Year Three

Aesthetic Exercises to Accept the Body and Mirror the Body of the World

Acts:  Third Year

If the initiate has survived the first two years, with the respective risks of decadence and deprivation, she may initially welcome this third year in which she explores normal restraint and moderation.  Although, as we mentioned earlier, this year¾the immersion in the average¾may be remembered as the most difficult year of all.  Some adjustments may be required.

Why such potential problems with the average?  There are two primary reasons for this; we’ll discuss these in turn, but first need to clarify what we mean by the term average.  By average we mean human attitudes and behaviors that fall roughly between the extremes detected in the vast and rugged sphere of all human attitudes and behaviors that have existed or do exist.  (We exclude human attitudes and behaviors that will or may exist, for what we hope are obvious reasons.)  By average we do not necessarily mean balance, for while balance is sometimes used synonymously with average, it can be used in the sense of two equal and opposing weights; but this latter meaning, the commonest, is not at all what we intend in this third year, for it suggests a totality of opposites, which itself is the precise opposite of the initiate’s objectives this year.  (Which raises the issue¾impossible to explore here¾of what the opposite of the totality of opposites is; does, for example, the totality of opposites include within itself its opposite, or is the average excluded?)  The average knows nothing of the extremes, existing, as it always does, never deviating, at the midpoint between.  The average consumes images of the extremes, but does not itself know the extremes¾the extremes for the average are always external.  One of the challenges for the initiate, of course, is that she has just lived two years at opposite extremes, and, no doubt, has noticed similarities between them, for the circumference of existence, no matter what the position on it, is made of the same spiritual material, and this material should be pardoned; the similarities between the first two years and year three are few if any.  So one of the challenges she faces is that she, unlike the person born average to live an average life, has, in entering into the average, already known¾absorbed and internalized¾a mode from the average:  what we might call balance, in the second definition we gave it.  This, then, is the initiate’s dominant practical problem:  how to attitudinally and behaviorally be average, when she is not.  Yet all she is called to do this third year is learn how to adopt the average and present it in such a way as to ensure others accept her as average.  For we find that it is sufficient for the purposes of many, and always sufficient for the purposes of the average, who are average because they are not perceptive, among other reasons, to present the desired mask in order to be understood as being what one is presented as.

Now, coming to the two primary reasons as to why the initiate is likely to find this third year the most difficult of all to date, and possibly the most difficult among the entire Exercises.  The first relates to what we have already been discussing¾that the extremes of existence are simply more interesting than the average.  Think of the soldier who has been in the trenches for five years, but has somehow survived and returns to normal civilian life.  All the rest of life seems dull; his problem¾although he may himself have been average¾is that he can no longer be average; he is consumed by images of the extreme he has consumed.  So the initiate will be bored and think even of her sufferings and humiliations with fondness, even though those experiences, when fully present, when embodied, were highly undesirable.  This problem, then, contains two important tasks.  Firstly, the initiate needs to deal effectively with her tendency to alter her average life; secondly, and this is more fundamental, being as it is attitudinal, and applying, as it does, to many aspects of life, she needs to deal with her emotional longing for an extreme existence.  This touches on many key issues.  As we just mentioned, the longing she will inevitably experience at this stage is based on a misrepresentation of times past¾or perhaps a dishonesty or lack of sight in the past¾thus the initiate may represent the past situation correctly, but the initial situation was misrepresented to herself at the time¾this tendency, whether manufactured in the past or present is deadly to the artist, for, as we outline in our Annotations, the artist can only achieve her goal of producing worthy art by becoming a mirror of the world¾but should the mirror reflect poorly, should it have dustballs or specks of misrepresentation on it¾she will produce sentiment, not art.  It is true that longing, desire, are part of reality¾perhaps the root of reality¾and the initiate must be intimate with them, but she must not mistake desire and experience; we desire heaven; we obtain earth, which includes the extremes of heaven and hell¾the extremes, and the average.

The initiate in this third year should train herself to desire what is, and what is is the world.  Otherwise, she becomes lost in nostalgia and envy¾emotions deadly to the nobility of art.  The reader can object that, this being the year of the average, and it being true that the average live in nostalgia and envy, that the initiate should immerse herself in this emotional miasma.  But keep in mind reader:  we are training what is rare by calling forth the rare, not calling forth the average to be trained to be average.  This year of the average is to expose the initiate to the pleasures, boredoms and temptations of the average, yes, even to learn to enjoy the average pleasures, suffer the average boredoms and succumb to the average temptations.  Even as there was risk of losing initiates in the first year to pleasure or death through pleasure’s risks and the second year to deprivation and its consequences, so this year there is the risk of losing initiates to the average; there will be those who find the routines and delights of this third year so becoming that they are unable to leave them behind.

The reader and initiate should note that, in a very real sense, we do not care whether the initiate persists in the appearance of the average; for when this first phase, the phase of the body, is completed, the initiate may lead a life of debauchery, asceticism or bourgeois respectability, as long as she continues to follow the Exercises in spirit and practice.  We warn simply at identification of soul and appearance¾for if the soul is fundamentally or predominantly bourgeois (or, indeed, for that matter, debauched or ascetic), the soul’s art will be unbalanced and so not be an adequate mirror to the world.  The artist should not be irrevocably seduced by any manifestation of the soul in the body, but simply follow her natural temperament once she has been exposed to the practices in this first phase.  Nevertheless, as before, some embarking on the Exercises will find their true home in this third year and thus should not proceed, but stay here and live out their respectable existences.

The second major problem, already inferred, is that the artist is not average, but rare.  Feelings of envy and nostalgia likely disgust her, secure as she is in her emerging vision and style¾regardless of how obscure these may be at this stage.  This third year may easily require the initiate to pursue paths far more foreign to her than those of decadence and asceticism.  Yet this very difficulty is key to the success of this year.  For the artist must learn to move among what are considered normal people, for these make up the bulk of humanity and in some manner sustain it through their sheer mass.  The main aesthetic difficulty with the extremes¾and here we arrive at the core truth of this year¾is that, while the artist is temperamentally inclined to live at the circumference of existence, the artist who externally lives there always produces inferior works to the artist who only internally lives there¾assuming equal talent.  This is quite logical:  we are mortal, finite beings with limited energy¾regardless of how we may feel at times¾the more the artist pushes her energy into the world, either in self-indulgence or flagellation, the less energy she has to push into her art.  Now it is true that sometimes the artist requires an injection of energy from the world to propel her forward and that without this she may stagnate or diminish, and that the frequency and severity of these injections can vary from individual to individual.  But let no one say that she needs, as a lifelong habit, regular, extreme injections of vitality; this only reveals a weak spirit¾but the spirit of the artist is strong.

Such injections are deceptive, for they are external addictions; the only addiction the artist should have is polishing her mirror¾a solely internal exercise.  She must know the externalities¾this is the reason for these Exercises, for we cannot reflect the world on behalf of the artist¾that is her task and her task alone, to be fully faced only after these Exercises are done¾but she must not habitualize any of them.  So this year of the average is critical in helping the initiate to begin containing her bodily energy.

The temptation she will face, as we have already discussed at length and as with the previous years, is to not become the average after she has successfully embodied it.  So let us discuss how the average looks and what the initiate must do this year.

Comforts

The initiate should surround herself with average comforts.  She should find employment that allows her to do so, this employment being neither conspicuous nor inconspicuous.  She should earn an average wage according to the norms for the region in which she lives and work an average number of hours a week.  She should vacation in places that average people enjoy, and throughout the year while she is not on vacation she should engage in activities, both within the home and outside, that are typical.  In nothing she does or says should she ever draw attention to herself, other than that natural for a person of average ego and standing.

She should, if such is the norm, and such a norm is likely, be in a heterosexual monogamous relationship, married if necessary.

She should decorate her home with acceptable furniture and prints and watch the television shows that everyone watches and talk about them in the way that people do.

Food

The initiate should shop at average supermarkets, eat at average restaurants, own average cookbooks and cook average recipes.  She should not be unduly carnivorous or vegetarian.  She should attempt in her diet to be reasonably balanced, without, however, obsession.  Obsession is not a hallmark of the average.  Duty, properness, niceness and conformity are the average virtues, and the initiate should do what she can to foster these virtues and exhibit them.

Sex

The initiate should take care not to be either too bored or too animated¾and certainly not too odd¾in relation to the sex act.  In terms of quantity, she should consult the many available studies and do her best, without neuroses, to conform to the average number of coitions per week in the typical positions in the typical venues, which we would expect to be the domestic bed.  Also, in terms of quality, she should neither be too dull or too delightful, responding and initiating with her partner, but not unduly.  Both excessive lechery and prudery are inappropriate, except on certain occasions, when such behavior would be called for, such as birthdays and funerals.

Image

In keeping with the spirit of this third year, which by now, even with the limited direction we have given we trust that the initiate will have understood, the initiate should strive only for an image in keeping with the average:  her ambitions should be average; she should accept both failure and success with an admixture of external equanimity and internal diluted resentment; her ambitions should be exercised in acceptable pursuits (for example:  accounting or marketing, and not pimping or espionage); her network of friends and acquaintances should be acceptable (that is, she should know many people casually and comfortably and no one well); her reputation should be untarnished (people should speak generally well of her, with some but minimal disregard); her name should be known, but not extensively and only in the natural circles of home and work; should she be so privileged as to be interviewed in the media, she should be internally proud and externally modest (she should tape the proceedings and file the labeled tape on noticeable but discreet display); she should have views on religion and politics, and indeed she should have opinions generally, that are neither vacant nor zealous, expressed with a certain amount of tactful earnestness but with no significant commitment or connection to her actual life; her clothing should be fashionable without her being called fashionable; she should know the names of those whose names are expected to be known and the facts in common circulation; she should not show undue emotion but neither should she be thought to be wooden; she should, on the whole, be reasonably satisfied with her lot in life and not reflect with any focus or duration, except perhaps in rare moments of inebriation, on meaning, life, death, meaninglessness, justice, love, peace, war, hope, faith, freedom, fate, chance, or any issue beyond that which is necessary to lead an average, comfortable existence.  In short, her life, appearance, thoughts, opinions, practices and dreams should be commonplace.