[Buddha-l] beauty--or art-- (?) and the restraint of the senses,

[Jayarava]

--- On Mon, 4/5/09, jkirk <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:

Hi Joanna

Have you changed mail programs? Your quotes and comments are barely distinguishable suddenly. But you do say:

> There seems to be another conundrum: those who make art
> are not the same as those who view it.

I don't see this as a conundrum. Some people are like lotuses standing up above the water, and some are still down in the mud. The beauty of art is that it can give those of us still in the mud a glimpse of something higher - if the artist is capable of higher being.

Part of the contemporary situation with art however is that the artistic community have done away with distinctions of this kind - all is one, and crap IS art (and with no sense of irony). Does it all stem from misunderstanding Duchamp? An interesting counter trend has occurred in music - for instance John Tavener and Arvo Pärt. Pärt epitomises the crisis which a nihilistic secular art can bring on. He wrote awful serial music, abandoning aesthetics for the artificially constructed - the idea being that aesthetics are arbitrary. And then he fell silent for some years. During this time he wrote virtually nothing and rediscovered his Orthodox Christian faith. When began writing again it was in a totally new style - simple (on the whole) and beautiful music, full of the love of God. Music for people to play and listen to, and be uplifted!

Contrast Pärt with, say, John Cage. I admire Cage, but his experiments in getting rid of ego show what a disaster _that_ can be. While 4'3'' is a work of genius, some of his experiments in randomly constructed music are truly awful. While the rampantly egotistical doesn't add value to our lives either - only to art collectors portfolios. Somewhere in between there seems to be a crack in the gloom and a glimpse of light; a glimmer of hope! The consequences of simply getting rid of ego, and not allowing oneself to be in touch with something higher is writ large in Cage's oeuvre. 

It's interesting that much of the really beautiful art in the world is inspired by religious devotion.

Finally I think we do an injustice to monks if we say that an ostinato is not relevant to the subject. Ostinato is an important tool in the composer's repertoire. What is more the training of a musician or composer in many ways is all about repetition, over and over, of the basics. In fact untrained composers, unpractised musicians are vastly unlikely to reach any great height. Some of the raw talent of popular culture figures might be cited as a counter example, but inevitably when you read about such people they practised - i.e. repeated things again and again - to the exclusion of almost all other activities. The musician must spend 1000's of hours, often alone, repeatedly playing scales for instance. And replaying familiar passages looking for nuances. All artists must spend time mastering their medium. What's more, like those admirable monks, a musician will commit a huge amount to memory, as they also know that without memorisation and
 internalisation there can be no true familiarity, no deep understanding of a work, and no fluency with what it expresses. (let alone considerations of preservation in oral cultures.) I'm sure we could find parallels in the lives of all artists, and the great artists would stand out precisely because of their willingness to pursue perfection through repetition. It's only because of obstinatocy of the musicians et al, that we have art. Think of all that we would NOT have if not for the monks who followed the rules and persisted in their way of life! No texts to study for a start!

Let us also not forget that music is all about rules - some of which seem arbitrary to the uninitiated. The artist may break some rules on occasion without much harm or even to the good, while others seem to be important under all circumstances. These rules connect us to the history of music, and to the underlying nature of experience, if only we consider the implications. In fact all societies are rule bound, and all have some arbitrary rules, and some which try to save us from our own stupidity. 

I wonder if someone with senses restrained might not be in a better position to appreciate art, as I am defining it, than someone who is not very discerning about what they feed their mind on?

Best Wishes
Jayarava