Changed
I was reading a book review online and came upon this quote:
"For ten years in publishing I read, on average, four novels a week. Now the thought of reading fiction no longer appeals to me. It's more than that I'm too tired or that there's a war unfolding in Iraq. What keeps me from opening any of the new novels that friends from work send over is a feeling that fiction is hubris. With all of the real pain going on in the world, it strikes me as gratuitous, objectionable even, that writers feel a need to create tragedies. So many already exist."
Now books don't turn me off like this, but I'll admit something that does lately...movies with excessive violence or sadness. I get no amount of grief for this when renting movies with the sister or husband, they tend to like things sadistic. While I appreciate their iron stomachs and brain bleach ability, I can't take it anymore.
I can barely work up the guts to rewatch films where I know what freaking happens in them.
This doesn't change my love of horror movie artwork and set design, I just don't want to watch it if I wasn't there making the thing in the first place. I just keep thinking when I'm browsing Netflix or the movie rental place that there is enough shit going on now, why would I want one of my escapes to make me feel sad? Simple? Probably. Lame? Well, that's like your opinion man.
I like a good cry and I like a good action film, and I'm all about a decent coming of age story. I just can't hack the "Hostel" or the "High Tension" or even the "Devil's Rejects." Even though if Rob Zombie needed me to carry his child for him, I would gladly give out all of my eggs like a dam Ovary ATM.
My problem is I keep thinking about what I saw, over and over. I can barely watch the news now. I gave up watching any films with rape scenes in them a long time ago. (Never even seen the ass rape scene in Pulp Fiction.) Either I'm going insane or well, I'm not sure. This makes me incredibly lame with my hardcore film loving buds. It also makes me feel like I'm puporsely living in oblivion on current events. I just can't take it.
So there's my secret for the week. Can we still hang out?
posted by Kitten at 7:20:00 PM
2 Comments:
i think this somehow fits with what you are talking about.
i understand what you are feelin...
osho can have a tendency to oversimplify at times, but the point can still be well taken.
What is objective art?
Is creativity somehow related with meditation?
Osho:
Art can be divided into two parts. Ninety-nine percent of art is subjective art. Only one percent is objective art. The ninety-nine percent subjective art has no relationship with meditation. Only one percent objective art is based on meditation.
The subjective art means you are pouring your subjectivity onto the canvas, your dreams, your imaginations, your fantasies. It is a projection of your psychology. The same happens in poetry, in music, in all dimensions of creativity - you are not concerned with the person who is going to see your painting, not concerned what will happen to him when he looks at it; that is not your concern at all. Your art is simply a kind of vomiting. It will help you, just the way vomiting helps. It takes the nausea away, it makes you cleaner, makes you feel healthier. But you have not considered what is going to happen to the person who is going to see your vomit. He will become nauseous. He may start feeling sick.
Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso's painting for long. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a byproduct of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent of art belongs to that category.
Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw out, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness arises love, compassion. And out of this silence arises a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion - these are the qualities of meditation.
Meditation brings you to your very center. And your center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole existence. Only on the periphery we are different. As we start moving toward the center, we are one. We are part of eternity, a tremendously luminous experience of ecstasy that is beyond words. Something that you can be... but very difficult to express it. But a great desire arises in you to share it, because all other people around you are groping for exactly such experiences. And you have it, you know the path.
And these people are searching everywhere except within themselves - where it is! You would like to shout in their ears. You would like to shake them and tell them, "Open your eyes! Where are you going? Wherever you go, you go away from yourself. Come back home, and come as deep into yourself as possible."
This desire to share becomes creativity. Somebody can dance. There have been mystics - for example, Jalaluddin Rumi - whose teaching was not in words, whose teaching was in dance. He will dance. His disciples will be sitting by his side, and he will tell them, "Anybody who feels like joining me can join. It is a question of feeling. If you don't feel like, it is up to you. You can simply sit and watch."
But when you see a man like Jalaluddin Rumi dancing, something dormant in you becomes active. In spite of yourself you find you have joined the dance. You are already dancing before you become aware that you have joined it.
Even this experience is of tremendous value, that you have been pulled like a magnetic force. It has not been your mind decision, you have not weighed for pro and for against, to join or not to join, no. Just the beauty of Rumi's dance, his spreading energy, has taken possession of you. You are being touched. This dance is objective art.
And if you can continue - and slowly you will become more and more unembarrassed, more and more capable - soon you will forget the whole world. A moment comes, the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.
There are in India statues, which you have just to sit silently and meditate upon. Just look at those statues. They have been made by meditators in such a way, in such a proportion, that just looking at the statue, the figure, the proportion, the beauty... Everything is very calculated to create a similar kind of state within you. And just sitting silently with a statue of Buddha or Mahavira, you will come across a strange feeling, which you cannot find in sitting by the side of any Western sculpture.
All Western sculpture is sexual. You see the Roman sculpture: beautiful, but something creates sexuality in you. It hits your sexual center. It does not give you an uplift. In the East the situation is totally different. Statutes are carved, but before a sculptor starts carving statues he learns meditation. Before he starts playing on the flute he learns meditation. Before he starts writing poetry he learns meditation. Meditation is absolute necessity for any art; then the art will be objective.
Then, just reading few lines of a haiku, a Japanese form of a small poem - only three lines, perhaps three words - if you silently read it, you will be surprised. It is far more explosive that any dynamite. It simply opens up doors in your being.
Basho's small haiku I have beside the pond near my house. I love it so much, I wanted it to be there. So every time, coming and going.... Basho is one of the persons I have loved. Nothing much in it: An ancient pond.... It is not an ordinary poetry. It is very pictorial. Just visualize: An ancient pond. A frog jumps in.... You almost see the ancient pond! You almost hear the frog, the sound of its jump: Plop.
And then everything is silent. The ancient pond is there, the frog has jumped in, the sound of his jumping in has created more silence than before. Just reading it is not like any other poetry that you go on reading - one poem, another poem... No, you just read it and sit silently. Visualize it. Close your eyes. See the ancient pond. See the frog. See it jumping in. See the ripples on the water. Hear the sound. And hear the silence that follows.
This is objective art.
Basho must have written it in a very meditative mood, sitting by the side of an ancient pond, watching a frog. And the frog jumps in. And suddenly Basho becomes aware of the miracle that sound is deepening the silence. The silence is more than it was before. This is objective art.
Unless you are a creator, you will never find real blissfulness. It is only by creating that you become part of the great creativity of the universe. But to be a creator, meditation is a basic necessity. Without it you can paint, but that painting has to be burned, it has not to be shown to others. It was good, it helped you unburden, but please, don't burden anybody else. Don't present it to your friends, they are not your enemies.
Objective art is meditative art, subjective art is mind art.
- from The Last Testament, Volume 3, #24
basically, what it comes down to is that we need more psycho-spiritual responsibility in art.
if artista are the weavers of tomorows dreams, they better start gettin a better, more visionary perspective.
it takes no balls and no imagination to create violence and suffering.
that is why i usually laugh at supposedly "experimental " art and music, as anyone with half a brain can see that it is usually ten times more pedestrian and juvenile than most other art simply so it can shock.
of course, there are always wonderful exception...like my favotite show WONDER SHOWZEN which seems to actually try to shock people into self realization.
i just know that as i look at the dvd's i own wanting to choose one to watch, i'm finding less and less interest in all of the negative fear based storytelling.
it gets old and exhausting.
so i'm with ya gurl!~
even though i've still got an iron stomach!
10:26 AM
I like things sadistic?
Yes, I did watch High Tension, but I didn't think my desire to watch it was based on wanting to see the female actor's character ended via make-belive murder. Instead, I thought I watched it due to the number of positive reviews the film received.
Do I really give you that much shit when it comes to renting movies? How often do I want to see violent movies?
I myself cannot tolerate watching too much violence anymore - "real," or "simulated". Yeah, I have the ability to eat food and watch video of medical procedures, or death scenes, but I rarely exercise that ability much anymore.
I DO, on the other hand, think it's funny watching video of medical procedures with you; especially ones that star you(LASIK procedure).
With the readers of this blog as my witnesses, I would like to apologize for my actions, and vow to no longer give you grief.
:)
1:17 PM
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