2 Short Aphorisms on Art & Magic

Artist No More…

I think it’s quite possible that we really don’t need the word Art anymore.

I am sort of half joking here. The reason we wouldn’t need art as a word is because it is at least partially a misnomer. Art is not really art. An artist might fashion a painting or a sculpture or a story, but to really get in there and give life to an image or a story or a song, it is a veritable wild hunt filled with accident, indescribable intuitions, luck, and a fortitude of perception and action worthy of living prey. 

If Art is alive it is Magic, plain and simple. None can control it, and none can faultlessly predict its future: shall we say it is Magic which propels the harmonic engines of culture into the millennia? 

The Heart of Matters

Though it is difficult to say really what the pristine form of Nature really is, it is fair to say that the actions of the many living beings on Earth figure into the overall magical weather in the tides of creation and destruction of our home planet. And so to be conscious of the origins and the connections of such a wide cross-section of creators and destructors, it is also fair to say that all life forms and lands should be celebrated and their fate taken into account in our magical works. 

The celebration of the individual human has had its day. Now is a wonderful time in our cultural history to look a little deeper into what our magic empowers: open the doors to the celebration of Earth and its many species of life. And maybe this is to say that in an age where information is so widely available, perhaps our arts should reflect this way of drawing together so many into a harmonious and realistic whole. Our works should perhaps reflect not the power of the individual but the deep, diverse and sublime otherness of each thing. Music would be a ritual of release and rejuvenation, a celebration of diversity in a complex musical landscape.