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.
