mystical landscapes

visiting toronto from mumbai recently, i treated myself to the mystical landscapes exhibit at the art gallery of ontario. aside from any specific surprises, disappointments or expected delights, some more general impressions:

canada’s troupe (including carr and the group of seven) plunge into god as well or better than most of the rest of that presented world

the extra-thick crowds around van gogh, while not unjustified (the represented starry night is powerful) and not as wholesale an absurdity as the gaggling routine camera competition around the louvre’s mona lisa, remind of something mostly to be forgotten

humans (and other animals) – while thick as art voyeurs on the exhibit floor – are almost entirely absent from the art. yes, we can say this emerges partially from the period – mostly a century ago, the selection process, in which a certain strain of artists struggled with the increasing potency and pervasiveness of a technocapitalistic society by withdrawing from its human and industrial faces. but it is not just this (and related factors)

the divine vision – almost however we define it, palpably elusive in definition though it must be – places the human alongside the myriad creatures, without ascendancy … and how then can it appear in greater proportion than the entirety of creation – almost [but not quite] nothing, an aspect among teeming aspects of the creator, oneness, the universe, thingness, irreducible and vast complexity, love (call it what you want)

starry night has, for example, some humans, blurred individuals, hardly individuals, forms of sorts really, in the foreground, but small, more like re-shaped stars … and those other stars (the original ones, our likely destiny), those popping out like thoughts in god’s universal mind are the backdrop and centerpiece of the drama, the settlements and affairs of earth like icharus rippling into the sea in auden’s poem or bruegel’s painting … a reality to be sure, but one like a shutter being closed or opened on some lane in a village beside drying laundry in dusty-sunny air, clouds working nonchalantly as they do on their important projects

and now? a century later? 6 billion more humans, the urbanized percentage having risen from 13 to 58%,12 cities with more than 1,000,000 humans leaping to over 400, technology our skin and consciousness, god in an unmarked grave, capitalism like nero in an rpg of rpgs, art a useless caboose, a used tampon, a credit limit of vision, a dream journal, a cosmic rosary, a desert song … now … where are the mystic landscapes and those who paint them? with the soul made of garbage rather than numinous emptiness, how shall we ascend descend migrate to the forbidden light?

around the time nietzsche went mad, georges-albert aurier wrote – and this quote is prominent in the ago’s exhibit –

we must become mystics again. mysticism is what we need today; only mysticism can save our society from brutalization, sensualism and utilitarianism. the noblest faculties of our soul are atrophying … we must react.

is this sentiment even translatable in 2016?

(the journalistic reports on the exhibit in the dailies suggest in their expected prose thudding lightly across pragmatic landscapes that mysticism isn’t for everyone – a little out of place really – but that they’re glad at least the results exist even if the origins seem somewhat off to the orthodox)

does the more contemporary reel-unreel short shot in kabul (on the ago’s 5^th floor presently) hold hints?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IuEM4w7Gbc

do the films on https://vimeo.com/videovectors ?

the paintings in http://bernardlegay.fr/ ?

the sounds on https://thenidus.bandcamp.com/ ?

the dancing dead, holding hands across the waking world?

February 13 - Malfeasance of Translators

A court is in session.  There is a judge, a crown, defense, and a room full of press and spectators.  The defendants are on a bridge suspended between two voids, walking from one end to the other.  Each has a bucket, which he dips into the blackness at each end and proceeds to walk to the other end and pour the contents of the bucket out.

Judge         The charges are heresy, blasphemy, murder, and treason.  Crown, proceed with the accusation.

Crown        What are these flippy-flops on this flimsy bridge?  What crass carousers cross its clumsy tines?  Are they dilettantes?  Dual citizens?  Losers?  Asylum rejects?  Mercenaries?  Frauds?  Are they saints?  Parasaints?  Neosaints?  Antisaints?  Demisaints?

                  No, demons of the jury, they are piranhas, piranhas only, eternally piranhas. Look at them, neither here nor there; thieving always, faithful never, they walk the road to truth … one lie at a time.  These false usurping friends betray their origins and prepare a bed of indolence for saccharine tourists who then confuse an ocean with a wading pool.

They hammer masks on masks.  They establish masquerades of words on floors of deception. They hang mirrors of names onto walls of imprecision.  Neither themselves nor another, they compose simulacra of creation in the name of accessibility and compromise.  Are these principles the principles of art?  No¾they are the principles of prostitution.  The defendants are common whores.

Taking no responsibility, they hide behind the name others have constructed with their lives and use the travel notes of saints to discover what reality is like.

For erring against the purity of origins,

For dragging sainted names to imperfection,

For slaughtering intent, meaning and syntax,

For betraying the essence of the land they’re from and the one they’re fleeing to

These traitors, shams and cowards are nothing other than guilty in the first degree of all four charges.

Defense     I would like to suggest that the Crown’s words require some translation.  I would, in fact, like to suggest something more¾that we all are translators, that to be human is to translate¾yes, even that our species’ task above all else is translation.  This is what we ceaselessly do.  The only difference between those of us in court and those walking the bridge is that we are dilettantes and they are professionals.  I went to a dinner party at my Aunt Frida’s last night.  My Aunt Frida loves television and my uncle loves the cinema.  Friends¾I love both and spent the night translating between them.  By the end, they were like two newlyweds who felt they each were understood.  And I thought¾even I am a translator.  Perhaps you work in one of the world’s great bureaucracies¾all you do is translation.  Between lawyers and clients, HR and marketing professionals, technologists and politicians. You’re a priest?  You translate between God and man.  A mechanic?  Between people and machines.  A farmer?  Between tomatoes and the soil. A seducer?  Between desire and action.

                  I assure you all that none of us would survive even an hour of our lives without the translation services of everyone around us.  We would be zombies, fools, infants¾unable to tell even our left hand from our right.

                  But whereas we translate for survival, friends, those on the bridge translate for a higher purpose.  Do they reach perfection?  No, but as the Council of I instructs us, even saints do not.  Perfection is a category of the imagination. The defendants may not be saints, but this is no reason to accuse them¾few are saints, but many are the sinners who walk the earth.  The defendants, though, walk neither in the Heaven and Hell of sainthood nor on the solid earth of sinners, but on the bridge between two great nothings.  Animating the dead and dying, moving art-chunks across time and space without regard for physics, history, or geography, they do this selflessly … from love.

                  For upholding the only task humans have,

                  For sacrificing their names to another,

                  For resurrecting the inanimate and giving life to what would otherwise be dead,

                  For giving their allegiance to every just claimant

                  These valiant citizens of everywhere and nowhere are innocent of all charges laid against them and should go free.

Judge         I have listened to the evidence and have determined that the defendants are not-guilty and guilty.  The penalty is thus both life and death.  Half the defendants are sentenced to be thrown into the abyss at dawn, the other half to wander back and forth on the bridge forever.  Their fate shall be decided by a coin toss.  To ensure that the crown and defense share in the defendants’ fate and thus are bound to their claims, one shall be chosen by the same method and executed immediately.  Court is adjourned.