Art, Performance, and Life in God

Author: Thomas Lee Abshier

John: Mike, in our live concert yesterday from the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the pieces was Rachmaninov’s “Isle of the Dead” which he composed after observing a painting of the same name by Arnold Böcklin in 1883.  I asked Grok (AI) to show me a picture of that artwork.  Instead, Grok generated its own rendition of what it “thinks” such a painting should look like:

• Thomas: Grok certainly captured “the isle of death.”

John: The actual painting is this:

John: I looked it up because I wanted to see the visual of what inspired Rachmaninov to compose his piece of the same name!  Damn, he did a great job.  He wrote adjacent bars in different meters to capture the random swaying of the paddle boat against the ripples that lap at the boat.  The piece is all in one movement but very dramatic.  I had never heard it before.  You can probably find a recording on YouTube.  The music describes this scene of the boat arriving at the island with a coffin, then unloading and carrying the coffin, the final placement of the coffin, and then the little boat paddling away.  The music also hints at “what death might be like” – hinting that death MIGHT be better than life.  There is just enough hint to be mysterious.

• Thomas: Adjacent bars with different meters is a dramatic technique to capture swaying, which is incredibly difficult musically! The somber memorial of a coffin coming and going is striking in its step-by-step reality. The hint that death may be better than life has two implications: that a heavenly world awaits and that the peace of death is better than the struggle of life.

John: Before the concert, a preview showed their rehearsal of the piece.  Many conductors might say, “I want this section louder,” or offer other technical suggestions.  But the Berlin Phil conductor only described the scene and the emotion of the boat passenger and then left it up to the incredible musicians to interpret that scene and those emotions their way.  Wonderful artistic communication and musical results!

• Thomas: This is like method acting, where the actor attempts to become the character. https://poe.com/s/IqAsYwkIgtEiNVXfTFXc This raises the question of “what it is to be a person.”
• This brings up the issue of character development. We devise different methods of coping with reality, which typically become habitual. That set of behaviors becomes identified as the person’s personality. I think the happiest/most joyful life arises when we choose Godliness as the pattern we attempt to emulate as we grow from the flexible shape of the child to the carved-in-stone character of adulthood.
• Ideally, our parents should teach, and we should choose to develop character habits pleasing to God, which of course is taught in the Bible. We could do the same thing divorced from the Bible if we knew for a fact what the best way of behaving in reality was. Still, we don’t, so following God (reading the words repeatedly and getting insights on how they apply to our circumstances) is the time-honored way of learning God’s way.
• By choosing God’s way, we act in ways that produce feelings of the most fulfillment in every life situation.
• Most drama portrays people acting out of their animal instincts rather than their highest God-pattern of life. This is what makes drama: people behaving badly. Often, the value of watching dramatic performances in live theatre and movies is the lessons we learn about how not to act in various fictional scenarios. Drama is like school, learning from virtual life experiences.
• The same is true of still-life art (photos, paintings, sculpture…). It represents an aspect of the human condition as felt and captured by the artist. It’s a method of acting in still life: taking feeling and capturing a moment.

John: That also reminded me of an unforgettable rehearsal I witnessed of the Santa Rosa Symphony a few decades ago.  The conductor explained to the musicians “this passage represents the integrity of the leading character in this piece”.  The conductor immediately stopped and corrected himself, “No!  This passage IS the integrity of the leading character!”  That hit me hard.  I never forgot it.

• Thomas: I think symbolic performance art, symphony, bands, ensembles… in sound is similar, a capturing of the feeling of an episode or epic drama, as felt by the artists. That was your point about the musicians feeling the episode as coached by the conductor.
• The conductor’s comment is an excellent observation about character. We act out who we have trained ourselves to be by habit over a lifetime of choices. When our entire being is our character, we have reached a place of integrity, integration, and oneness.
• I’m reading a book, “5 Types of People that Can Ruin Your Life.” It talks about five personality disorders. If you are in a relationship with them, you will be manipulated, lied to, disappointed, and maybe end up dead. The types are sociopathic, histrionic, borderline, paranoid, and narcissistic.  It raised the question of how people develop such bad behavior to exhibit a personality disorder.  I ran into a few in my practice, and they ran me around severely. It was a great puzzle how to help people with such distorted habits of relationship, self-other perception…  It was intriguing, involving, and scary. They all called themselves Christians, and I think they wanted to behave better. They would get better if they followed the Biblical prescriptions of living a Godly life. I want to see what it takes to get that more profound transformation of spirit/soul/mind. What makes an actual difference in behavior and experience of life? I don’t think believing something is valuable if it doesn’t translate into actual behavior.
• As discussed in my last essay, I think the reality of life is that God lives us.  There is no other reality other than God observing, being observed, and living in relationship to Himself.  I think this is what life is, but we don’t see it.  We see God as a separate entity, a being to fear and love. And this conception is true in that God has created the universe for His pleasure and satisfaction.  And for it to be satisfying, our relationship with him must be a relationship of free will/choice to serve/love (expressed by living His way).  And one other thing: He feels us entirely as we live, which gives Him the experience of our life, which is enjoyable. He stays close and interacts deeply with us or separates far from us (being not of His nature or affinity).
• I went to a concert last night with Gary here in Portland.  You would have hated it.  It was so loud it made your clothes vibrate and hit your body with each beat. It was unpleasant.  It was a Christian rock concert. It wasn’t what I consider to be a sustainable life experience of being in a relationship with God. It seemed that people enjoyed it, though. I assume it was because the sound, the words, and the sensory stimuli in some way resonated with some people’s lives. This may be how some people feel close to or resonate with a supreme entity. The attendance almost filled up the Rose Quarter/Moda Center in Portland. Thousands of people were there. A pastor from Atlanta that Gary liked was there.
• The way that most people relate to God is as being “other.” The concept of God being the source of life, the essence of being, the only one living, is uncommon, but I believe it is, in essence, what all world religions imply. It is not recognized commonly, but I believe Christianity also implies this fact. (The verse which most strongly captures this perspective/insight/truth is, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”) If God really is All, then I think God needs to create a separation between the parts of His mind. Thus, there is a strange juxtaposition of two realities: 1) He is experiencing us fully, and in a very real sense, He is us. and 2) He must separate Himself from the unity of all His mind as the source of all being. If my Conscious Point Hypothesis is correct, He experiences every particle of our being because mass and the carriers of energy are (in some mysterious way) produced by His mind.
• So, that’s the latest on my magical mystery tour to Portland.
• TLA.