Unpacked By Art

By Justin McRoberts • May 13th, 2009 • Category: Artists in Residence

At times it can be difficult for me, as an artist, to articulate what I want to see happen with my work. In one way, the ‘result’ or desired effect of my work once it’s left my hands is not really even my responsibility. But if I desired any particular kind of response or reaction it would be something like what a recent visitor to my blog articulated when he wrote…

“…I recently learned to play (Deconstruction) on guitar, and when I do it seems to take on a new meaning. When I play it, it’s like I’m expressing what you wrote rather than just agreeing with it.”

…“expressing it rather than just agreeing with it”…

..that
sounds
about
right…

Mainly because that has been my experience with the music I’ve loved; It has not simply asked me to agree with a doctrine or other or align myself with an idea as an observer. The music (the art in general, I suppose) that I have truly loved has delicately burrowed into the core of my person, planted itself like a living seed and eventually reshaped the way I express my own humanity. It has not done so violently or even manipulatively in the way of Industry or the Market. Instead leads me to “places (I) couldn’t get to any other way”- Anne Lamott.

Something about the language of art unlocks doors in me that would otherwise remain closed.

Something about Stars of the Lid’s “December Hunting…” brings my heart-rate down
Something about Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” raises it
Something about Radiohead’s “Videotape” causes me to reconsider.. everything
Something about Bon Iver’s “Blood Bank” leaves me adoring my wife more

..and on and on..

and these are just the songs I’ve been listening to as I write this…

I’ve written elsewhere (http://justinmcroberts.com/blog/?p=354) that the work of Pedro the Lion/David Bazan simply unpacks me… rather than the other way around. I recognize that I spend quite a bit of time and effort trying to “figure out life” and package everything into manageable groupings or identifiable categories (only to find out that my grip is much weaker than I’d believed). Art turns the table on this behavior in that the things I feel or say as I engage good art are generally more revealing of me than of the work I’ve engaged. I’d venture a guess this is true of many of us.

As an extreme example: The public response of the religious community to Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ) was far more revealing of who we are than who Serrano is an an artist. Better (and more directly) said: Our indignation was far more interesting a statement than the statement the piece made by itself, if there was one. Now, it’d be easy to allow my example to become about shock value, but I can search my own history with music/art and find parallel experiences with less graphic work than Serrano’s which drew out of me either horror or beauty I hadn’t known to be in me beforehand.

(brief aside: Far too much Evangelical Christianity takes the same approach to the Scriptures in that we are all about the dissection and usefulness of “the Word.” Conversely, the scriptures intend to get into our guts and unpack us so that we can be remade.)

Perhaps I should try to say it this way: The complexity and mystery of art unravels our certitude and control; challenges us and, in its more brazen forms, calls us to be human. Which is to say, art calls us to be (or frees us to be) complex and unfinished.

C.S. Lewis writes about this “experience” of beauty…

“We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words — to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it”

This is why my next project is going to be a cover record made up of the songs that have unpacked me. I’m currently gathering permissions for:

Rolling Stones’ “Can’t Always Get What You Want”
Toad The Wet Sprocket’s “Fly From Heaven”
NIN’s “Head Like A Whole”
U2’s “The First Time”
Tom Waits’ “Georgia Lee”
Model Engine’s “Suture”

… and several others…

Because, as stated by the reader at my blog… “When I play it (them), it’s like I’m expressing what you (they) wrote rather than just agreeing with it.”

Does it Resonate with you?

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