Manifesto 2a

Expansions on "About Antipostmetasemanticism".

Skip if you don't care or if it's too long. When the time is right, perhaps this material will be wrapped up, tightened up, made more artful, and added to the Antipostmanifesto

Art does a few different types of thing:

(1) Show us about what is, or what has been.

(2) Show us about what may be in future

(3) Show us about what is not, but should be

(4) Show us about what is not, but could be or could have been

(5) Teach us new ways to see what is by letting us practice on what is not

(6) Making some things to be which were not before.

(7) Teach us the real values that real life experience often fails to confirm

(8) Remind us that we are more than we think we are.

(9) Make us stronger by making us better - deeper, richer in spirit, wiser, better.

(10) Deliver us from the false wisdom of bulleted lists.

And by Art, of course, I mean paintings, sculptures, but also music, stories, poetry, and whatever else.

Nobody ever invented anything without the ability to think about things that aren't yet real. Nobody ever invented anything good without the ability to dream of a better world.

Nobody ever did a good deed without taking the risk that the recipient might prove unworthy or ungrateful.

In fact, I would argue that no good deed has ever been done when the first step was to question whether the recipient deserved it.

Art is vitally, absolutely necessary. Much more necessary to any people, any community, any civilization, any culture, than military might, or economic wealth (whatever that really means), or any other form of domination. None of those things come, and none of those things last, unless the people have strength and virtue of spirit of the kind that worldly and materialistic dogmas are totally unable to build or cultivate. When art is no longer able to remind us of the deep, metaphysical, intangible truth, we are doomed. Everything we build crumbles on top of us; every meal we prepare turns to poison; every new exciting thing turns empty and bitter, every dawn becomes a new dusk.

One hears so many people these days who decry art on the grounds that it doesn't make you rich. Or that only art-forms that do make big profits are worthy of existing. This is absolute nonsense, and is almost the very opposite of true. Not only does the art of importance rarely bear the fruits of economic success, but there is every reason to suspect that once an artwork becomes a significant commercial interest, its capacity to do real good is in serious danger. The creative decisions fall more and more away from being made on the grounds of what is "good" in artistic senses, and toward being made on the grounds of what will sell a million. Could these ever coincide? Well, yes, and you could win the lottery. Possible does not mean probable.

Art is a gift to the world, and a gift to the future of humanity. Gifts may be well received or not; gifts may be appreciated or not. But doing good means going on and giving gifts anyway, in the hope that at least some will strike home and flourish. A tree casts many many seeds in hopes of even one successful sapling.

The story goes that after a successful performance of Messiah, someone congratulated G. F. Handel saying "the people were very much entertained by your oratorio, sir!" He is said to have responded "Only entertained? I wanted to make them better." Is all art moral? Is all art religious?

Yes. Art is always about what should be- or about what reality needs to be changed. This dimension may play a large and visible role in an artwork, or it may lay buried deep within, but I believe it is never absent. Art is always working to make us into something - either something better or something fouler and more base. Occasionally it may do so out in the open, in a literal and visible sort of way, but more often the effects are its undercurrents, its unspoken assumptions, its formula of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. And the surface may or may not be aligned with the inner core, just as a person's stated values and their actions may or may not agree. Art is made by humans, and is vulnerable to all the same things as we all are.

Art is made to enable us to travel in the worlds that are not real, from which we can gain a better perspective on the one that is. Those other worlds may be better, or worse, than the real one, (or both), but their function is an essential one.

That which is not has been chosen to bring to nothing that which is.