Art and Myth

"Starry night over the Rhone" is one of my favourite paintings. Originally I bought a copy prospectively as a present for "my muse" but while it stood upon my shelf awaiting some day when I might satisfy her with it, it looking back at me every day, I began to fall in love with it, began to be drawn into its intense dreamy world; and then it hit me. Contemplating in the stillness of the image one day the stars, the river side lights, the reflections and the couple walking arm in arm looking out from the scene. All of a sudden I noticed in a flash the alignment between the stars, the street lights and the reflections. Are the reflections of the worldly lights, or the cosmic lights; or are they the same?

The alignment of world and celestial! This is what is so magical about this picture.

And, the couple arm in arm are they simply reflections of a world in flesh and bone, or arm in arm are they reflections of heavenly realms of love: or both? And the painting; is this not a reflection of that scene or one similar all those years ago, a reflection of unity and love itself? It is an image of profound symmetry and alluring depth.

But, and the reason for this blog... it is an array of colours only! How can there be so much to say of an array of colours? There is no river here, no lights, and most absurd no people. Try and talk to them? They are dumb and souless, and yet I speak of love!

Yup, it's yet another illusion, yet like the growing world of illusions in the blog, there seems nothing wrong in entering the illusion even while we know it is not real. This is what needs to be watched more closely... it is not the entering of illusion that is wrong, but just how easy it is to forget we have entered it.

Art is an accepted illusion with clear boundaries that we have learned to accept. We watch a film and while probably totally engrossed in it, we have learned how to escape its hold: it is "just" a film. Although we may feel a bit jittery for a while longer after watching a horror movie alone late at night: or we may feel the warm glow from a romance or positive movie for many days... even weeks after. I wonder what effect the use of guns and weapons in American films has. In "reality" I have and will never need access to a weapon. We have some air guns at home for target practice, for sport. This is not however how guns are portrayed in American films! Personally whenever an American picks up a gun in a film, I switch off - it is a culture so alien to me that I cannot relate to it - it is purely fiction. I wonder tho whether all children switch off so readily! If you walk away continuing the illusion that a gun really can achieve anything then problems are starting. Even the governments seem to believe this illusion: War is an ancient myth which people still haven't escaped from: sadly the movie still goes on.

Adverts are even less defined. There is no car in a car advert, and what is displayed is complete illusion from start to finish, but do we really switch it off after the illusion ends? Clearly not since car companies consider it money well spent to continue making this "art".

Education contains a plethora of myth, and it is very hard to see the start and end. When we read history while we might say "this 'really' happened" the question we might be pushed on is "what" really happened? In recent history no one questions the missing World Trade Centre or did such a building ever exist - maybe World Trade Cent-er (anyway that big building that isn't in New York any more). However if someone says in the history books "a central American office building" and someone else says "an icon of American global imperialism" clearly we have vastly different political views of the same event. And if someone else says "life has been difficult I lost my mother in that tragedy" and someone else says "God be praised against the odds my mother was saved" we have two completely different stories. There are as many views as can be thought of an event which seems to be just just one thing! And of course there is the governments "use" of the event which is another view.

So one truth, but a million stories. And the problem for humans it seems is to find which story "is" the truth. But as this phase of this blog unfolds it appears: no story is ever the truth. The truth is actually quite profound and while we may tell stories about the world (as indeed I am doing here) which are all very illuminating and informative: when we turn to Truth we need to switch off ALL the illusions: forget all the stories, close the book, turn off the radio, the TV, the phone, put down the newspaper, burn our qualifications, forget our name, and where we were born, forget what people think of us: get out of bed, end the slumbers of day dreaming, open the curtains, indeed open the window and look again at the stars that shine upon high, and the street lights that shine upon low, and the painting that reflects the light betwixt the two.

=== added 27th June

On second thoughts maybe the river is the key ingredient of the picture. The steady flow of the Rhone symbolic for the steady flow of process in Van Gogh that gave arise to this picture and which continues in my own mind giving rise even to this blog addition. It is the river which refelects the river side lights and the stars: it is in the river of the world that all things become manifested and reflected, a great river which is both the canvas upon which the world is set apart and which at once is brought together : the universal cosmic love?