Why Nietzsche and I Agree About Art

In his famous text, The Gay Science, Germany’s celebrated skeptic, Friedrich Nietzsche begins breaking down the concept of morality, which will eventually become the focus of his Genealogy of Morals. By calling into question the foundations and histories of every societal more that has every been considered by and large “good” or “virtuous,” and by contrast that which is “bad” or “evil,” he uncovers the hidden fallacy of an “absolute” or “universal” truth. Every authorial account of knowledge in history, according to Nietzsche rests on some faulty premise.In his critique of modernity, he recounts the story of “The Madman,” who is in fact, a self-reflection of the author and the mouthpiece of his infamous pronunciation that “God is dead.” But the madman continues, “and we have killed him.” Nietzsche’s claim is that by creating the world we presently live in, the world of consumers, of industry, of technology and science as “empirical truth” we have created an environment that is so hostile to a the immediacy of the ancient beliefs in God, that we can no longer accept the idea of God as the ultimate authority. Those judged as “immoral” are no longer at the mercy of a God who will smite him with lightning, because science explains the phenomenon of lighting and as a natural condition of earthly weather, it does not have the discretion to smite. Even those claiming religion and service to God, Nietzsche insists instead to be non-believers worshipping a shadow-in-memoriam of the god who has perished at our hand. He laments the death of God as the loss of the beautiful delusion that was for so long, the glue of pre-modern society.

Nietzsche accepts this great loss for humanity, and without nihilism, but instead with a cheerful optimism, provides a solution through art. We must become the artists of our own lives, creating from the raw materials of suffering, joy, pleasure, and pain our own personal guidebook for living. We must be able to look at our lives in terms of aesthetics in addition to the terms of rules we live by. In fashioning this life as artwork, we the artists must be able to step back, palette in hand, and look at the whole of our lives and see the gestalt of choices made intentionally by a “single taste.” In this way we become improvisers and transformers of self.

The way Nietzsche describes this self-authoring is such that we as individuals must be able to live our present lives as if we could live that same life verbatim, with all its vicissitudes, again and again for eternity, like a favorite novel.  The way I have described this life philosophy, before ever reading Nietzsche’s words, is that I must never have any regrets. In spite of what many would charge me with as “poor choices,” I have always been able to reflect on my life’s decisions and direction with the honest belief that if I were given the choice over, I would not have already acquired the experiential knowledge of having lived and suffered through the cause and effect of my actions in a given circumstance. I have come to realize that I do not write my own fate, so much as I write my own interpretation.In response Nietzsche provides that  “only one thing is needful: to give style to one’s life.” Artistic decisions require knowledge, self-control and luck. The element of luck in cicumstance makes an experimentation a necessity. When one can step back from his creation, tastefully executed, and behold it in all its disharmonies of form as a full composition and an object of beauty, he as a human becomes “tolerable to behold.”

For this reason, we as a society, can never dispense with art. Art is the most powerful metaphor of a meaningful life in modernity. With making and and absorbing objects of art, we practice living.

Church Window Design I

This past extended weekend, I went to Minneapolis to visit my boyfriend and attend an info session on the MFA program at UMN's art department. The facility was amazing. They had everything. They have a FOUNDRY right in the building. They have a shop for every sculptural medium and a studio for every 2D medium. They have an experimental THEATER just for art... with SURROUND SOUND. I asked if students could access a box truck if they needed to go to a lumber store for large supplies... our host replied that she didn't know what a box truck was, but any supplies you order are delivered, and you can use the freight elevator to get the supplies to your graduate studio which occupies a WHOLE FLOOR! 

The last thing I saw was the gallery, an open, modern space with work from artists of their Chinese exchange program, which is big. I left with a high degree of inspiration and whimsy. To have so many things at my fingertips! I must go there! In terms of making and meaning, the mental state of "inspiration" invites further exploration.

When inspired, the world looks different to an artist, just like the world looks different to a person in love. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist whose life's work studies the brain in love, describes the importance dopamine plays in obtaining this feeling of love. Novel experiences often drive up dopamine levels, and she tells the story of a graduate student at a conference in Beijing who tries to make a colleague fall in love with him by creating novelty by travel in a rickshaw. The result is that the colleague does experience this dopamine rush and exits the rickshaw in a state of exhilaration and infatuation... for the rickshaw driver. "There is magic to love!" She says.

http://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_cheat.html

However, I find the manipulation of this discovery intriguing. Perhaps it's impossible to tamper with someone else's internal chemistry and achieve the results you want, but within yourself, the effect can be more pleasing. Though we typically do not choose who we fall in love with, we can capitalize on the emotions we get from novel experiences and live and do productive things while in that state of euphoria. As I've gotten older, I try to spend less time basking in a state of inspiration, which is inextricably tied to a sense of longing for something ambiguous, and therefore impossible to obtain. Instead I linger in the place that causes this feeling and do whatever artful thing I can with what I have. I've been in too many situations where I had inspiration and no tools, so as an adult, I plan ahead. I anticipate those moments and they come. Perhaps they come more often because I anticipate them and don't fear being unprepared. Even if I don't have my tools, I practice "being" art, moving and looking and engaging fully in my senses so that as with any "practice" I can recall the motor expressions I rehearsed in a state of inspiration and by repeating them when I have my tools again, recall a bit of that emotional state. In a way you could simply call this practicing positivity. When routine plays such a large part of my sense of security, finding a way to inject even a diluted degree of inspiration into my day makes me more productive, and in response, more secure. An upward spiral!

I went back to work on my window piece for my thesis and finished yesterday. The SALVS is the old English SALUS which means "Health" in Latin. For artists, exercising inspiration is not going to lead to dopamine rush after dopamine rush, but through practice it helps me stay in love with the world. And I think that is essential to the health of any artist.

Beatitudes of The Adytum

1. We shall always be honest in our speech.

2. We shall only use the language for the communication of ideas to each other.  The literal meaning of its components will naturally become obscured by the honest frustrations that erupt in the emotional undertones of our phonetic utterances.

3. While we will try to play by the rules of society, that is of spoken language, a medium we can never fully communicate with, when we become genuinely too frustrated by our failed attempt to understand and be understood, we will resort, quite exhausted, with music, so that the segue between speech, voice, and secondary voice (or instrument) is quite necessary and indistinguishable as separate entities.

4. We will maintain the etiquette of polite conversation in music, until our opinions and emotions are so at odds with each other it becomes necessary to momentarily project without listening. Our tantrums will be short as our group dynamic and sense of community is our ultimate ally and power.

5. We shall all align our methods of speaking with our individual characters. We have always been Four Sisters. Novieiska. Truvieiska. Civieiska. Matoschi.

6. We shall speak of things in terms of an elemental nature. The universe, our universe, is made of these fundamental elements - Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

The properties of these elements are  scientifically observable and immutable. They are found in varying degrees in all things. Their natures are found in varying degrees in all things. Therefore each person is constituted by four natures in varying degrees, and by virtue of their juxtaposition against other persons, communities are constituted by these four natures. The 4 elemental natures are as follows:

Earth:

Tangible, solid, sturdy, material, practical, grounded, unshakable, unmoving, steady, pragmatic. Earth holds its own shape and provides a reliable surface and sense of security to those it gives itself to walk upon. The sensual. The corporeal. The body.

Air:

Invisible, quick, born of the sky and higher things. Filling to the lungs. Perceptible to sight only by what it displaces. Heard in the ears and felt on the skin only after it has vanished. Witty. Contemplative, idealistic, mercurial, and communicative, it demands a dialog. A conversation. A friend. The mind.

Water:

Undulating, ebbing, flowing, gushing, freezing solid, now hot, then gradually cold, now raging, then placid, then unmovable as ice. Transformative. Emotive. Conforming to the shape of its container. Bound by gravity to move ceaselessly and restlessly until it finds it's level. Then deep, nuturing, satiating, healing. Restorative to those it gives of itself to drink. The heart.

Fire:

Rapid! Dancing! Glowing! Charming! Moving without regard for gravity or other such laws. Free and unbound! Constantly in action. Now here, now there! Free from deliberation! Brightest and warmest near those who respect its unpredictability! Blazing forward in some direction, though direction is chosen only by the necessity to blaze! Energy! Action! The spirit!

But in distress:

Earth is the earth that crumbles beneath our feet, that blocks our path, that blinds us from the sun.

Air is the air that uproots us and knocks us off our feet, that refuses to wait for us to catch up, and that in its haste, prods and stirs up a violent reaction from the other elements.

Water is the water which drowns us to death.

Fire is the fire that burns and swiftly consumes every last thing before it even knows what it has done.

Therefore, only in balance of measure does the universe remain constituted.

7. We are constituted by elemental natures and as such constitute with with our Gang of Four, our universe.

Novieiska is the Earth.

Truvieiska the Fire.

Civieiska is the Water

Matoschi the Air.

8. At the very onset of the story, in the act of childbirth, Civieiska finds her sudden demise. Before we have the chance even to experience the dynamism of the 4 elemental natures in unity and balance, we find our universe bereft of her heart! Oh woe to us! To lose access to that fluid depth! Vengeance against he who rent us apart!

But where to place the blame? And how to even process the grief without our heart! We grieve that which can only give substance and movement to the grief! Oh Woe!

9. The death of the heart was brought by this tiny harbinger of the future. But where is the balance and sense in such a future?! We are too grieved to yet imagine!

10. And so the rain pours. A chilly repetitious reminder of that which is lost.

Does this child have a chance?

To My Talented Lady Friends: An "Improv Opera"

Hey Ladies,

I miss you, and I'm sorry I've been so engulfed in my thesis to hang out as I'd like... however, I have a two (or maybe even ten)-fold efficient idea which should be fun and hopefully productive.

So in my thesis there is a film. In my film, there is a diluted narrative. In the diluted narrative there is a history of morality. In the history of morality there is a group of women who serve both as spiritual leaders in their community and as prostitutes. In reality this seeming division of self was perfectly legal in Medieval Europe. Today's mindset would look at this type of pairing as hypocrisy, but I'm trying to use it to show how people (especially women or minorities) make meaning out of a marginalized life in society. Culture forms in the mythology people make and need to have meaning in life (rather than life being objectively or universally meaningful in the context of societal laws) and become more fully human or transcendent. But at the same time, morality is prescribed by those in power to unintentionally make a slave class for themselves to feed and survive on, which is the animal part of human nature, to survive by eating those lower on the food chain. It is inevitable and glossed over by human idealism as something people can transcend with enough effort and presence of mind. I disagree, and believe, like Nietzsche that chaos is necessary to meaning and we discover meaning in life through art.

There are 4 characters in the introductory scene of the film. They are all nuns/ladies-of-the-night who serve their community as nurturing, earth-mother sympathizers of the downtrodden, rather than as tradeswomen of sensual goods and services. Because they embrace the chaos of the animal they are humble. Nonetheless they are shamed because they are powerless to survive at the hands of the moneyholders, who by their capacity to requite, that is, reward and punish, can prescribe morality which both condemns their way of living and enforces it. The moneyholders are mainly men in the rich church inside the town who have cast their cloister into the woods to perform their spiritual rites to society in the confines of a humble tent.

I know this is probably more philosophy than anyone wants to read this early in the morning... but here comes the practical and fun part:

I have images to show you, which are not final but which should give you the mood of the opening scene. With those moving images in mind, I want to create an organic improv piece with 4 voices. These voices should begin as your actual voices, so in that sense you'll have to play a character, but since the piece is written in the fake language, what I would like is ostensibly what we did with Literacy, to have a list of these fake words to choose from and through your compositional sensibilities, we form a musical conversation. In a way, you might think this piece would be better for trained singers, but I don't. And in fact, I think it would be cool to have your instruments in this piece too, as sort of a secondary mode of individual voice. In the opening scene the elder nun (most like Leonardo of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if this analogy makes sense) gets into an argument with the nun of a fiery, angsty disposition (the Raphael character) over the death of their youngest sister (who could have been the Michaelangelo character, but whose sudden absence simply leaves a lack of unity among the others). A fourth nun takes the role of the Donatello character, and contemplates the sister's death quietly and with gentle reserve. Its a funeral scene but unlike Leah's In Morning piece, does not resolve quite yet. If after the erupting first movement it makes sense to pick up instruments, and I hope it does, there should be a second wave of mourning without voices that I will carry into the next scene which is devoid of human characters.

The sister who has died has given birth to a baby in this first scene which is the catalyst for the eruption of the argument between the two nuns. The story follows the child as she grows up in this scenario without the socialization of other children and makes art of what is "too real" incorporating dreams into reality and bestowing the form of her growing up with an aesthetic fashioned from the abstraction of real visions of this life.

So it's in essence a Piece, and a Piece I'm serious about - And it needs 4 voices (I can be the 4th if necessary). I think it would be cool to supplant those individual voices with instrumentation in the way that to speak to each other, Leah might just as naturally pick up her Saxophone as vocalize the script and Jessica might pick up hers and yell back with it. Basically, where in all technically received films (popular and/or critically acclaimed films, that is) there is a track for dialog and a track for incidental music and the music must always be suppressed just like the music of opera is (according to Nietzsche, for whom opera was the popular film of his time) suppressed by the libretto because the clarity of the words is the most important thing to an audience of theatre-goers.

For my thesis, I want the dialog AND the music to BE THE SAME THING. For this Piece, the words are only important in the sentiment they are producing for and between the performers, the rhythms they are then forced naturally into creating, and the musical form they are exalting over time. For this reason it will only be important to practice the language to the degree that it should feel natural like playing an instrument. The literal meaning of the words does not matter except in the feeling they cause in the performer uttering them. They should move fluidly through moments of tonality and periods of texture and rhythm.

There will then at last, be one long organic piece with 5 movements (which now reminisces of Leah's interest in the 5 stages of grief, and makes me feel this can not be done without Leah in the natural role of the elder nun) that will loosely follow a script in lieu of a score while I orchestrate the instrumentation and shifts in mood/dynamics with image cues. We will need to practice a lot, because this in essence will be like an opera... but practically speaking I credit everyone participating as a Composer as that's the nature of improv and collaboration. The way I see it, this is a history of the culture of women and only through a ritual performed by us as a group, is it going to create that mythology.

Notes on Nietzsche's The Gay Science I

Book 1:1

Teachers of purpose appear (these are ostensibly Philosophy teachers, religious heads, or any professor of the whys of existence and the insistence on preserving the whole of the human race. Nietzsche talks about laughing at oneself for this. It's laughable. That humans divide eachother up as good and evil then talk about the necessity of every "evil" attribute in the loftier goal of preservation of the human race. It's laughable because it will survive on its own. Then these professors come in with second lives that aspire to do what the life of the race will do by its own nature. He mentions drives again and then laughs about how we are the only species that from time to time must understand "why" we live when other species just go on living without needing an answer to this question.

Book 1:2

Where Nietzsche describe his type of "injustice." He describes people as having no intellectual conscience. Many people. And those that do have it are lost to his kind in "the most densely populated cites as if he were in a desert." I agree with him on this, that the majority of people do not find it contemptible to think this way or that, weigh this as good and that as evil, but never account for the "desire for certainty" within himself as a problem. However he sees people who question their own "desire for certainty" as elite.

Book 1:3

Where Nietzsche talks about the "common" complaining about "noble (morally magnanimous) types because they suspect selfish motives led them to this lifestyle and when they are convinced of noble motives they simply see the noble as stupid to enjoy leading a life of martyrdom or self-disadvantage. Conversely the noble treats the common well, but complains endlessly that they won't do what is "needful" and that is their injustice.

Book 1:4

On what preserves the species which Nietzsche says "In every teacher and preacher of what is new  we encounter the same 'wickedness'. that makes conquerors notorious, even if its expression is subtler and it does not immediately set the muscles in motion, and therefore also does not make one that notorious. New is "evil" because it wants to overthrow and change the old. Old = "good." All things good as evil are just as expedient in preserving the human race as the other.

Book 1:5

Manipulative tactics of those who speak of their "Unconditional duties," and of themselves as servants to a cause he says "Because they desire the unconditional confidence of others, they need first of all to develop unconditional self-confidence on the basis of some ultimate and indisputable commandment" so that they can feel like "instruments."

Book 1:6

Loss of dignity... Reflection never stops, and doesn't require enough preparation. Thinking refuses to stop.

Book 1:7

"Where could you find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of pious respect for tradition, or of cruelty? He mentions vegetarianism as a basis for philosophy, then discards it. How differently have man's instincts grown! He describe culture and counter culture... and how much study it would take to give a why answer to all these variants of human instinct... then science can't do what it sets out to do with study and empiricism.

Book 1:8

...

This is how I get into the book I guess. Now I'm into Book 2 where Nietzsche slights women, provides some insight into men forming opinions about women in their minds and then finding humans instead, to their disgust and crediting women with "willingness" to reform themselves into the vision the man has dreamt up.

And at long last I discovered I was assigned Human, All Too Human for tomorrow's class and not The Gay Science until later in the semester... the human brain, oh how it works against and with the rest of the social world... nonetheless I will enter class tomorrow more educated than I was at the last class period... I feel like my prof shouldn't mind a lapse in practical sense... I hope.

Test with Masks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tPqHVV1eBA