A follow-up to April 9th.

The Persistence of Mystery

I look to art for answers do I? But the art that keeps me is that which eludes me. Just as Linden Arden stole the highlights, as the intimacy takes on a warped intense pitch between Mac and Myles with Mac’s flesh above his snow-white collar changing pinks which strikes suddenly upon us as reader, as audience, as yes, hello, look at that picture, yes, hello, how does it seem to you now, good, thank you, yes, hello, yes, hello, yes, hello, does it seem to be persisting, drones on to the point of irritation then gives way to a curiously amused relief as the pieces put themselves together and Burroughs may or may not inject into his arm, and so we know that art, if not life, will not let us slip through the cracks. Oh anywhere but the here and now! The very best things we find in art are the qualities that take us somewhere far away. This is not an appeal to escapism, or transcendence in a spooky, ethereal sense.

However, it is not an experience that those who enjoy being limited to the mundane will have because they are not trying to get anywhere beyond what is in front of them. Strong, specific desires push a person in the direction of such art. It does not exactly get to the point, though, when people say that to appreciate art you must live a life of suffering. Starving artists are perhaps besides the point. The myth of suffering is only real when we discuss the extraordinary struggle most artists have had to push past in order to make something new. And the myth of suffering, when applied to the audience, has less to do with suffering and more to do with a willingness to plunge into the unfamiliar; suffering just happens to be one of the most surefire ways of improving upon our will. The search for new experiences, and the embodiment of mystery, are at the heart of the aesthetic experience. This is why asking an author about his novel, ‘What’s it about?’ is so crass and infuriating. A good writer will give a good answer to that inane question. But in no way are they obligated to – the question is in some important sense ill-formed. To filmmakers, or to those engaged in any art form that has a relationship with narrative, this question will be applied. My sense is that this is asked less of painters or musicians. What many have difficulty understanding is that narrative-oriented art forms are not under any greater an obligation to stay faithful to ‘aboutness’ than (static) visual or sound art. Aboutness is a place to start and, yes, the narrative often contains the structure in which the style is instantiated. But the mystery I have been speaking of cannot exactly be located. Where could it possibly be located? It is inside the artist’s long-persecuted head and inside one's twinkling cunt if one is finely tuned.

For the longest time, I think what I was looking for in various forms of art was style. A very individualistic yet informed style statement. I still approach art in this manner, looking for a sensibility weaving throughout, a certain kind of negotiation between rebellion and precision, and a masterful handling of themes, whether understated or over-the-top, classic and straightforward or postmodern and serpentine. I have heard and considered arguments regarding what art should be made of, in particular the argument that art needs to refer to other art, in contrast to the idea that art should refer to life. Thick layers of reference can appear as mystery because they draw the parameters of the audience very sharply by narrowing the aperture only to those in the know – those who have clearly invested themselves in art – and because they make the artwork increasingly difficult to decode. In fact, I have sprinkled somewhat bizarre, personally meaningful references here and there in this article. But they are not the same as mystery, and mystery does not have to be achieved in this way. Indeed, after going back and forth between these two polarities, I have decided that the choice does not mean much to me – what matters is that the art should contain a potent lingering mystery that repeats itself in your mind over the years, something that distinguishes it from the evangelical pursuit of logic, from the world as we know it in its daily senseless churnings that do more to degrade than uplift, from a great many jigsaw blades that still stubbornly and intricately give shape to the obvious in human experience. The art that moves me the most is just not that obvious, and that is a great part of what makes it important. This is the case even when the surface style statement is purposefully ‘obvious’, or by contrast, austere and restrained. It will be very personal and even open in terms of what its implications are, not a message, but just because it is not obvious does not mean that it always has to be restrained and tasteful. I do have other requirements and a certain bent (very difficult to describe it, though) when it comes to what I seek out – some sorts of mystery are more compelling to me than others. Mystery is not tied to any particular style statement, but I will own that some styles put the artist in a better position of mining it. (Stan Brakhage is my case in point, but I will leave discussion of his body of work for a separate article.) Because it just shouldn’t be an easy handout, if you see what I mean.

Nor is mystery tied to a particular spiritual agenda, historical message, and ideological profile. This is why I do not care much, as I have written in a previous article, for the accusations Frank Capra typically attracts: ‘Fascist!’, ‘Cornball!’, ‘Hollywood!’. While these accusations may have their place, they do not acknowledge what is mysterious in Capra’s work. So I claim that such mystery is beyond the spiritual, religious, and political leanings of the artist – it is not tethered to anything, and it is beyond and out of the control in so many ways of the artist himself, thus attempts to crack open the artist through a full invasive deconstruction of the circumstances of their actual life do not address the fullness of the mystery in their work. I am a compulsive reader of interviews – they are among my favourite forms of journalism – but they are more often than not a head-on insult to the artist, not because journalism is inherently base in contrast to the artist’s aims, but because journalists have trouble respecting mystery. Even when it is interpreted as an exercise in accountability to an audience that relates to the artist in a supposedly close way. In a world of question and answer, what remains? ‘Is there a way I should be reading this work of art? What is the right interpretation?’ and then you realize that these anxious sweaty questions – which often make for pained, inadequate discussion, as I have highlighted in my previous piece, ‘How should we treat art?’ – totally dissolve. This essay can be seen as my companion piece to ‘How should we treat art?’ (see Spring-cleaning 0.1, April 9th). Except that in this essay I am calling attention to what it is about art that leads us down this path of treating it a certain way. The way that people talk about and ‘treat’ art reveals a great deal, whether they realize it or not, about what they believe is on offer. The consumptive attitude is repulsive. Talking about what film is out in the theatres now is, of course, fine and we all do it, but it is more often an extension of the consumptive attitude, rather than a meaningful relationship with art. The so-called touchstones in cultural references are so unimportant, as they can block you from discovering things on your own terms. It has never made any sense to me that people insist that we all have something to say about the latest Coen Brothers film, or are shocked when I disclose that I haven’t seen Jurassic Park: I enjoy a bit of dinosaur, but where is the urgency in talking about New Babylon, a brilliant Soviet experimental film made in 1929? Am I not allowed to be offended as well? And why are people resistant to developing a lasting relationship with an artist’s body of work? This I have often wondered too, as I see it as the antidote to the consumptive atittude that poisons the environment in which art is made and shared. There are too many Dylan-haters out there that latch their hatred onto albums of his that they consider garbage (the critics do this, too) and strangely seem to relish how Dylan has deteriorated in the last decade, entirely overlooking the fact that he is one of the few in our time who has taken an uncompromising approach to his muse. As Nick Cave put it, in a 2008 interview with one of my favourite rock journalists Phil Sutcliffe: “The only periods when I get a bit uneasy is when I feel the records [here he is referring to his own] didn’t move on much, they didn’t change. My heroes of that sort of thing were Dylan and … that he could keep coming back and do something that made you think, ‘Do I like Bob Dylan?’ All over again. And sometimes you said yes and sometimes you said no.”

So what is this mystery that is not tied to statement, message, narrative, style, or even the artist and the formal groundrules that he swears by? I am not saying that it is the undefinable, the inexpressible, and so on, and I am not saying that it is (the more grounded term for the undefinable, the inexpressible) an emotion. I can only hint at what it is by saying when I know it is there. It is not located solely in any of the above things that I have mentioned, but as I have said the closest it can get to being located in anything is by floating somewhere in the artist’s head and in the audience's reactions that most closely resemble/embrace what is happening (without the artist's full knowledge of it) in the artist's head. I am still thinking about what that means, of course, as it mildly dissatisfies. There is a lot of confusion and pretension and determination in the artist’s head, so I am not talking about a honed artistic intention or the goal to do this or that on the next album or the next film – I am addressing the relationship the artist has with his muse*, that sweet and anguished line of prayer. The real artists deal directly in this mystery and do not shy away from it as the impostors do. From the audience perspective, and the critic is only another member of the audience, the most I can do is try to point to the slivers of the art-piece that work for me. I will experience something and say, ‘That works for me.’ But do I know why? The assembly of lightbulbs in Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 1927, the mystery in this instance created by the incredible cinematography – I credit cinematographers possibly as much as I do the directors for holding the potential of mystery in their hands); the rainy close-up upon an eerily glistening statuette of the Virgin Mary with gravediggers in the background in Новый Вавилон (New Babylon, 1929); most of Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951); and the hideously sad demise of Augusto, as though God himself had smeared him across the pavement with his boot like a crushed insect, in Il Bidone (The Swindler, 1955), and so on. A piece of art can embody mystery in one moment, tender or explosive, or it can reveal it gradually throughout. If such mystery were not important to people, I do not think they would as often go looking for it in an exotic vacation, or more importantly, in love – an area of life that most people do not feel a need to demystify and debunk. If I were to desire that my ramblings here on The Big Sleep become a locus of communication for a single something, the idea I most want to come through and to defend is that art is the greatest reliable source and protector of mystery.   



*"Here is a man who is a great filmmaker and who knows he is a great filmmaker, and who has almost no recognition and who could make some works that could attract a lot of attention for himself. And of course he must feel the temptation to do certain things that would please people, and draw attention to himself. And he disciplines himself against these seductions. And the name of that discipline is ... the theology of that discipline is, for Brakhage ... seems to be called the muse." --P. Adams Sitney on Brakhage (transcribed this from a documentary which I will probably say something about in another article).