Robert Shelton
Robert Shelton
Many of us wish our lives reflected the vibrancy of our favorite artists rather than the monotony of our normal, humdrum existence. Why is this? What is it about the way art makes us feel that we crave so deeply?
I think what we crave from art is often two more general things: The space of between and Quality. What’s important about these two things is that they can be experienced in any endeavor and are not limited to one medium or practice.
The space of between is a borrowed phrase from the philosopher Martin Buber which expresses the central tenet of his philosophy, the I-Thou relationship. The I-Thou relationship (as opposed to the I-It relationship) refers to the divine feeling that occurs when we do two things simultaneously:
1) Fully embrace ourselves
2) Fully embrace a divine other
This divine other can be a person, a tree, a sunset, anything that we release our objectification over and experience connection with. The space of between therefore is something we enter into like a dance rather than a destination.
What does this have to do with art? Maybe nothing! But, I find I experience this sort of connection more when I treat everyday parts of my life more like an artistic experience where I more readily allow myself to give full attention.
Capital “Q” Quality is a borrowed term from Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and is more easily understood by what it is not than by what it is. To Pirsig, the lack of Quality in the world can be felt as the anxiety and apathy mounting all around us in thousands of small ways when we operate without soul, love, craft, or respect for whatever it is we are doing. Tangibly speaking, the lack of quality is that nagging feeling we get when we think about our ever growing landfills that we are all aware of but have no real plan of what to do with so we just keep moving on.
When I think of someone who embodies the pursuit of Quality, I think of my brother who works as a carpenter. When I spend time with him I’m struck by someone who puts a great deal of love and respect into their craft. You feel in his work how much he cares about doing a good job the same way a performer deeply wants to captivate their audience. Through his craft he exercises creativity, care, and skill which is what art and Quality are all about. And, I really do think it makes the world a little less mad when professionals engage with their craft in this way.
Thinking about art as the cultivation of the space of between and Quality greatly expands what we consider art and who we consider artists. Many of us often feel, although we may deny it, that art is reserved for some group of spiritually endowed poets while we as “normal people” must continue in our slog of 9-5, bill-paying work. This perspective which we hold of ourselves and of art is incredibly reductive and harms our potential for recovery from this mad world and it is a form of objectification. Instead of pursuing life-giving quality and connection in what we are doing right now we falsely conclude that what we’re craving is out of reach and not for us because we can’t sing like Beyonce. This mindset seeks art as an object to be obtained, not as a practice to be engaged with.
Therefore in this framework, there’s nothing to get from art - only two things to practice:
1) Cultivating the space of between.
2) Pursuing Quality: the soulful living of life.
Our world is always and will always be suffering from a lack of connection and a lack of Quality and there is no one time fix. Embracing our day to day life with these two focuses makes us members of the sanity maintenance crew that keeps the good things going.
Obviously, in practice, this is an ideal and reality is much messier but I find this model (thinking of myself as always engaged in art and these two aspirations) makes my life better than worse. And I’m selfish trying to maximize my existence: trying to live with quality nets me a better life in the same way that eating my vegetables does. If vegetables didn’t make me feel better I wouldn’t eat them.
Finally, in order for all this to work, we need to believe there is spiritual partial credit while we practice the art of living. It’s not all or nothing—healing is a practice, and recovery often looks more like exercise than like taking a one-time pill. It is also not something we can do alone. The nurse, the plumber, the poet, the chef, the graphic designer, hell, even the politician, are all part of each other’s healing. We can find this healing by embracing the art in whatever we do by cultivating the space of between and pursuing Quality.