Art As Escape : In The Spotlight

Arthur Schopenhauer, philosophy’s most notable pessimist, once blackly said: “There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over”. The notion that life, for all its swings and roundabouts, is filled with suffering and tribulations that we must endure until the sweet release of death, is a common but unpopular theory.

We all wish to believe that we are here for a better purpose than to kill time; the religious have it easy. They can be satisfied with the good word of an old book and the unwavering belief that some all-powerful (though, considering the trials befalling the world on a daily basis, largely useless) deity has them under a rose-coloured microscope; their back-breaking shifts at the grocery store and impoverished trailer bursting with hungry children and sick cats will all be worth it, because endless, fruitful heavenly bliss awaits.

The atheist, however, is not as content with this assumption. This is not to say there is a large divide in intelligence; I am not of the belief that religious people are stupid simply because they believe something very different to me. I have met many mouth breathing, cretinous ignorami in my time; both godless and god…. full alike.

The trouble lies in an atheistic purpose; what is the point of our seventy-odd years on this Earth if all that awaits is blackness forever? For what do we suffer, besides the animal instinct to survive? And, like the good upstanding creatures we are, man created art.

Obviously human misery will befall each and every one of us at some point; this is inevitable. Even from within our sphere of control- like where our money goes- we are at pains to keep the boat forever unrocked. If we are not destroying ourselves, or being trampled by our fellow man and woman, Mother Nature, that bitch goddess, decides to get in the ring as well. And she packs a much stronger punch than you or I.

So, for all this ongoing wretchedness, what is one to do? Some of us piss away our sorrows in dark, beer-stained alleys. Some of us take out physical admonishment against our fellow humans. Some of us add numbers, fix machines, cook, pour, ride, chop, shoot, drive or medicate.

Others- and this being the heart of this windy rantlet- paint, or sing, or write, or sculpt, or bang a drum, or strum a string. For some, art- whatever one decides is art- has made human life bearable.

“The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting” said Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh retreated into painting from what he called a “gloomy and cold and sterile” childhood. The story repeats itself the world over. Michelangelo’s reputation has been that of a solitary and melancholy man.

Legendary satirist Bill Hicks used his vantage and profession as a stand-up act to vent his antagonism at the idiocies and cruel underhandedness of his fellow animal. His shows would, at times, become frightening for all his rage and vitriol. He died in 1994 but has left a cult following in his wake; one wherein fans of Hicks look to his live CDs and DVDs for a reassuring, sometimes violent, pat on the back- someone else feels this way, too.

There are the endless cases, too, wherein stage actors, comedians, musicians, singers and even those untouchables on the silver screen only feel free from their personal constrains and the oft-deafening roar of life’s fruitlessness when in their respective element.

Whether punching jokes out to a room of guffawing pub patrons, or wailing their heart out to a stadium sardine-d with screaming, screaming, screaming fans; there is peace at last. “On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.” 60s blues singer Janis Joplin famously said.

There is respite in the pursuit and fulfilment of creativity; for some, the worries and trials we must face in life become too gargantuan to simply drink or think away. We must retreat into our personal shell, a home-made cocoon wherein, whether on stage in front of a thousand people or alone but for a coloured canvas, one can truly feel safe, contended, bullet-proof.