On Refusal, Contingency, and Your Duty as an Artist
— One of the most useful things I’ve read lately comes once again from the book Faith, Hope and Carnage, a conversation between Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan. Cave speaks about the loss of his son, as a condition that infuses everything. He hopes that in the records he has made, that there is “an audacity in the face of things, a kind of reckless refusal to submit to the condition of the world.” It seems to me that this kind of reckless refusal to accept the current fuckery of the world is the kind of audacity that is needed.
— And he also says this, which is in my mind, beyond useful. Like, fucking yes. "Well, I love this world — with all its joys and its vast goodness, its civility and complete and utter lack of it, its brilliance and its absurdity. I love it all, and the people in it, all of them. I feel nothing but deep gratitude to be a part of this whole cosmic mess. I have no time for negativity, cynicism, or blame.”
— We’ve seen some truly evil things take place. Ongoingly. And it’s hard not to become negative and cynical. I think for me it’s about being of two minds. Because, yah, I do refuse to submit to the conditions of a terrible world. I will imagine a better one. I believe that the imagination can be a powerful thing. I believe in the elegance of refusal.
— As artists we live in a bizarre timeline. I do believe that we have a duty to get our work out there. We owe it to the things we’ve made to share them. In the Cave / O’Hagan conversation Nick Cave talks about how people say the best art is never seen and he disagrees. “It has to do with connectivity and, well, with duty or service.” A song especially he says, “does not exist in its true form unless it moves through the hearts of others as a balm. Otherwise, it is just words and notes and little more.” If you have the power to share an art that is healing, then that is your duty. Annie Dillard has cautioned the artist against hoarding, and says we must spend it all. I tend to agree. That said, when we put our work out there now, we’re likely to have it stolen in some way, scraped, with no compensation. And by compensation, I don’t necessarily mean money, either. When humans share work there is something magical and giving going on. I think we need to be extra mindful of what and where and how we share things.
— I have often quoted from Stephen Batchelor’s book Living with the Devil, here on contingency, on “if not this, then that.” In a recent re-read, this stuck out for me: “The practice of waiting is to learn how to rest in the nirvanic ease of contingent things.” And, “As an alert stillness that cradles perplexity, it is the ground from which we can respond in unpredictable ways to life’s unfolding and the inevitable encounter with others.” The path, says Batchelor, is “both a task and a gift.” And ain’t that the truth.
— And then Marcus Aurelius: “…love these people among whom your lot has cast you; but love them in all sincerity.”
— Life seems so different these days, the news is overwhelming. But we also need to ground ourselves where possible. For me, it helps to look at those around me and recognize that there are so many wonderful humans in the world doing amazing things, useful and helpful and good things.
— Are we ready again for this mainly obsolete word, respair? “As a noun, respair means “the return of hope after a period of despair.” As a verb, respair means “to have hope again.””
— When I began writing in this space in 2016, the world was not easy, it was not difficult. I began with the feeling that “you are required to make something beautiful” and the urge to share. In my nearly 10 years of trying to do that, the need for beauty in my mind has increased in relation to the darkness and ugliness and evils. Beauty isn’t simplistic and naive. It always exists in a context, it is created out of conditions. And still it arrives, a shock, a knife, an axe. A refusal, a smudge or smirch of light, a tender contagion, a bouquet of wounds, a rent in the red velvet drapery of the universe. Beauty continues, is in motion, it regards, prevails.
— In whatever time I have left, it will be spent loving the beauty of the world. I will put my ear to the flowers and listen to the soul soul soul of them with all tenderness, with all my obsolete heart.
