artists

I'm up today at The Master's Artist considering the question of whether we should publish or perfect our work.

On the one hand, why would I want to put anything out there that is less than my best? I have one opportunity to impress, and I don't want to waste it. One must dress for success. Plus, we all know this is the answer the agents want to see. Case closed.

On the other hand, my work will never match the ideal I have in my head. The novel is perfect. Until I translate it onto page. If I wait until perfection, I'll never publish. (Perhaps some of you have better luck with attaining the unflawed and unblemished.)

On the other hand, settling for mediocre art leaves a bad taste in my mouth (although that could be last night's garlic sauce). Art and excellence go together like beans and rice. If choosing publishing over perfection means settling (such a dirty word), I'll have none of that, thank you very much.

Read the rest here.

I'm blogging today at The Master's Artist.

A preview:

"Hold on! Let me get my camera!" She swished out of the water, her large gold hoop earrings glinting in the sun. The tourist, a complete stranger, waited at the top of a 35-foot drop. The teenaged girl grabbed her camera--not bothering to dry her hands--positioned, and focused.

"Okay," she said. "I'm ready. Go."

The tourist jumped off the cliff, straightened into a pencil before hitting the water.

You can read the rest here.

I broke out the ole Kierkegaard yesterday (sometimes you need a little Kierkegaard to get your day going). In Either/Or, A Fragment of Life, Kierkegaard portrays two philosophers, a brash, witty, but disenchanted youth and his older, wiser mentor. The witty-but-disenchanted youth writes:

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

He goes on to talk about the people who hear only the beauty without recognizing the deeper anguish. They clap their hands and say, "More! More! Entertain me!"

In the older man's reply, he has much to correct in the youth's shortsightedness and romanticism, but he affirms the youth's ideas about the poet. The poet is working through despair, the older man says. He lives in between the finite and the infinite. 

The poet sees the ideals, but he must run away from the world in order to delight in them . . . [he] cannot calmly go his way unmoved by the caricature that appears around him . . . For this reason the poet's life is often the object of a shabby pity on the part of people who think they have their own lives safe and sound because they have remained in the finite.

Our art works out the struggles of the "already/not yet." Thus, it is a spiritual work. I mentioned in my post on Monday about some stresses in the Goodman house. One of them is my WIP. This novel toys with my worst fears. It dances on would-be regrets. It pulls like taffy my ideas of family, community, and individuality. I suppose this explains my penchant for procrastination. Thank God for spring and all its planting demands! (On the plus side, our house has never been so clean.)

I purse my lips, forming an embouchure in hopes that what whistles through is beautiful music, but the impetus is the doubt and despair I daily work through, clinging to the hope of the resurrection but with an eye toward the suffering of the world.

Barbara Nicolosi once talked about the eyes of the artist. The average man thinks the artist crazy. After all, the artist is gesturing wildly, eyes wide, in warning to the average man. But the average man doesn't see the snake wrapped around him. The artist does.

I do not presume to believe the artist is any greater or better than the average man. If art is a spiritual task, I'm not sure I can say that it is any better than any other spiritual task, or working out of the "already/not yet" of God's kingdom. Perhaps this says more about the artist's disposition, his position of constant observer, his willingness to turn these observations in every angle Picasso-like, to anguish over the pain and suffering of the world as Jesus anguished over it, and his bravery to purse his lips and bring forth somethig beautiful.

She arranged the six squares of construction paper--red, blue, and yellow on the top row, green, purple, and orange on the bottom. In a Modrian-esque way, she then selected smaller squares of tissue paper in colors that mimicked the construction paper blocks.

The other four-year-olds left the table, one by one, as if retreating from the ark. They found legos and kitchen sets and toy cars.

She undid some of her work in order to glue it down, every decision made after contemplation.

After that came the streamers--not dumped or thrown, not amassed like a shimmering mountain as the other children had applied their goodies. Her silvery streamers, each with hints of different colors, she smoothed, twisted, and swirled just so.

"Do you want glitter?" I asked. (Actually, Kim, the teacher I assisted in the Sunday school class may have asked her this.)

She considered her piece. "No, thank you." Then she signed her name.

A masterpiece.

Josh Havens (of The Afters) and I continue our conversation. In this episode, we talk about the creative process.

Yes, the dog barks on (perhaps it's poetic). And no, now that it's fully night, you can't see us. I'm looking into getting the audio-only version. I know it's out there somewhere.

Ah-ha. I'm starting to get somewhere. But apparently, blip.tv can't handle having both available on the same blog. Since it's dark, let's try the audio-only (mp3) version today, shall we?

Also, if you right-click on the "Click to Play" link, you can "Save link as" a file on your computer. That way, you can download it on your iPod. I know you want to take me everywhere you go, don't you?

Click to play

I can't put my finger on it quite yet, but something compells me to come back to this piece. It's not flashy, like watching Ed Harris re-enact a Pollock creation. Perhaps it's the meditative quality or the improvisational nature as Susie Ibarra and Makoto Fujimura influence one another.

Whatever it is, it's beautiful:

A few days ago (meaning sometime in January, February, or perhaps March), I sat down with Josh Havens, lead singer of the Dove Award-winning band, The Afters (as well as guitar and keyboards) and apparently Coffee Master, and talked about music.

This podcast is Part One of that interview, where we discuss how Starbucks is working toward Total World Domination in good ways.

Please ignore the incessant dog barking. Also the fact that we decided to have the interview outside with no outside lighting at night. I promise that is, indeed, Josh Havens.

Also, you can subscribe to these podcasts (and more!) through Blip.TV or through iTunes. Rumor has it the audio-only (mp3) version is floating around in cyberworld (on iTunes, I believe), but I have no idea how to get it on this post.

Psst--If you find this post interesting and think others might as well, would you mind taking a minute to stumble it? It would mean a lot to me.

Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture collects essays written by Makoto Fujimura to artists from 2004 to 2006. Living in post-9/11 New York City, Fujimura challenges artists: How does your art recognize the brokenness around you? How does your art offer hope and redemption in the midst of it?

I began this book months ago. The essays demand to be read contemplatively, even devotionally. I savored it morsel by morsel, letting each piece roll on my tongue, slide down my throat. As I digested it, it became part of me and part of my art.

I read this the other day on Pandora about Bobby Darin:

This is the third and final installment of my talk with Sandra Glahn.

Sandra Glahn is the author of fiction (including a Christy-nominated book), nonfiction, and Bible studies. She's editor of the award-winning magazine, Kindred Spirit, and adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. You can learn more about Sandi and her writing at her website and at her blog.