The House of Art

The house of art is built with many grants - and there are those who value their new extensions more than the art itself. Therefore I must ask where does the value really come from? Am I alone in thinking that the artist is the higher mind which is housed in no facility at all except its sphere of truth? I approach this artist with trepidation because he is really myself and yet I cannot claim his glories as my own. This is because the higher mind - the artist within - defies classification; his name cannot be put on an application form. He belongs to the pure realm of ideas which no one can identify except in a conscious dream, a higher transport of creativity. It causes a kind of pain, like a dazzling by a brilliant light, to hold that crystal sphere in your hands - even if such a thing were possible. Therefore an artist will stop talking and create.

And yet it becomes necessary at a certain point to say 'I am that' - I can't deny authorship any more than I can say authority is given to me. No true writer will derive his or her credibility from grants or publications. You know if you are what you have been given - given in a higher sense, as the angels give their light. I know the angels are there - they border on the area where the true self lives. They will find their way into earthly creativity because they are a first power, a potent force. They don't need to be acknowledged except in the artist's originality and truthfulness. But they would like us to come to the point of saying 'I am that' - I am one of you: a being among beings who derive their shining from the realm of the eternal and from their own efforts to get there.

Yes, we live in a world of grants and tenureship and publication - and there are many who would like to throw me and people like me out of their extensions. Those are the ones who would populate the world with stylistic abstractions. They admire and acclaim each other; they review each other's books. But their efforts are not works of the flawless deep; they are jewels of the human mind as it exists purely on earth - not in the higher sphere.

Inevitably one looks foolish saying this. I might be accused of being jealous of the glittering prizes. But in the end the glittering prizes amount to nothing more than a sack of earth - and I will not flout my talents for that. Have I earned the right to speak? The only judge of that is one born blind who sees with sightless eyes what's bought and sold.

Jay

©landar 2011. All rights reserved


Image: Angel from Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci