Hello, world. Long time no see! I missed you.
Today, I'd like you to pitch in a little effort here. I'm catching some verbal flak, mostly from those who never knew what a clue was, let alone had one of their very own. Give me a little help. I'd be grateful.
So, if you would please... look around you. Think (look, I know it's hard, but you can't use AI for this, nor a computer or calculator of any kind beyond the brain you presumable were born with between your ears).
I'll wait a few minutes. Maybe play a game of solitaire. * humming off key *
...
Okay, got it? Let's resume.
You're probably sitting on a seat of some kind. You're using a device to read this. Maybe you have a beverage, possibly in a nice thermal container, and a snack. In the area around you are numerous decorative items, some of them rather clever and entertaining. There's possibly a radio or television, maybe a computer monitor with sound nearby. Not far away, vehicles pass by, the passengers in designer clothing as unseeing of you as if you were truly invisible, but it's deliberate. Down the way, church bells are ringing, playing a melancholy tune loud enough to drown out most conversations. Someone is talking about vacation, scheduling a tour of Europe to see museums and other cultural sites, even an anthropological dig with gorgeous mosaics and some interesting burial facilities, catacombs and graveyards.
Do you know what all these things have in common? Guess. Go on, take a moment.
(I'm laughing here, I confess, because the answer is so easy. There hasn't been a moment of human history or even prehistory without some similar forms of this. But I'll shut up and give you a little more time. * humming off key again * )
...
Surely that's long enough. What's your answer?
No, it isn't that they're all expensive, though that's true, too. That's the end of the story, though, not the thing that brought them all into being.
I'll take it easy on you. My ribs ache from laughing, so I'll switch to tears. Yes, your assumptions hurt me that much. By bedtime, I won't be able to wiggle. All my spoons* used up. Such is life.
The answer is simply the arts. Specifically, human made.
The seat was designed by someone, the same being true of the device, inside and out. Imagination. Culinary art came up with the drink and snack, and that thermal container got its outward appearance by design, also. Artists made those clever and entertaining items of decor, as well. The radio, television, or computer monitor, ditto, and the content on it... yes, actors, VoiceOver artists, musicians, singers, actors, and a plethora of technicians backed them up with sound and light painting. The same goes for the vehicles, designer clothing and the church bells. Taking a vacation without the arts would be difficult, especially a tour of museums and other cultural sites, even burial facilities, catacombs and graveyards. We, as a species, reach for the creative in all aspects of life and history.
Until recently, those things were all created of humans. Until a few humans figured they could make more more more more more and more, and thereby, more more more (oh, heck, you get the idea) money by having artificial creators.
Yeah, like a plastic apple tastes like apple pie and will sustain the body and soul. Spoiler: It won't.
What it's doing is removing the souls of those who do these things. Without anesthesia. Cruel? Yes, absolutely.
In some respects, artists are healers. Every discipline, every medium, every perspective offers strength to someone, somewhere. If not the creator themselves, then their audience, whoever that is. Most of the time, it's both.
At the roots of religion is a form of spiritualism often made fun of by the ignorant... scratch that... I mean, the truly stupid. Ignorance can be changed. Stupidity cannot. These people not only don't care, they don't care if you care. As long as they get what they want: (spoiler) more.
I refer to what's commonly known as shamanism. The word "shaman" originates from an area in the Siberian region populated by the Tungus people and some associated parties. It refers to an internally spiritualism embraced by mostly indigenous peoples the world around, and alludes to, in part at least, "wounded healers"**. It's a Way, a philosophy, not a religion of itself.
Dig far enough into any religion, and you'll find it there. And art of every kind imaginable.
I don't believe it's possible to know true spiritualism and not feel it in art. The translations are clearer than any printed or spoken language. I also believe it's not possible to make art without feeling that as a deep spiritualism. It's that still place in one's soul where we go to recharge and make magic out of real things around us.
Being in the soul's zone is well known to those who sit Zen. The Dalai Lama knows it. The sand artists know it, Puebloan or Himalayan born. The same goes for a rock star on a stage, the timid en plein aire painter in a city park, or the actor portraying a dying soldier for the stage or camera. I'm sure the Pope knows it from his meditations and prayers. Every parent who has walked a colicky baby through the night without giving up faith knows too.
That spark of spirit able to warm whole continents of the lost isn't in a machine. Deus ex machina is only a lame plot device used when all else fails. It's about as charming as a cliffhanger with no resolution, no ending, even offered. It's a cheat.
There's a reason why homemade food tastes better than machine made. Precise skill isn't programmed in. Hand crafted things made by a person who takes soul deep pride in what they do? They last. Just like there's a reason why going to a live concert is so exhilarating: the artist's very being is right there, close enough to absorb a bit of the spirit of and maybe even touch. (Groupies aside. Different story.)
If you would, as John Gillespie, Jr., wrote in High Flight, "reach out and touch the face of God", you have to accept that creation of beauty comes before none of us until it is born in the heart of an artist. Or for that matter, accept that sarcasm is of itself an art. (See F.R. Higgins' Song for the Clatter-Bones.)
My point here is that every artist is in some respect a priest of their own calling: the art they've embraced came to them because of open wounds, though not necessarily easily visible ones. Their pain and struggles shapes every line in song or sculpture or painting. It gives the swan dancers grace in ballet, hard bought by physical stress up to and including crippled feet bound into delicate looking slippers that are anything but fragile.
Wounded healers are artists and vice versa. There's no priesthood hierarchy or golden crown for it, no irrational following. They simply are.
While a good many artists do make financial success of their work, the vast majority don't. You can look at a crowd, seeking the next Albert Einstein, until your eyes bleed and it won't work. Sculptors get dirty... rock dust, clay, welding blowback. Many musicians and singers go no farther than their neighbor's porches for a stage. A child who can do a terrific caricature will no doubt be encouraged to "get a real job" in a factory by well meaning adults, never knowing it takes a certain kind of genius to see the rudely comic truth in portraiture. Most art winds up on the proverbial fridge door... wherever it lands, if it isn't beaten out of the artist by whatever fate has in store for the creator.
It makes me snort (in derision, I assure you) to see highly religious people decry art and artists, when raising both hands up for the entity they believe made everything and everyone, hoping for of all things, profit to fall into their sweaty palms. Hate the child of the maker, and you hate the maker... however far back you'd like to trace that thought, well, be my guest.
Most creatives are also disabled in some way. Physically, mentally, emotionally. It's as if for one path destroyed, the sun comes out to shine on a new and different Way.
For those who say magic isn't real, I snort again. Magic, or if you want to call it miracles, is as natural as breathing. You see it when a child dances in the rain with a puppy, sharing an ice cream among friends, with a smile so bright it brings tears to your eyes. Especially if you're aware that half a world away, children are dying of starvation over, yes, greed.
Take a photo of that moment. Learn to sketch it. Write a poem about it, or a song. Read aloud at an open mic night, the local nursing home, or at the nearest veteran's hospital. Sit Zen on your porch during a spring shower. Knit a sweater or scarf and give it to a lonely homeless person.
It is in the pain of reality that the truth of hope winnows out. Skilled hands or none, it doesn't matter. It's the soul within that counts. If you can't understand what a wounded healer is, you haven't tried to be your best person. Try it. You might like it.
Just remember one crucial thing: Those who make the art shape the world around you. To the very last of them, each one is exploited for income by ten, twenty, fifty, five hundred, thousands, millions of non-creatives. Most of the exploiters make more money than the initial creatives, who have needs and dreams also.
Destroying the protections of copyright law isn't a victimless crime. It will backlash, and it will do it world wide. Stupid people will be stupid; like I said before, there's no cure for it. Stupidity is the foundation of warmongering, destruction, intolerance, and societal breakdown.
The opposite, the antidote? Compassion. Tolerance. Common sense as cooperation.
It's true that some people are so rich that all they have left is money. They can't eat it. Their fanaticism is so deep they're willing to die with it, for it, and by it, and for the rest of us to die ugly deaths, as well.
As George R. R. Martin said and illustrated well in his series A Song of Ice and Fire (you may know it as Game of Thrones), "Winter is coming."
It's time to choose your path. Choose well.
...
* See www.butyoudontlooksick.com and look for The Spoon Theory.
** If you need help, look to those who know pain for real assistance. Wounded healers know. They've been there.
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