IS ART YOUR RELIGION?

My latest thought-experiment question* is this — once you break down the fundamental acts that an artist practices and the resultsof these actions, can the case be made for artistic creation to be seen asa form of religion? Isn’t the artist’s life a callingas well as a profession? Admit it — there can be something utterly pure and humble about picking up a paintbrush. There is something fairly reverent in loading film into a camera. There is something miraculous about writing a script, then hearing it read out loud for the very first time. The sheer joy of strumming a guitar, of lifting your head back and singing the truest words you can muster. The grace of a dancer’s elbow as it turns. The whack of a typewriter’s keys as a story unfolds across an empty sheet of paper.

Let’s take it further. Is a museum so different from a church, or a cathedral? Do we speak there in hushed voices, reverent in the presence of the profound? Are there factions and splits within the community, all convinced theirversion of the process, theirbeliefs are BETTER than other factions? Catholics and Protestants, realists and abstract expressionists — are their conflicts so terribly different? Ah, but these are just the petty trappings, the outer shell.

Let’s dig under the skin. Does this religion help to decipher the complexities of our world, offering a road to follow in our curious little lives? Can morality be embedded in art? Are there great life lessons to be learned in the stories of Raymond Carver, or the songs of Townes Van Zandt? I’ll save you some trouble. Absolutely. When you are lost, when you are in pain, when you have no hope, and need to process the storm we call life, listen to some Dory Previn and tell me you do not feel a little bit better. Tell you me you were not just reminded how frail we all are, and how we all just want the same basic things. To love, and to be loved. To be understood.

What is art’s place in your personal life — let’s call it your spiritual life, your true self, or just the face that looks back at you in the mirror? Do you find faith in a song? Did a film save you? Did a book reveal a path for you out of the forest? I want to know.

Now, let’s throw a wrench into this rude little investigation. There are creatives that get paid good money to create, and it just might be that they manufacturetheir emotion and expression to fill the empty space. Even if you design PowerPoint presentations for a living, you can still put your heart into them (if you are any good, that is). How do we accommodate this example? Is this still a spiritual act? A pure, humble one? I don’t know, but I’ll be generous and say it might be. Clarity, candor, compassion — even a corporate graphic can have these qualities. And let’s imagine that our humble designer goes home after work, has dinner with their partner, puts their kids to bed, and then wanders over to a table in the living room, turns on a light and works on their masterpiece after a long day of working for the man. There is nobility in their day job/night work solution, and I say let’s respect that.

At the same time, we can chase the “art vs commerce” conversation. Expressions that are empty, calculated ghosts of ideas — formulaic and glossy on the outside — are they the result of humble makers? Is there redemption in their making? Do they make the world a better place, or do they smack of algorithms and targeted marketing? Ah, but an army of good, innocent people work on these clickbait products, so it is not a simple answer! It takes a village to build these hollow beasts. I think that if the work does not elevatethe human race, if it does not have redeeming qualities, I see that work as an embarrassment, the worst we can accomplish, our lowest common denominator, our weakest, most bankrupt selves. They are indeed a classic form of temptation — easy money, easy viewing, cheap laughs, cheap thrills. The world is overflowing with this dreck.

Is there an afterlife? Well, that’s a big one, maybe the biggest. Can art really answer life’s eternal questions? I can only say that the creation of art and the act of receiving these expressions makes thislife an easier one, a better one, a useful one. That in itself is a perfect reason to find faith and peace in them, and yes — answersto life’s dilemmas, sometimes hidden inside the healing tonic of laughter inspired by comic books, or the shadow and fog of films, in theaters and in the halls of museums.

For me, creation is sacred. Maybe I am blowing smoke up my own ass by saying that, all-too-conveniently ordaining myself as a priest in the religion of storytelling. Since I was a teenager, strangers somehow found themselves confessing things to me. I just listen. I do not judge. I try to say something wise, or funny, or practical to them. I try to help them remember they are just a messy human, that they will fail constantly, and that is just fine. I did not ask for this role, it just fell to me. I remember every damn one of them.

There was a man, a quiet and kind one that I worked with one summer. Late one night, sipping cheap beer on the front porch he told me about how he had tried to kill himself a year earlier. After hashing out where and how it all happened, and the fallout he apologized for burdening me with this secret, but at the same time he felt better just to get it off of his chest, to let the story out. I remember the look in his eyes, the yearning in them, the courage it took him to crack open that book and spell out the details of his bungled attempt. I told him that he had probably gotten past the hardest part already. I told him that someone in the world (outside of his family of course) needed him, that he was good and kind. He went inside and we never talked about it again. I never saw him after that summer, but that exchange found its way into a story I wrote not too long ago. (I protected his identity of course.) I feel that is my imaginary job in life. To bear witness. Maybe that is where all redemption begins. To listen, to document — that is how the spiritual act of creativity changes our world — not with wars or crusades but picture by picture, paragraph by paragraph — with the pens of journalists and documentary cameras, songs sung in the rain and other everyday miracles.

*I know I’m going out on a limb on this one, but bear with me. (And by the way, this is not a condemnation of any existing faith, or against anything in the established spiritual practices of billions.)

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