The War of Art (8 page)

 

TESTAMENT OF A VISIONARY

 

Eternity is in love with the creations of time.

– William Blake

 

The visionary poet William Blake was, so I understand, one of those half-mad avatars who appear in flesh from time to time–savants capable of ascending for brief periods to loftier planes and returning to share the wonders they have seen.

 

Shall we try to decipher the meaning of the verse above?

 

What Blake means by “eternity,” I think, is the sphere higher than this one, a plane of reality superior to the material dimension in which we dwell. In “eternity,” there is no such thing as time (or Blake’s syntax wouldn’t distinguish it from “eternity”) and probably no space either. This plane may be inhabited by higher creatures. Or it may be pure consciousness or spirit. But whatever it is, according to Blake, it’s capable of being “in love.”

 

If beings inhabit this plane, I take Blake to mean that they are incorporeal. They don’t have bodies. But they have a connection to the sphere of time, the one we live in. These gods or spirits participate in this dimension. They take an interest in it.

 

“Eternity is in love with the creations of time” means, to me, that in some way these creatures of the higher sphere (or the sphere itself, in the abstract) take joy in what we time-bound beings can bring forth into physical existence in our limited material sphere.

 

It may be pushing the envelope, but if these beings take joy in the “creations of time,” might they not also nudge us a little to produce them? If that’s true, then the image of the Muse whispering inspiration in the artist’s ear is quite apt.

 

The timeless communicating to the timebound.

 

By Blake’s model, as I understand it, it’s as though the Fifth Symphony existed already in that higher sphere, before Beethoven sat down and played dah-dah-dah-DUM. The catch was this: The work existed only as potential–without a body, so to speak. It wasn’t music yet. You couldn’t play it. You couldn’t hear it.

 

It needed someone. It needed a corporeal being, a human, an artist (or more precisely a
genius
, in the Latin sense of “soul” or “animating spirit”) to bring it into being on this material plane. So the Muse whispered in Beethoven’s ear. Maybe she hummed a few bars into a million other ears. But no one else heard her. Only Beethoven got it.

 

He brought it forth. He made the Fifth Symphony a “creation of time,” which “eternity” could be “in love with.”

 

So that eternity, whether we conceive of it as God, pure consciousness, infinite intelligence, omniscient spirit, or if we choose to think of it as beings, gods, spirits, avatars —when “it” or “they” hear somehow the sounds of earthly music, it brings them joy.

 

In other words, Blake agrees with the Greeks. The gods do exist. They do penetrate our earthly sphere.

 

Which brings us back to the Muse. The Muse, remember, is the daughter of Zeus, Father of the Gods, and Memory, Mnemosyne. That’s a pretty impressive pedigree. I’ll accept those credentials.

 

I’ll take Xenophon at his word; before I sit down to work, I’ll take a minute and show respect to this unseen Power who can make or break me.

 

 

INVOKING THE MUSE,

PART THREE

 

Artists have invoked the Muse since time immemorial. There is great wisdom to this. There is magic to effacing our human arrogance and humbly entreating help from a source we cannot see, hear, touch, or smell. Here’s the start of Homer’s
Odyssey
, the T. E. Lawrence translation:

 

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope—for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse. . . .

 

This passage will reward closer study.

 

First,
Divine
Poesy. When we invoke the Muse we are calling on a force not just from a different plane of reality, but from a holier plane.

 

Goddess, daughter of Zeus
. Not only are we invoking divine intercession, but intercession on the highest level, just one remove from the top.

 

Sustain for me
. Homer doesn’t ask for brilliance or success. He just wants to keep this thing going.

 

This song
. That about covers it. From
The Brothers Karamazov
to your new venture in the plumbing-supply business.

 

I love the summation of Odysseus’ trials that comprises the body of the invocation. It’s Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in a nutshell, as concise a synopsis of the story of Everyman as it gets. There’s the initial crime (which we all inevitably commit), which ejects the hero from his homebound complacency and propels him upon his wanderings, the yearning for redemption, the untiring campaign to get “home,” meaning back to God’s grace, back to himself.

 

I admire particularly the warning against the second crime,
to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun
. That’s the felony that calls down soul-destruction: the employment of the sacred for profane means. Prostitution. Selling out.

 

Lastly, the artist’s wish for his work:
Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.

 

That’s what we want, isn’t it? More than make it great, make it live. And not from one angle only, but in all its many bearings.

 

Okay.

 

We’ve said our prayer. We’re ready to work. Now what?

 

THE MAGIC OF MAKING A START

 

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.”

 

—W. H. Murray,

The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

 

Did you ever see
Wings of Desire
, Wim Wenders’s film about angels among us? (
City of Angels
with Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage was the American version.) I believe it. I believe there are angels. They’re here, but we can’t see them.

 

Angels work for God. It’s their job to help us. Wake us up. Bump us along. Angels are agents of evolution. The Kabbalah describes angels as bundles of light, meaning intelligence, consciousness. Kabbalists believe that above every blade of grass is an angel crying “Grow! Grow!” I’ll go further. I believe that above the entire human race is one super-angel, crying “Evolve! Evolve!”

 

Angels are like muses. They know stuff we don’t. They want to help us. They’re on the other side of a pane of glass, shouting to get our attention. But we can’t hear them. We’re too distracted by our own nonsense.

 

Ah, but when we begin.

 

When we make a start.

 

When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens. A crack appears in the membrane. Like the first craze when a chick pecks at the inside of its shell. Angel midwives congregate around us; they assist as we give birth to ourselves, to that person we were born to be, to the one whose destiny was encoded in our soul, our
daimon
, our
genius
.

 

When we make a beginning, we get out of our own way and allow the angels to come in and do their job. They can speak to us now and it makes them happy. It makes God happy. Eternity, as Blake might have told us, has opened a portal into time.

 

And we’re it.

 

THE MAGIC OF KEEPING GOING

 

When I finish a day’s work, I head up into the hills for a hike. I take a pocket tape recorder because I know that as my surface mind empties with the walk, another part of me will chime in and start talking.

 

The word “leer” on page 342 . . . it should be “ogle.”

 

You repeated yourself in Chapter 21. The last sentence is just like that one in the middle of Chapter 7.

 

That’s the kind of stuff that comes. It comes to all of us, every day, every minute. These paragraphs I’m writing now were dictated to me yesterday; they replace a prior, weaker opening to this chapter. I’m unspooling the new improved version now, right off the recorder.

 

This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don’t even notice. But it’s a miracle. And its implications are staggering.

 

Who’s doing this revising anyway? What force is yanking at our sleeves?

 

What does it tell us about the architecture of our psyches that, without our exerting effort or even thinking about it, some voice in our head pipes up to counsel us (and counsel us wisely) on how to do our work and live our lives? Whose voice is it? What software is grinding away, scanning gigabytes, while we, our mainstream selves, are otherwise occupied?

 

Are these angels?

 

Are they muses?

 

Is this the Unconscious?

 

The Self?

 

Whatever it is, it’s smarter than we are. A lot smarter. It doesn’t need us to tell it what to do. It goes to work all by itself. It seems to want to work. It seems to enjoy it.

 

What exactly is it doing?

 

It’s organizing.

 

The principle of organization is built into nature. Chaos itself is self-organizing. Out of primordial disorder, stars find their orbits; rivers make their way to the sea.

 

When we, like God, set out to create a universe–a book, an opera, a new business venture–the same principle kicks in. Our screenplay resolves itself into a three-act structure; our symphony takes shape into movements; our plumbing-supply venture discovers its optimum chain of command. How do we experience this? By having ideas. Insights pop into our heads while we’re shaving or taking a shower or even, amazingly, while we’re actually working. The elves behind this are smart. If we forget something, they remind us. If we veer off-course, they trim the tabs and steer us back.

 

What can we conclude from this?

 

Clearly some intelligence is at work, independent of our conscious mind and yet in alliance with it, processing our material for us and alongside us.

 

This is why artists are modest. They know they’re not doing the work; they’re just taking dictation. It’s also why “noncreative people” hate “creative people.” Because they’re jealous. They sense that artists and writers are tapped into some grid of energy and inspiration that they themselves cannot connect with.

 

Of course, this is nonsense.We’re all creative.We all have the same psyche. The same everyday miracles are happening in all our heads day by day, minute by minute.

 

LARGO

 

In my twenties I drove tractor-trailers for a company called Burton Lines in Durham, North Carolina. I wasn’t very good at it; my self-destruction demons had me. Only blind luck kept me from killing myself and any other poor suckers who happened to be on the highway at the same time. It was a tough period. I was broke, estranged from my wife and my family. One night I had this dream:

 

I was part of the crew of an aircraft carrier. Only the ship was stuck on dry land. It was still launching its jets and doing its thing, but it was marooned half a mile from the ocean. The sailors all knew how screwed up the situation was; they felt it as a keen and constant distress. The only bright spot was there was a Marine gunnery sergeant on board nicknamed “Largo.” In the dream it seemed like the coolest name anyone could possibly have. Largo. I loved it. Largo was one of those hard-core senior noncoms like the Burt Lancaster character, Warden, in
From Here to Eternity
. The one guy on the ship who knows exactly what’s going on, the tough old sarge who makes all the decisions and actually runs the show.

 

But where was Largo? I was standing miserably by the rail when the captain came over and started talking to me. Even he was lost. It was his ship, but he didn’t know how to get it off dry land. I was nervous, finding myself in conversation with the brass, and couldn’t think of a thing to say. The skipper didn’t seem to notice; he just turned to me casually and said, “What the hell are we gonna do, Largo?”

 

I woke up electrified. I was Largo! I was the salty old Gunny. The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it.

 

Where did this dream come from? Plainly its intent was benevolent. What was its source? And what does it say about the workings of the universe that such things happen at all?

 

Again, we’ve all had dreams like that. Again, they’re common as dirt. So is the sunrise. That doesn’t make it any less a miracle.

 

Before I got to North Carolina I worked in the oilfields around Buras, Louisiana. I lived in a bunkhouse with a bunch of other transient geeks. One guy had picked up a paperback about meditation in a bookstore in New Orleans; he was teaching me how to do it. I used to go out to this dock after work and see if I could get into it. One night this came:

 

I was sitting cross-legged when an eagle came and landed on my shoulders. The eagle merged with me and took off flying, so that my head became its head and my arms its wings. It felt completely authentic. I could feel the air under my wings, as solid as water feels when you row in it with an oar. It was substantial. You could push off against it. So this was how birds flew! I realized that it was impossible for a bird to fall out of the sky; all it would have to do was extend its wings; the solid air would hold it up with the same power we feel when we stick our hand out the window of a moving car. I was pretty impressed with this movie that was playing in my head but I still had no idea what it meant. I asked the eagle, Hey, what am I supposed to be learning from this? A voice answered (silently): You’re supposed to learn that things that you think are nothing, as weightless as air, are actually powerful substantial forces, as real and as solid as earth.

 

I understood. The eagle was telling me that dreams, visions, meditations such as this very one–things that I had till now disdained as fantasy and illusion–were as real and as solid as anything in my waking life.

 

I believed the eagle. I got the message. How could I not? I had felt the solidness of the air. I knew he was telling the truth.

 

Which brings us back to the question: Where did the eagle come from? Why did he show up at just the right time to tell me just what I needed to hear?

 

Clearly some unseen intelligence had created him, giving him form as an eagle so that I would understand what it wanted to communicate. This intelligence was babying me along. Keeping it simple. Making its point in terms so clear and elementary that even someone as numb and asleep as I was could understand.