The Art of Completion

The Art of Contemplation

Beyond religion is the call of Christ to follow, to imitate, to abide. None of these things can be relegated to the category of public religion. They border on the lands of piety but go well beyond. These assume a public commitment to some end.

In other words, following and abiding in Christ in some ways makes us a better citizen, a better sibling, a better employee, a more considerate citizen, etc. It’s impossible for our personal, spiritual commitment to not “leak” int our lives.

That’s why I love how Jesus phrased things. And a ton of “missional churches” are trying so hard to put discipleship into their core strategy. However noble, there is simply a major part of discipleship that can NOT be done in a charted course.

*It assumes far more of the individual. It assumes ultimately everything. This is where contemplation begins to make sense. It is that bit beyond the scope of religion that is essential to “bear the fruit” of what religion is really all about growing.

Contemplation is gazing upon life with a completely different perspective. It refuses to see the cause and effect casuistry of cursed, murphy’s law thinking. It will not submit that this is all there is and that we are merely to find our place in the system.

Contemplation opens the door to another whole world, one without limits, a world where God is able AND willing. It flies in the face of the anxiety tied to bottom-line economic thinking. It pulls the gaze off only oneself and one’s potential sufferings.

Contemplation invites us to change our focus onto the one Who makes all things new. It’s invitation keeps us from believing lies. We are removed from the scarcity of futile thinking and reminded again and again that our Master owns the hills.

Contemplation is the feast in the presence of my enemies (the lies that cause people toward anxiety). It is the green pastures He makes me lie. It is remembering that I am not God, but I know Who is. It is ultimate freedom from and freedom to.

Ultimately contemplation is the freedom “to” enjoy. Fear, worry, anxiety, guilt, all these negative emotions are so strong and de-enabling. They lock us inside ourselves and outside our ability to enjoy, that is live in joy and freedom.

They keep us at bay, at a great distance from that place of truth. They speak overwhelming lies in code of truth: constant half-truths and slight of truths that keep us buried in powerlessness. We have to call them out in violence.

They will kill us. Lies are aggressively there to steal, kill, and destroy. They will leave nothing of our soul or humanity. They deteriorate our sense of joy and freedom. They replace them with the restrictive layers of guilt and obligation.

“Stuck-ness” is not something to mess with. Some will see no correlation with their inner freedom and their outer commitments. They are connected. Someday our outer life will reflect our inner one. But it starts with the inner world. Always.  

The End of Hope (Part 7)

The End of Hope (part 7)

The final word is that there is no final word. The artist always attempts to create “the holy spectral shiver” in his work, something told or made so well as to carry the capacity to actually transform upon experience. Literally.

Many will offer here class sort of debates that art never makes its way to lower classes who have not been trained to make it a priority (or who do not that the time to learn). That is the true power of the greatest art, however. The greatest makes its way through the classes. It lures even the coldest, pragmatic cynic. The kid from nowhere who simply finds something about it irresistible. He will not have the language to explain it, but he will KNOW it.

Most artists have had themselves this sort of transformative experience. Only after receiving such a mind-altering thrill can one truly be inspired to create it. Our ability to receive great art (of all kinds) is directly proportionate to our ability to make it.

So inspiration must be a 2-way communication. We must always be open to the move of the Muse. She will draw us in to something that seems so far removed from anything we are doing. She draws out an insight we didn’t know we were looking for. Then days or weeks later that insight or line makes its way perfectly into a song or art project. Incredible fit. Unbelievable. So good it actually brings into question who is actually writing this thing: she or us? Is she actually the author?

Perhaps we are co-writers, but it seems clear the deeper we get into the process that she is definitely the executive and we the associate. Of course we must have discipline and put the pen to paper but she keeps it from being only mundane business. She gives the whole writing process its meaning. She keeps us coming back time and again to the core, to the essence. She reminds us what words on paper can become. She lifts us out of our limitations to see the transcendent healing power of our work.

And we mustn't forgot it is her who gives us the call in the first place. Think of it. Why did we get involved in the arts so many years ago anyway? Why were so particularly drawn to certain forms and ways of expression? Do we create our tastes or discover them? The reality is that we, along with our teachers and families, etc discovered a deep-rooted passion for our art form. It was already there, responding with great fervor when first given the chance.

It may not have been love at first sight but there definitely was some sort of strong personal connection. Something about the thing kept us coming back again and again. The lord of inspiration was tantalizing us with her beauty.

When we said yes we were rewarded, vindicated with a certain confidence we had in no other arena of life. There, in the midst of our destined art form, we became something new, something powerful, something capable of creation. We found our voice! 

The End of Hope (Part 6)

The End of Hope (part 6)

We must remember that in the very end of the matter we do not get to “pick” our particular expression of beauty. We are subject to era and experience, and frankly the availability of our class. What tools are available depend on when and where.

If you are born to a working class midwest family your options are different. Even with a father who poked around with music as a teen, there may not be any encouragement or development of artistic skill or talent. One is left to what is innate.

Something begins to emerge. It could be the paintbrush, the pencil, pop radio, fashion. #ChooseYourWeapon

Some expression begins to make sense to a young man or woman. It just does. Which one emerges we clearly do not pick, we discover. There is already an appetite.

Without familial support a young person in such a place has only the deep sense of longing to connect with. There is no shaping of a mentor, or fluency of the medium. It is simply gut-level determination to translate pain somehow through a medium.

But that is enough. It is enough grit to get through the many layers of self confidence issues and start-up posturing. The desire and love for that medium simply trumps all fears, and usually at an age when we are to dumb to fear anyway.

We jump into the thing because it almost feels like we have to. The escape we get out of that release is almost intoxicating. It strongly pulls us back in, time and time again. Those truly “in” forget to think about anything else.

There is no marketing plan. There is no long-range thoughts at all. It is simply the present freedom in doing the thing we love, especially in the late teens, early 20’s.

If not thought of as a burden of discipline, art can be a drug.

In the good sense. Creating art does give us a release. It is satisfying. It does feel good. It is intended to. We are actually to love and enjoy it before anyone else. We are actually to like the art and music we create. Really!

That’s ultimately the point: to enjoy the creative process yes but more so to create the thing (sound, color, gadget, etc.) we are envisioning. We see or hear something that embodies the art form for us. We are completely captivated by it. We immerse ourselves in it. We listen or watch it over and over. We are transformed by its imagery and sound. We run the risk at first of imitation when we start. Our master’s work is so fundamental to us. But that’s where it must start.

Eventually we begin to find our voice, somewhere in the midst of our context, our inner passion and drive, and what is at our disposal to use. We are compelled to write. We start and have no idea what is coming out, but “it” is coming out!

Something is flowing out of us, something beautiful and compelling. We can not be “fans” at first because it is so new. We can gaze at it like looking at a newborn, but we can’t “know” it, not yet. It’s not completely ours after all. It has a Father!

The End of Hope (Part 3)

The End of Hope (Part 3)

Is there a reward for hope? Is there a practical reason to continue hoping? Is success in some form or another a part of cultivating hope within us? In other words, do we believe that what we seek is better than where we are at?

Some will try to philosophically contend that hope somehow is an end in itself, that it is sort of a state of mind or attitude. While not all wrong, there does seem to necessarily be more for the conditions of what we call hope to blossom. In other words there is an object to our hope. And somewhere innate in that object is not just its creation (or bringing forth into reality), but also its blossoming (what may in our time be connected to “selling”). In other words, success.

Do we pursue some creative endeavor only in the prospects of its possible success? Or is there something innate to the calling that is deeply part of us regardless of success? Yes. But somehow our job is to get the thing inside us out. Some at this point will bring out exceptions of course. People who did what they were called to do but faced only failure. Some may mention Jeremiah the prophet - called to failure. Perhaps. But then how do we know his name today?

We think for a prophet success is people listening to the words spoken and changing. Not so. Success for the prophet is getting his word out. Period. Did Jeremiah do a good job in getting the word out from his heart to the public? Yes.

That’s what we don’t realize. How did Jeremiah get the attention of the royal courts? How did his word make such a big impact so as to be considered a threat to the royal way of life? He must have done something to get the popular vote. Or did he? Even they didn’t like what he was saying. In that sense, he was universally annoying. But he didn’t stop. And people didn’t stop hearing his words from God. He did exactly what he needed to do. Isn‘t that the kind of success we mean?

Success isn’t albums sold or price per painting, but it may include that. We really get to determine what success looks like for us. We get to tell our creative endeavors what the goals are. No one else can tell us what the goals are.

Obviously viability will likely be one. We are not free to determine what viability means (in other words, it comes down to a certain number of sales, etc.). But we are free to determine the values and vision of our particular company.

We have the creative freedom to dream it up, to fight it out, to discover what it looks like for us. That is the beauty of it all. Too often we get hamstrung on the initial viability needs, to the point where that becomes the only goal.

The goal is the what. We define the “what’ whereby we judge ourselves successful or not. What are your goals? You decide them. You must figure out what those really are. What is it you want to do? Only you can decide that question. 

The End of Hope (Part 1)

The End of Hope (Part 1)

Sometimes life’s very repetitive almost circular nature can be overwhelmingly consistent. A familiarity sets in that breeds something worse than monotony, boredom. We get an arrogance that assumes all we have is all there is. This possibly innocent reflection is the beginning of a diseased sort of despair that ultimately has no cure. It is the stuck-ness of someone on the verge of suicide. It is the lack of sight (or insight) literally. There is no horizon, let alone beyond the horizon.

This again is why art is so important. It reminds us of the horizon, that there is something bigger than merely our tiny slice of the pie. It is pulls us into a connectedness with this greater reality. There is more. That there is more is sufficient to end crippling despair. Having any sorts of ideas about what that more is can be unnecessary initially. Just make a crack in the wall of finitude certainty and you have given a precious gift. There is more!

Without art kicking at the walls that block our sight, we have only political realities, only economics. Everything becomes extremely cause and effect, a fated locked-in system where the rich get there’s and the rest are left only to suffer. What is left is a sort of faceless rage underneath an overwhelming sea of passivity and despair. “This is all there is,” the sentiment though void of any contentment. The focus is exclusively on “ALL,” assuming an exhaustive scope of reality.

This is the arrogance of despair. It gives a sense of certainty that no human is meant to endure. There are no gaps. No holes. No theory. Just reality. Painful, heart-breaking, reality. This is it. Anything else is illusion from stark reality. While this on one hand can seem heroically honest, it fundamentally lacks any sort of humility. It claims full access to all of reality, an exclusive to the bottom layers of truth. Underneath it all, well, there is nothing. How martyr-ish! How arrogant.

Yet we feel the walls closing in often. When we try to breath, when we try to live outside of Murphy’s Law we can quickly sense the vertigo of trying to make it. It feels like we are on our own. The freedom we experienced suddenly turns on us. It is replaced with a rapid sort of discontent, or a sudden realization that we can not sustain this level of beauty and freedom. We are frightened back into our corner. We rehearse the lines, “I should have just stayed where I was.”

“What was I thinking?” Sort of a panicked hysteria settles in. “What are we going to do? How are we going to do this?” We stop trusting the journey, we stop trusting the sense of freedom, we stop believing that we are onto something.

Fear is a powerful thing. Not only does it keep people locked into place for many miserable years, it makes people long to be back who have left. It frightens those who have escaped to the point of reinterpreting the past to look much better. 

Process of Becoming (Part 4)

Process of Becoming (Part 4)

The further we get into the “how” of marketing and selling our products the cheaper they will feel. We will realize inevitably it is the same exact process of selling no matter what kind of product. We will also realize that ultimately we have a “product.” 

That feels cheap for some artists. Others have no problem insisting on the valuation of their art being high, advocating for their work against ignorance. “Does art have a value?” They insist on that question. If so, charge like it. When it comes to music in our culture it has little valuation. People love it. There is no doubt about that. But people are generally unwilling to pay for it, or to only pay a small amount. It has no scarcity so it ultimately gets valued as something abundant.

How with music, as an example, do we counter-culture to bring a valuation that makes sense? How do we align closer to people’s great love for it with a price that seems to suggest or honor that? Maybe that is where the live ticket price comes in. Any such methodology discussions are essential, but so completely relative to time and situation that they do very little good here, save to remind the artist of the importance of his time and team. Both are essential to keeping focus on the prize. This is where DIY has served artists horribly. Artists tend to control, manage carefully details, etc. When it comes to the business aspects of art there are simply too many things to manage with that sort of precision. It will drive a wedge between art and artist. Very soon the artist will feel more like a salesman. Suffice it to say that there is a reason artists do not go into sales. Most are simply horrible at it. And it might be the last thing they should do if they actually want to make a career of their art.

You will need a team. Sounds ridiculous to even think of with limited budgets and constrained time already. “It’s easier to learn and do it myself.” At this point, maybe. But what is at stake ultimately is the very art you are here to make, sell, etc. You will jeopardize your art without a team. That includes marketing, business, etc, but it also includes other creatives weighing in on who you are. We all need support. We all need encouragement. We all need people who know what it’s like.

A team of like-minded creatives keeps us moving forward. They in no way reduce or supplant our need to be alone, to write in isolation. But they can inspire the very act of doing so with faith and gusto. We can face isolation with hope. Somehow being a part of a creative collaborative of sorts pulls out of us a sense of responsibility to our gifts. It reminds us that our gifts bear the weight of eternity, that we are not without a commission. The gifts themselves are that commission. It is so easy to lose track of those creative gifts though. Prevailing culture and life itself will quickly swallow them back. We must learn to protect and wield them with grace. This almost necessitates having friends with similar pursuits.

As the inner creative life is protected and given the freedom to be pursued there is a sense that our life is not our own. We begin to sense that pulling or compelling to go into new areas. This takes focus and great courage. With like-minded creatives this shared fear can almost lessen its impact. We are moving forward into the unknown together. We will all be going different ways for different pursuits but all in some way have shared a similar journey. We have learned together the joys of creative process, birthing something out of nothing. We have also all shared the burden of seeing that thing born raised into a little person. We collectively have felt the sting of failure to launch.

Together we empower each-other to fail. Failure gets put in its proper place, not as something to be utterly avoided but something to be celebrated, learned from, grown into. Failure can never stop us from becoming who are meant to be! Failure can wear many faces. And just as we seldom define clearly what success looks like we give our potent ability at self sabotage ammo when we allow failure to be defined by our inner critic. Failure is simply the refusal to try. There are times when it becomes much easier to believe lies that make it convenient for us to not try. We get seduced into believing all sorts of things about the condition of our efforts (“this was failed from the start,” “you should have never started”).  Believing means trusting in what we have been entrusted with. In other words, if we can start with the assumption that we did not ask for our gifts, they were already there we can remove so many of the pride issues and other lies. If the gifts are honestly there then a failure to believe in them is simply a lie based on fear. We did not decide their existence. We did not conjure them up in our brains. We simply discovered them and in some way are held accountable for their realization.

That discovery may be one of the most important for the artist or creative. We do not ultimately create. We mine or excavate what is deeply written innate in our capacity. We become guides of the interior. We work from the inside out. This could be in some ways the job description of the artist: interior excavator. One who digs into the human heart (earth) to discover what latent realities are already there. One who interprets the data and reconstructs the pieces to the public.

This again must be a fearless process. Fear can only interfere with such work. The artist therefore must be fearlessly honest with the process. Again, their job is not to create, but to articulate their discoveries of what is already there. They must enter this work with the sort of passion of a potent archaeological dig. We are onto something big here. What we discover can change the world, or at least the way people understand the world. Inner realities are worth (or worthy of) the process.

Often we get going on a project and we get hung up on the obstacles being outside us. We assume sort of a halt. This thing or that thing isn’t lining up. Until we get that thing resolved outside we can’t really get things moving inside. This is most certainly not true. Our job is to keep focus on what it is we do. We focus on the “what,” over and over and over. As we articulate the “what,” dream about the what, sing and paint about the what. That is our primary role.

Many a great artist have been pulled into the “how,” some to the point of making a career of it. They eventually become “how to” experts to other artist types. They are worn out by the inward task of staying focused on the “what.” There is nothing wrong or less than about the “how,” it is just not the most important place. An artist gifts dictate for him what thing she can pursue. The gift itself is the guide. Though entrepreneurism is required, it is done on our terms.

We don’t limit the scope of our work by being stubbornly anti-capital. We don’t harbor a sense of guilt for making a profit on our work so that we can actually sustain it. But we also aren’t necessarily involved in the exploitation of that work. Somebody will have to be. That is the reality. Exploit is such a pornographic term, but ultimately the point. There is a necessary process of taking your project from inside you to outside, and then from your living room or basement to the community.

How far beyond the local community you as an artist want to take your work is a matter of conscience and sometimes economics. Can the local community sustain your project? In NYC, most likely yes. In a tiny town, probably not.

Again, the point here is do NOT get caught up. Don’t get stuck in this area trying to “figure it out on your own.” If you do, slowly but surely you will loose your grip on what is most important: your creative process. That is your untouchable! 

Process of Becoming (Part 3)

Process of Becoming (Part 3)

Now let's talk about the public birthing phase of our projects. As we close in on completion, we are forced to deal with the realities of marketing. Marketing by its very nature must make many decisions about the nature of a piece and its purpose. Some artists may have the luxury of off-loading this area, or giving it over to their management, etc. Generally, some artists (some of the best) are simply overwhelmed by this area. They literally start to shut down during this transition.

No matter how great the marketing the process seems to make arbitrary this painful process they have just been through. They have just given birth to a baby after all. Some would like to spend a bit of time with it before going public. Is going public with the baby more like sending it off to boarding school OR more like bringing to a public event with family and friends? That is a great question. What is our relationship with a work once it has been birthed?

Obviously for the musician this will be much different than for the visual artist, who creates the work, then once procuring a buyer, is done with it. This process may take some time of course, but there is a definitive end to the relationship.

Not so with the musician. They create a life-long relationship with a piece whether they want to or not. That piece of art will forever be a part of their potential live catalogue, sometimes inspiring others haunting them with phases that now seem long past. That’s the great difficulty of many creatives post-birth, they want to make more babies. There is nothing wrong with growing the family, but you got to maintain and parent the ones that are already here too. Baby-making is the fun part! Rearing? Well...

So for the conscientious artist, seeing the baby grow and get strong enough to remain on its own is essential. It is obvious (and just as important) as the creating stage. It requires a different set of skills and work, but they must be involved.

This is the make or break point. Many artists want to maintain complete control of the process, much like they did in creating the thing. They know that world. It worked for them. Now they have to start entrusting parts of the process to others. They are essentially getting parenting help. One such person (a manager of sorts) will basically be another parent. But there must also be grandparents, teachers, aunts and uncles, and of course childcare providers. Some we pick, some we inherit.

Some artists, unlike the controlling types mentioned, have absolutely no trouble getting others to help. They are completely comfortable giving parts of their business to others. They understand their limited time and talents in such areas. Some in this vein, though, give up too much. Soon they find they have given up creative control of how their project is realized, and even how future projects are made. We begin to see how this launch process is extremely important and delicate. The truth be told, some secretly hope to fail. They can blame it on the process, the industry, their management, everything else. But really the key is to define failure clearly, so we do not get duped into believing inaccurately we failed.

Is commercial “success” the guiding light? How much? What does that even mean? How about things “going well”? Artists get very superstitious about these things. But the reality is very few artists know what it is they are really after. What is success?

I encourage here not defining the “how” but focusing on the “what.” What will it look like if we find success? What things will be happening as a result? This sort of visioning exercise is key to getting toward what it is art is really after.

For me, having my art realize its full potential (in other words, actually getting a project to the place where I love it and believe it is done) was enough. I just wanted the piece good enough. I wanted it to the place where I could say “yes!”

But that is not enough. Then what? What comes of this finished song? What does it create in people? Finished in the studio, for the performer, is not finished at all. We have to recreate that same passion and finish live with an audience.

How are those at an experience of my art going to be moved? How am I encouraging them? What am I telling them? I don’t pigeonhole my work, I clarify its power. Does my art bring life to the community? Does it connect and inspire?

Thinking of the what (i.e., What is success?) is scary. We are so afraid of being presumptuous that we are presumptuous. We don’t want to think of ourselves as great, we want to let history and our audience dictate that. Besides, there is lots of great competition out there. Maybe. That’s not how many of the greats thought. They thought of themselves, BEFORE they were there, as already there. It is true some are self-delusional and really not talented. Of course. But for now focus on those who really are good.

“Ok, maybe good, but not great,” many will say, a failed attempt at humility. There again, what is the point of the gift. Who gave it and to whom is it going? If the gift really only was self-realization and no one outside of ourselves was effected, perhaps. But if the gift truly is a gift than it is much bigger than ourselves; and it is actually selfish to sabotage it, to belittle it, to relegate it. It’s ok to believe. In fact, it’s required. Believe it is great. Imagine it as great. What does it look like to be great?

Why not be great? Some will immediately repulse from the question as inauthentic, in-genuine, missing the point. They will argue the artist should not assert toward position or legacy, but simple obedience to craft and instinct. Science if you will. For some this may work, it may be enough. But for others there is something of the magic of art that is much more provocative and compelling than merely mastering the craft. One is focused on the art piece, the other on the art process.

Generally for the audience there is not at first a genuine fascination with the process, or the craft. What ultimately connects them is something deeply emotional, profoundly spiritual that they would have a hard time putting into words.  The effect is real, though non-rational. It shakes something below the surface. It’s something the Hebrews may have called “deep calls to deep” (Ps 42.7). This inner movement caused by the work is what many translate into “great” art.

And they are right. The work must move us. Where critics go wrong is assuming that the project’s ability to create movement is exclusive to them. In other words, if they don’t feel it, it is not there. This is where the mystery of art comes in.

How art works to move people (which is the bottom line), is not always predictable. Where a critic may be sure a work falls flat or is wrapped into itself, the reality is that the critic may simply not be able to see certain aspects of the effect.

The human ability to “feel” art, or to experience another’s processing of life, is not completely objective. Inevitably, our affinities matter. Some things considered by most to be foundational master-pieces may be so technically but not affectively.

We sow the seeds, we don’t make things grow. In the same way, the artist cannot control how and who is effected or moved by his art. Oddly, the artist in this way does not get to choose his audience, only to accept it as it comes. There is a process for the artist in learning to “adopt” his fans. And like a real adoption, this is a process. Sometimes parents in the process will admit to having a hard time loving the child as their own. Sometimes it feels awkward or forced. Even for biological parents, there is ultimately no control over what “type” of children you have. In other words, we do not choose temperaments, intellectual ability, special needs, interest areas, etc. Sometimes our kids are extremely different from ourselves and from each other.

That’s the beauty of seeing how and with whom your art connects. It is a mystery. Some will be fundamentally not the people you imagined. Love needs to be cultivated. Fans need to become more than potential customers. They are human beings and we are all walking through life together. Something about what we have created inspires them to face difficulties with integrity and confidence. We are part of the solution. We need to celebrate the empowering and healing that we are part of.