9 January 2017, 9.21pm.
I've been pondering (so what else is new?): I think I'm starting to get an idea of why so many artists commit suicide or get addicted to any number of things.
It's lonely. But not just in that there-are-no-people-around or I'm-always-on-tour-away-from-my-family way. It goes deeper than that. I'm noticing increasingly that people in general don't think deeply -- but I do, and that one difference puts a disconnect between us. I guess I always sort of knew that in the back of my mind... and the fact that since I was a child people have remarked on my (sometimes) acute observations and how 'smart' I am should have tipped me off. 'Smart,' I have learned, is code for 'thinks about deep things.' This, in turn, is code for 'she's weird -- don't hang around her.' Even as a kid I was lonely. I thought it was just because I lived out in the middle of nowhere.
I'm realising, though, that there's this deep-seated loneliness that almost defies explanation. I myself didn't even realise it was there until this school year, though I've certainly felt it all my life. It's this longing to connect, on a soul-to-soul level, to someone, anyone, who thinks about deep things too. Someone who understands why it's important to feel, why we need music and dance and paintings and beauty and stories, what it's like for your heart and soul to ache and not know why. Someone who can see -- at least sometimes -- through my eyes and understand the hollowness that never quite goes away, even when I'm happy and content. This is probably why I have such an obsession with Daniel Amos, David Meece, and Prodigal -- because they saw it too. They feel it too. There are at least three other figures who have ever existed who get it. They can take the words out of my mouth -- and sometimes that is solace enough.
If this is the mind of the typical artist -- if this depth and these feelings are what makes the artist an artist -- no wonder so many of them die young. No wonder so many are addicted to anything that numbs the mind, that turns off these feelings that sometimes seem to hold us hostage whose existence nobody is willing to acknowledge. And suicide -- well, that's the ultimate 'off' switch. But is it really better to live without feeling? It would be easier, yes... but is it really better? This is the question we face more often than we feel we are allowed to admit.
This whole thing is even trickier as an artist with depression. Where does one end and the other begin? What level of deep-seated melancholy is 'normal' and when should I start to get concerned? Am I doomed to spend the rest of my life always seeing the ends of things clearly enough that I can never truly enjoy the beginnings and the middles?
Showing posts with label addiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label addiction. Show all posts
15 January 2017
17 December 2014
Childlike Wonder
Something clicked for me the other day. Why I do this. Why I want to do this -- this art thing. Creating things.
I was listening to Michael W. Smith's brilliant orchestral piece Glory Battle. I have wanted to choreograph this since I first heard it this past summer. I have blocking and theme all figured out -- all I'm lacking is time to flesh out the actual steps. But that day I was listening to it, trying to wake myself up so I could study. I never realised before how consistently that piece gives me chills. I swear I listened to it twenty times. I sat there on my bed for literally forty-five minutes and just kept hitting the back button every time it finished. I couldn't stop. I kept thinking, Okay, one more time. Okay now, last time. Now this really is the last time. But I kept hitting that button like an addict. I wanted to hear it again, see the dance in my mind's eye again, feel that orchestra again. Like a little kid watching his favourite film or playing his favourite song over and over and over again because it's so captivating and big and can't be experienced all in one go.
Once that little kid was me. And the song was David Meece's This Time. I could not get enough of it. It wasn't a 'kids' song,' but it absolutely captured my four-year-old mind. Perhaps it was because it wasn't a kids' song, deliberately dumbed down to pander to a younger mind. It made me feel happy and sad all the same time, and one listen could not sort through it all. I distinctly remember even as a child trying to articulate why I liked it so much, what exactly it made me feel -- but I couldn't. In a way I still can't. You can analyse the song structure and the theory and production all you like, but it doesn't explain why my soul seems to get bigger and simultaneously smaller when I hear it. It doesn't explain why the world shrinks and expands before me, why snowflakes seem to glitter brighter and yet so do the stars.
This is why -- or at least part of it. I want to give a little kid that moment -- that moment where the soul is simultaneously crushed and flying. Even if the old people don't care, if there can be a little kid that will watch this choreography on YouTube obsessively not because it's my work, but because it awakes in him a wonder and awe he can't explain away, that will be satisfactory. Emotionally, at least. (I do still need to put food on the table somehow. I don't know how that works yet.) I want to give them the same experience I had -- that sense of awe and wonder, as I build on the foundation of those who gave me that same experience. And then may the child go out and do the same for the next little child.
But is it art for art's sake? Wonder does fade. But that path back to the great artists of history that started with David Meece turned out to be a good one. From there I ended up largely in the hands of artists who knew that the wonder they create is elusive and fleeting and that it fades. They had already found -- and directed me to -- the source of the awe and the wonder that never fades. May I build on their foundation and direct the next generation of artists the way that those before have guided me.
I was listening to Michael W. Smith's brilliant orchestral piece Glory Battle. I have wanted to choreograph this since I first heard it this past summer. I have blocking and theme all figured out -- all I'm lacking is time to flesh out the actual steps. But that day I was listening to it, trying to wake myself up so I could study. I never realised before how consistently that piece gives me chills. I swear I listened to it twenty times. I sat there on my bed for literally forty-five minutes and just kept hitting the back button every time it finished. I couldn't stop. I kept thinking, Okay, one more time. Okay now, last time. Now this really is the last time. But I kept hitting that button like an addict. I wanted to hear it again, see the dance in my mind's eye again, feel that orchestra again. Like a little kid watching his favourite film or playing his favourite song over and over and over again because it's so captivating and big and can't be experienced all in one go.
Once that little kid was me. And the song was David Meece's This Time. I could not get enough of it. It wasn't a 'kids' song,' but it absolutely captured my four-year-old mind. Perhaps it was because it wasn't a kids' song, deliberately dumbed down to pander to a younger mind. It made me feel happy and sad all the same time, and one listen could not sort through it all. I distinctly remember even as a child trying to articulate why I liked it so much, what exactly it made me feel -- but I couldn't. In a way I still can't. You can analyse the song structure and the theory and production all you like, but it doesn't explain why my soul seems to get bigger and simultaneously smaller when I hear it. It doesn't explain why the world shrinks and expands before me, why snowflakes seem to glitter brighter and yet so do the stars.
This is why -- or at least part of it. I want to give a little kid that moment -- that moment where the soul is simultaneously crushed and flying. Even if the old people don't care, if there can be a little kid that will watch this choreography on YouTube obsessively not because it's my work, but because it awakes in him a wonder and awe he can't explain away, that will be satisfactory. Emotionally, at least. (I do still need to put food on the table somehow. I don't know how that works yet.) I want to give them the same experience I had -- that sense of awe and wonder, as I build on the foundation of those who gave me that same experience. And then may the child go out and do the same for the next little child.
But is it art for art's sake? Wonder does fade. But that path back to the great artists of history that started with David Meece turned out to be a good one. From there I ended up largely in the hands of artists who knew that the wonder they create is elusive and fleeting and that it fades. They had already found -- and directed me to -- the source of the awe and the wonder that never fades. May I build on their foundation and direct the next generation of artists the way that those before have guided me.
29 March 2013
Music Day (Part One)
I had a different song planned for today, but at the Good Friday church service this morning, they showed this video.
It completely wrecked me.
Seriously, go watch it. You will almost certainly end up in tears, but please, go watch it. It will stretch your brain like it has never been stretched before. Go ahead. This post will still be here when you're done.
Watched it? Good.
I don't know how much you know about what happened that day, so I'll try to explain it a little. Then the video might make more sense -- in its crazy seemingly-backwards way.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In six literal days. (I know most people refuse to believe that, but then again, you could believe all you want that grass is orange and that wouldn't make it true. I'm not going to get into the debate here because it'll detract from the point I'm making.)
This God is a powerful God -- think about it. He spoke and the entire freaking universe showed up. We can't even find the end of this universe, and God holds it all in the palm of His hand (you know what that means? We can't even measure the span of God's palm, never mind God Himself. That's how big He is). This God is a holy God -- perfect in every way, even ways our brains can't even think about. This God is unchangeable -- He has been and always will be the same. And this God is a just God -- crimes against His holy law (based, by the way, on His own perfection) are punished justly.
And the just punishment is death.
God made us so we could bask in Him. But rather than basking in Him, we spat in His face. We continue to deliberately and repeatedly break His law (as laid out in Exodus chapter 20 -- commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments). So we are now under the death sentence. This death is worse than anything else imaginable -- complete and eternal separation from God (and that is what actual Hell is). We will have no access to Him. The momentary pain of physical death is nothing compared to being completely cut off from the source of beauty and meaning and purpose and everything wonderful (namely, God).
But... God is also a God of love and grace. He forgives.
But how can a unchanging and flawlessly just God just up and forgive somebody? The crime has been committed and the guilty party must pay. If God were to just turn a blind eye to it, He would no longer be just and He would no longer be unchangeable. God would then be weak and worthless.
He is forgiving. That cannot change. He is just. That cannot change.
Now what?
Somebody had to pay. So God fathered a baby (Jesus) who had a human mother (Mary). Because the holy unchanging God was Jesus' father (rather than a human father who automatically carries the sin nature), Jesus was completely untainted by sin. And Jesus was going to pay the price for the crimes of we the humans so God could then legally be able to forgive us while still serving perfect justice -- after all, the price would then be paid.
And the price was separation from God. So God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son, would have to be separated. Understand that they had been together for eternity past, up until that point. Father and Son had never, ever been separated.
But when Jesus was in His early thirties, around the year 30 A.D. they were separated for the first time. Whenever we humans have trouble here on Earth, we can always call out to God. We know He hears us. But on the day when Jesus' entire weight hung on a cross, supported only by three measly nails, after He had spent all night being shuffled back and forth as a political pawn in a sham trial and beaten and mocked multiple times, after all His friends on earth had abandoned Him, He could not call out to God. God would not listen to Him. In fact, God was pouring out all His just wrath that was meant for all humankind on Jesus. Not only was God watching Jesus die, He was actively crushing Jesus to death Himself. (Are you seeing the parallel to the video now?)
God knew even then that the overwhelming majority of the people on that proverbial train wouldn't care. They would remain angry, bitter, and selfish. They would remain addicts and thieves and liars and cheats. They would continue to spit in His face and actively try to destroy the knowledge of His very existence. How easy it would have been to not pull the lever, to save his son and let the passengers on the train die.
But then, of course, He would no longer have been unchanging and perfect.
I've been exposed to this knowledge for my entire life. But watching that video today, feeling, however vaguely, the emotions of the father, suddenly this whole thing perplexes me. Why? Why would God do something so seemingly crazy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful God did it. I'm thankful that I have the option of new life, life with Him rather than forever separated from Him. But... why? What would drive Him to save the addict on the train, who thinks of nothing but where she's getting the next hit? What would drive Him to give a second chance at life to the people who wouldn't care -- if they even knew at all -- that He had had to kill His own Son to do it?
All I could see as I watched that video was me -- the addict on the train. Because I am an addict. I'm addicted to having people think nicely of me. I'm addicted to getting things my way -- oh, I'll be 'polite' about it, but woe betide you if you 'ruin' my plans. I'm addicted to my downtime. I'm addicted to my pride, my reputation. I'm addicted to the need to have everything perfect, whether or not I'm actually responsible for the project. I'm addicted to the need to be right, to win an argument. I'm addicted to the need to be everybody's darling. And you already know of my music addiction. And there are so many others. I will do almost anything to get -- or keep -- all of this. If I'm brutally honest, God is just barely in the top ten on my priority list, below all this other stuff. And still He crushed His Son so that I may live.
I still can't wrap my head around why He would do something like this. I don't know if I will ever be able to.
I don't have any children, but if that had been me in that father's place, I would most definitely have let the addict (and all the other comfortably seated people) die if it meant I would get one more chance to hug my child.
Well... like I said at the beginning of this post, I had a different song planned, but ever since watching that video, this song has been running through my head. This is the state I'm in right now.
Title: Broken
Artist: Altar Boys
Album: Against The Grain
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.
I've done what's evil in Your sight
And my heart is crumbling.
It completely wrecked me.
Seriously, go watch it. You will almost certainly end up in tears, but please, go watch it. It will stretch your brain like it has never been stretched before. Go ahead. This post will still be here when you're done.
Watched it? Good.
I don't know how much you know about what happened that day, so I'll try to explain it a little. Then the video might make more sense -- in its crazy seemingly-backwards way.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In six literal days. (I know most people refuse to believe that, but then again, you could believe all you want that grass is orange and that wouldn't make it true. I'm not going to get into the debate here because it'll detract from the point I'm making.)
This God is a powerful God -- think about it. He spoke and the entire freaking universe showed up. We can't even find the end of this universe, and God holds it all in the palm of His hand (you know what that means? We can't even measure the span of God's palm, never mind God Himself. That's how big He is). This God is a holy God -- perfect in every way, even ways our brains can't even think about. This God is unchangeable -- He has been and always will be the same. And this God is a just God -- crimes against His holy law (based, by the way, on His own perfection) are punished justly.
And the just punishment is death.
God made us so we could bask in Him. But rather than basking in Him, we spat in His face. We continue to deliberately and repeatedly break His law (as laid out in Exodus chapter 20 -- commonly referred to as the Ten Commandments). So we are now under the death sentence. This death is worse than anything else imaginable -- complete and eternal separation from God (and that is what actual Hell is). We will have no access to Him. The momentary pain of physical death is nothing compared to being completely cut off from the source of beauty and meaning and purpose and everything wonderful (namely, God).
But... God is also a God of love and grace. He forgives.
But how can a unchanging and flawlessly just God just up and forgive somebody? The crime has been committed and the guilty party must pay. If God were to just turn a blind eye to it, He would no longer be just and He would no longer be unchangeable. God would then be weak and worthless.
He is forgiving. That cannot change. He is just. That cannot change.
Now what?
Somebody had to pay. So God fathered a baby (Jesus) who had a human mother (Mary). Because the holy unchanging God was Jesus' father (rather than a human father who automatically carries the sin nature), Jesus was completely untainted by sin. And Jesus was going to pay the price for the crimes of we the humans so God could then legally be able to forgive us while still serving perfect justice -- after all, the price would then be paid.
And the price was separation from God. So God, the Father, and Jesus, the Son, would have to be separated. Understand that they had been together for eternity past, up until that point. Father and Son had never, ever been separated.
But when Jesus was in His early thirties, around the year 30 A.D. they were separated for the first time. Whenever we humans have trouble here on Earth, we can always call out to God. We know He hears us. But on the day when Jesus' entire weight hung on a cross, supported only by three measly nails, after He had spent all night being shuffled back and forth as a political pawn in a sham trial and beaten and mocked multiple times, after all His friends on earth had abandoned Him, He could not call out to God. God would not listen to Him. In fact, God was pouring out all His just wrath that was meant for all humankind on Jesus. Not only was God watching Jesus die, He was actively crushing Jesus to death Himself. (Are you seeing the parallel to the video now?)
God knew even then that the overwhelming majority of the people on that proverbial train wouldn't care. They would remain angry, bitter, and selfish. They would remain addicts and thieves and liars and cheats. They would continue to spit in His face and actively try to destroy the knowledge of His very existence. How easy it would have been to not pull the lever, to save his son and let the passengers on the train die.
But then, of course, He would no longer have been unchanging and perfect.
I've been exposed to this knowledge for my entire life. But watching that video today, feeling, however vaguely, the emotions of the father, suddenly this whole thing perplexes me. Why? Why would God do something so seemingly crazy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful God did it. I'm thankful that I have the option of new life, life with Him rather than forever separated from Him. But... why? What would drive Him to save the addict on the train, who thinks of nothing but where she's getting the next hit? What would drive Him to give a second chance at life to the people who wouldn't care -- if they even knew at all -- that He had had to kill His own Son to do it?
All I could see as I watched that video was me -- the addict on the train. Because I am an addict. I'm addicted to having people think nicely of me. I'm addicted to getting things my way -- oh, I'll be 'polite' about it, but woe betide you if you 'ruin' my plans. I'm addicted to my downtime. I'm addicted to my pride, my reputation. I'm addicted to the need to have everything perfect, whether or not I'm actually responsible for the project. I'm addicted to the need to be right, to win an argument. I'm addicted to the need to be everybody's darling. And you already know of my music addiction. And there are so many others. I will do almost anything to get -- or keep -- all of this. If I'm brutally honest, God is just barely in the top ten on my priority list, below all this other stuff. And still He crushed His Son so that I may live.
I still can't wrap my head around why He would do something like this. I don't know if I will ever be able to.
I don't have any children, but if that had been me in that father's place, I would most definitely have let the addict (and all the other comfortably seated people) die if it meant I would get one more chance to hug my child.
Well... like I said at the beginning of this post, I had a different song planned, but ever since watching that video, this song has been running through my head. This is the state I'm in right now.
Title: Broken
Artist: Altar Boys
Album: Against The Grain
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.
I've done what's evil in Your sight
And my heart is crumbling.
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