Art: A Big Fat Lie

"Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize the truth." -David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

Manipulation. Calculation. Scrutiny. Precision. Editing. Revising. Reworking. Re-imagining. Removing. And taking away, and away, and away.

The art of making art--no matter the medium--is more scientific than many artists would care to admit. It's about a vision (i.e., a hypothesis), and the working out, playing with, and truth-testing of that vision (i.e., lab work). Even if that vision is nothing in particular, or concrete, or even known to the artist him/herself, it's still there. It's a still a vision; a vision blind to the work that invisibly lays before it.

Like science leads us to facts through evidence, and hints at truth through its exhaustive testing (and re-testing) of its hypothesis, art's process is somewhat similar. It creates (sometimes from nothing and sometimes from too much of nothing) a reflection, a window, a portal, a tiny shaving of sight for the viewer to see. To hear. To touch. To smell. To taste. To ponder. To wonder. This is art's incredible potential. Yet, art's end result subtly (and not so subtly) hides its complicated and calculated and consuming labor. This is one way art lies so well (and why it's necessary for it to do so). For example...

When you're sitting in a darkened theater watching images unfold before you as if they were seamlessly one collective story, one effortless film, you're not thinking about the 7,459 people it took to make it. You're not imagining the 10 different takes an actor had to make before he got the line right, nor the make-up artist who stood just off to the right of the camera to make sure the blood would stay in the right place on the protagonist's forehead. In a way, your eyes are covered--blinded, even--to the glorious masquerade that is, in truth (and mostly lies), the nature of art...which is the editing of all things (tangible and intangible) to make a lie appear true. Gut-level true. Like, you-see-it-and-you're-heart-is-shocked-and-surprised-at-the-revelation-you're-seeing-for-what-seems-like-the-very-first-time-kind-of-true. It's about the emotional, the visceral, about touching (for better or for worse) fragments of the physical, emotional, and spiritual self. Basically, art is so non-holistic in its process (so detached and dislocated and dislodged), it transforms (or appears to transform) into something holistic (and holy) in the eyes of the viewer once it's finished.

At the end of the day, all the lies appear true. And the most provocative thing about this revelation is that you can't reach this truth without understanding the necessity for lies in art, without failure to put on the make-up right or screw up miserably those first 9 takes of a scene. If art really set out to be true (and truthful) we'd be forced to digest the whole artistic process--all 750 hours or more--and it would be excruciatingly dull, painfully monotonous. I'm not saying this wouldn't be a good thing to experience on occasion but I am saying that if this was art's norm, art's primary method, primary praxis, few would have the patience, the cognitive stamina to reach any mini-truth-epiphanies after watching the film Avatar, if what preceded it was 7,983 hours of interviews, and documentation on just how it was all done. This would be the 'truth' (or rather, the facts) but it wouldn't be art, nor would it enable us to recognize the truth any better I think.

This is why the statement, 'art is the lie that tells the truth' is so powerful (and so true). David Shields and Richard Walter and Madeleine L'Engle and Picasso and many others artists over time have said the very same thing (in their own way, from their own artistic medium perspective). The necessity of lies (not just in art, but in life) is what makes art possible. Without lies, art would cease to exist. For how can we see truth if we can't see the importance and value and beauty of lies?

The Bible: It's Not About How It All Ends

"Some people think that the Bible has to do with the terrors of the apocalypse, and that the apocalypse is 'the end of the world'. The end, they believe, will see the divine 'final solution' of all the unsolved problems in personal life, in world history, and in the cosmos. Apocalyptic fantasy has always painted God's great final Judgment on the Last Day with flaming passion: the good people will go to heaven, the wicked will go to hell, and the world will be annihilated in a storm of fire. We are all familiar, too, with images of the final struggle between God and Satan, Christ and the Antichrist, Good and Evil in the valley of Armageddon--images which can be employed so usefully in political friend-enemy thinking. These images are apocalyptic, but are they also Christian? No, they are not; for Christian expectation of the future has nothing whatsoever to do with the end, whether it be the end of this life, the end of history, or the end of the world. Christian expectation is about the beginning: the beginning of true life, the beginning of God's kingdom, and the beginning of the new creation of all things into their enduring form. The ancient wisdom of hope says: 'The last things are as the first.' So God's great promise in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, is: 'Behold, I make all things new' (Rev. 21:5). In the light of this ultimate horizon we read the Bible as the book of God's promises and the hopes of men and women--indeed the hopes of everything created; from the remembrances of their futures we find energies for the new beginning." -Jürgen Moltmann, from the forward of his book, In The End The Beginning.

'Christian expectation is about the beginning.' I'm not sure about you but that wasn't my experience in the Baptist church I grew up in near Bob Jones University in Simpsonville, South Carolina. From the age of 5, I remember hearing stories about heaven. No more tears. No more pain. No more stealing pencils from Jennifer's utensil box. It would all be over. Done. Finished.

The ending would be the happiest place on earth (if it were on earth, which it isn't--Mrs. Hyde had apparently been there).

I know that the main purpose in telling us kindergartners this was to share the gospel, and inform us of the fact that our souls would go to heaven in the end when we died if we believed in Jesus but, but, but...there could've been a better way of going about this. They could've also told us how every day (from sleeping hours to waking mornings) is a reflection of this reality. And it's not all bad. Endings aren't to be feared, agonized over, casting teams over who's in and who's out. Endings, as in stories, are about people becoming better, people learning something new, something fresh, something to help carry them from this ending to their next beginning.

This is one of my criticisms with mainline (evangelical Protestant) Christianity, today. I don't think we're doing a good job of educating and empowering people to live as 'Christian beginners' (the hopeful perspective); all too often, there's just a whole-heck-of-a-lot-of 'Christan enders' (the fearful perspective). And that's not a good end to be on, if you catch my drift. That's the end of the playing field where people (sometimes) are bullied, harassed, and slaughtered because of difference. Because they're an 'other.' Not just an 'other' in dress or lifestyle, but in belief, in their view on how life's going to end (if they believe there's an ending at all).

It's a travesty so many people boast and bicker over how it's all going to end. I wonder what would happen if instead, these 'Christian enders' lived life, humbly, as 'Christian beginners'. Beginners, like most children, are open to life, open to change, open to new experiences. Their mind is a race, running after knowledge and pleasures and excitement. Each day is a wonder. The future is full, wide, open (similar to how heaven is described as--which is upsetting because we're told we won't get there or experience anything like this until we're dead). Beginners are rarely proud because they don't know enough of something to be so prideful. They're in a perpetual state of learning, forming, growing. Wouldn't it be nice to be known (as Christians) for this? To be seen as someone who lives each day fully, each day faithfully, each day truthfully? To be someone who doesn't waste any new beginning with talk and talk and talk over (how they think) it's all going to end?

I wonder how much better it would have been for my K-5 Sunday School teachers--instead of sharing with us all about 'the end'-- to have shared with us on how to live life (in all its preciousness), beginning with today. To have shared how to get along with those who believe differently from us (and not be told they're going to hell or that we should tell them they're going to hell). I wonder what America--and the world would look like now--if we were taught (from the impressionable age of 5) to love the 'others' we come across each and every day, and to pray for others' happiness and well-being more than we pray for our own.

To put it plainly, what would've happened if we children were raised as 'hopeful beginners' rather than 'fearful enders'? How much different would we be today? Or more important, how much better?

'The Tree of Life' as a Psalm of Lament

Terrence Malick's new film, The Tree of Life, is a strange thing of beauty. Nothing can really prepare you for what you see. In it, life is in the details. It's about nothing, yet everything (as well as nothingness and everythingness). It's not a story, but contains within it a million tiny stories. Like the picture/poster to the left illustrates, it's a film about new life, new creation, beginnings, taking steps, growing up. Walking through the chaos in the cosmos, so to speak. Yet, it's also about the lines and creases on the bottom of our feet. They get dirty, messy. They age. We age. From the groaning of creation (via God, evolution and nature) Malick whisks us away into a dark (but beautifully lit) world. Generational sin is there. Goodness is there. Grace is there.

The Tree of Life is like the perfect/ultimate 'Psalm of Lament' film. It captures, in so many ways, the pain, the screams, the disappointments in life (to the good and bad of us--which is all of us, at some point). No one is exempt. Everyone suffers. Some of us, suffer a hell of a lot more. Yet, like the Jewish and Egyptian Wisdom Literature traditions teach us (e.g., the Old Testament Writings), after the storm comes the sun. And Malick captures this beautiful sun(set) and sun(rise) over and over, again and again. Could Malick be suggesting something here? Something about this glowing sun over a suffering setting? Simply put, it seems to be a daily reminder to him (and to all of us) that pain is not eternal. Like the Psalms of Lament express, 'joy comes in the morning.' Heartache will not win out. Suffering will, eventually, end.

Yet, some endings (as the film's beginning reveals) are the hardest on those left behind. So how to cope? How to go on? How to survive? How to grow up with a conscience full of sorrow, regret, deep loss? And how, if ever, can you let it all go? Should you let it all go? Can you forget the painful past, even when riding the elevator up a glass-highrise tower at the age of 50?

In Buddhism, the writings talk about 'the way to the end of suffering.' In a strange, mystical sense, The Tree of Life tries to explore this way, this path, this journey through time--from birth to death. By the film's end, you'll feel as though you've re-lived your own life, too. And even if you don't feel so much for the characters, you see (by the film's end) that the characters you're watching are really fragments of yourself. Fragments of your past lives. Past selves. The ones you've been and lost through the sands of time. Those selves that can be found walking around in the desert searching for a place to call home.

The metaphor of the 'home' is a powerful one in The Tree of Life. It's where life is conceived, where joy swings, and where cruelty lurks. It's also one that (in the end) is lost. Abandoned. Gone. Never to return to again (at least, not in this life, not in this world). Why is that? Garden State talked about home being an 'imaginary place'. This is, according to that film, what defines a family: "a group of people that miss the same imaginary place." There are echoes of this understanding of home all throughout The Tree of Life. It's like a childhood portal where everything looks beautiful but feels tragic. The kind of tragic look that comes when you visit a place that no longer exists.

But that's not all this film is about. I think one of its biggest themes is wonder (a word that's even uttered a few times by its characters). Its the film's own understanding of awe. The way the film's wonder perceives nature and the evolution of humanity that surrounds it. This wonder feels alive, and new. It's like the film is seeing these images for the very first time. That freshness, that child-like-life angle of perception, is captivating. You start to imagine what a baby must be thinking when he/she enters the world (if he/she could cognitively describe what a messy array of images they're encountering, daily). Thus, being fascinated with images (arresting images) is also one of the film's many wonders. A wonder it's asking its viewers to take seriously. To think. To feel. And most important of all, to see. But not just 'to see', but to see, anew.

For how many times have we looked at a tree and seen only a tree? Just a tree? Sitting there on top of a stump spitting out leaves for us to rake up, pick up, clean up?

And how many times, conversely, have we looked at a tree and seen (and thought, and breathed in) the word, the image, the object that is, life? The tree as life-giving? As nature's expression of grace? As the tree of life?

Not often enough.