity, so common among shouting activists, bitter hermits, and cloistered hobbits.  It affirms violence through its transformation.  The issue is not to attempt to eradicate violence—which is bound to be fundamentally counter-productive, through its rousing of its opposite—but to attempt to exploit violence through sex and art.  As long as we have flesh, art, of course, is not enough.  (This is the error of those like Nietzsche, who inevitably [though unintentionally] rouse those like Nazis to compensate for the formers' lack of passionate physicality in the world.  [The spiritual scales must balance and they do this with little regard to time, space, or what is often called reason--which, considering that time, space and what is often called reason are the solid infrastructure most humans inhabit, is why the scales are only infrequently seen, and then only dimly, intermittently, like a tugboat in the fog at night, off the coast of Labrador, on the Strait of Belle Isle.])  In psychic-societal terms, the human animal, to evolve, needs to release and harness its violent energies, to collectively build a cultural steam engine—not to attempt to seal it (as the moralists), to deny it (as the pacifists), or to expend it (as the acquisitive and anarchical).

Art, like any production, requires fuel to survive.  The artist feeds on itself (Nietzsche, Van Gogh), feeds on others (Baudelaire, Picasso), feeds on both (Shakespeare, Sophocles).  Fine.  However, present society is poorly structured to accommodate this need, resulting in schizophrenia in itself and the artist.  What does the artist do?  It subverts society—a subversion that society turns into a commodity, as society's function is to commodotize.  This dialectic—of demonizing and glorifying—indicates a highly imbalanced society, which is too insecure to see, acknowledge, and effectively integrate art.  I call for the development of an aesthetic ethics (an ethical aesthetics), which artists and society will perform in collaboration.  What the West has considered irrational, mad, schizoid, fragmented, unhealthy, dysfunctional can begin to dissipate (as autonomous complexes), as various disciplines (Kierkegaard points to them in his three spheres of existence, the medieval Sufis demonstrate them in their practices of “madness”) are developed.

Aesthetic Security

The concept of Food Security is relatively new and reflects a legitimate concern:  with so many people on a rolling sphere, with human production and greed being what they are, how do we secure consistent healthy food for as many people as possible?

Yet we are not just beasts.  I propose that Aesthetic Security be considered a top human priority along with Food Security.  This is not Shelley’s rhetoric of poets being the legislators (unacknowledged or not) of the world, which is too hierarchical, too misplaced and inaccurate, too legislative.  Rather Aesthetic Security attempts to ensure that sufficient quantities of awe are consistently available to all humans, including a distributed stockpiling on and off the earth—not entirely technologically dependent—to prepare for all imaginable setbacks and disasters.  One is reminded of the role of the foundation in Asimov's trilogy (but, ah!--mutation!). One is reminded of Joseph’s dream in the Torah (which he fulfilled in his Egyptian leadership role) of setting aside extra during the fat years to facilitate survival during the lean years.  Doing this with food makes obvious sense; but why not do it with art?

Yet.

Aren’t we already doing this?  Isn’t this what technology is most fundamentally about?  (Heidegger said the essence of technology was aletheia [truth or, more accurately, disclosure], which, if we modernize his concept somewhat, can be renamed, in a somewhat programmatic sense perhaps, Aesthetic Security:  the essence of technology is to nurture awe through art, to disclose art to the universe.)

Isn’t this why the space program, why digitization, why photography, why the virtual project, why the waste and plunder, why that mother of distribution—the Internet--exist … to secure beauty, to secure god?  Secure, of course, may be too strong a word:  too Western, definitive, teleological; we need something that has a stronger relationship with nothingness.  We could then say that the purpose of Aesthetic Security is to increase the likelihood of the continuance of awe in the universe.  A bit corporate, but if art and technology are going to continue flirting, moving toward some form of ecstatic consummation, the corporate element may be necessary.