Art

“People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write,” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once said. Anything can be an art. Cooking. Renovation. Conversation. What makes something art has not so much to do with what is done but how one does it. Merely going through the motions of an activity, of any sort, can never be called art. But when the passions are engaged, along with our creative sensibilities, as well as the mind in concert with the symphony of the soul, art happens. It even happens as much to us as because of us. Art is not always an act of agency. Art emerges, equally, through its own autonomy, through accident, coincidence, and providence. Art is not only done by us but to us, in us, and through us, by forces far beyond our reckoning. The greatest example of this is life itself. At one and the same time happening to you, as well as through your intention and active participation, you begin again, each new day, created and creating, working with raw materials bequeathed to you as you behold the blank canvas, the empty page, the uncarved block, in all its limitless potential, to color, shape, and narrate the story of your life. But the great and rare art, Nietzsche said, is “giving style” to this story and one’s character, by surveying all your strengths and weaknesses and fitting them together, until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. This is true art in a fully human vein, not suppression but the radical inclusion of our entire selves: emotionally, embracing anger, dread, disillusionment, and other often avoided dark dimensions of our being as equally vital actors in the drama of life; physically, treating the tapestry of your body with great care and attention to the details of its needs and desires (both) without bias or judgment; intellectually, realizing a rich river of thought is never far so long as you are willing to celebrate the opaque, confusing, and contradictory aspects of your consciousness; spiritually, holding space for not knowing and unknowing. Through the collaborative intersection of these forces art appears. Your life is your masterpiece.