Part of my morning's reading & reflection: how help is always available, even though we are often not available for help to help us.
The centre of gravity of the act of redemption is love. How easily said, how easily typed. What can this mean? I don't know, and I don't believe it is possible to know redemption on its "own" terms.
Creativity is a "foundation" for the redemptive act. This is also beyond what we can know, but we may get glimpses, or a sense, or a feel, of this. It also puts a very different spin on the nature of "art". There are different "qualities" and "intensities" of art, and each "world" has a kind of art that is proper to it.
"Objective art" belongs to the creative world, the world of the genius. "Objective" art represents the truth of what is true. It has no concern with "beauty" per se, which is a by-product of "true". This is hard for those of an "aesthetic" disposition to grasp. "True" or "real" may not represent what we find personally beautiful, or we have been taught is "great art". "Objective art" may not be anything like we recognise as Art at all.
Aesthetics are a "by-product" of real art, useful to describe symptoms & effects, the history of art in sequential time, originating causes in historical society, but not creative origination. Aesthetics, as a study, belongs to the world of the craft; and while we may recognise the power or "authenticity" of a work of art - we may sympathetically "resonate" with what is "real" - we won't get to understand through aesthetics alone.
If one stands in the presence of the "unconditioned" - what is truly true, and really real, the silence at the heart of silence - any manner of presenting this to the world is lesser than that. Silence is richer than music, but so wishes to be heard, it accepts forms of limitation to bring it within our audible range. In this sense, music is an echo of silence, which "shapes" & contains the silence. In this view, music is between the notes, rather than within them.
The unconditioned (silence) accepts a form of limitation (music) that it may more fully enter into our world. Silence is so rich, so complete, that any attempt to present silence in the world of sound is a restriction. Here, music is the "sound of silence". This belongs to the higher reaches of the world of the master musician.
None of this makes any sense whatsoever unless silence speaks to us. But we can, and may, feel & sense the redemptive action taking place in our world. And that's enough to be getting along.
22.51
A day of art. Toyah & I went to see Candida & Josie Lawrence in two more of Picasso's Women, then to "Under Milk Wood".
As we hit the lobby on the way to lunch next to the Assembly, a professional autograph "collector" approached T & myself with a bag full of goodies. Perhaps those innocents, those who have well established rights to fetishise the inherent & delineated meanings of music & musicians and are happy to assert these rights in the form of undeniable & irrefutable demands, are aware of the increase in professional autograph acquirers. These are not collectors, as such, but have their particular fields & specialities. So, they go to performances, or places where they know their targets will be present, with piles of stuff to be signed.
This is another story (and there are a few which could be told). Of interest, the man's sense of presence & bodily demeanour, his "smell", was quite different to that of the autograph collectors I customarily meet, or pass by swiftly, or stop and engage. This is because he belonged to a different "world of collector". No doubt, more of this later.
Susannah left Thesp Towers today.
"The highest quality of attention we may give is love."
