Positive Dissociation?

[quote author=Ana]. . .doing it busy letting the motor center act unconsciously[/quote]

Actually for artists expression is limited when other centers are employed in the technique itself. With advanced training the motor (itself conscious) functions skillfully on its own, allowing emotional and intellectual input for a deeper quality of expression.

Fwiw
 
Ana said:
Everything we do, we can do it conscious or unconsciously(different levels), and it is absolutely different seeing someone dancing/sculping/singing/drawing/talking consciously as an expression of essence/being and someone doing it busy letting the motor center act unconsciously, and the result is totally different, wasn’t Gurdjieff who talked of objective and subjective art.

I think that positive dissociation is not just mindlessly drifting out into nowhere, I think there is an active part involved but I suppose that can vary greatly in intensity osit.
I've never seen anyone perform objective art that I know of or I am probably unable to see the difference ?

While typing this MC wrote it better than I could put it in words, seems to make sense to me.
 
Hildegarda said:
Also, a lot of the contemporary "elite art" seems incredibly nonsensical, bizarre, and frankly doesn't even require any bona fide art skills in creation of its "objects". This is why, from what I have read - and I can see why this is -- a lot of really good artists appear to go into cartoons, and some of them produce superb and meaningful characters and drawings.

Which leads to the article pasted in below which, I think, relates strongly to this issue: how art, music, film, literature, and so on, are used to ponerize society - to inculcate normal humans into the pathological reality:

Here is an essay in two parts by Lasha Darkmoon which is partly based on
Shamir's Study in Art:

The Plot Against Art, Part 1

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-ArtI.html

Dr Lasha Darkmoon

September 19, 2009

"Never before have so few been in a position to make fools, maniacs or
criminals of so many."

HG Wells, The Shape of Things to Come.

I'll begin with a confession: I am a failed artist. Ever since I can
remember, I have wanted to paint. The only thing that stopped me was
lack of talent. The first time I did a self-portrait, checking with the
mirror in my bedroom to see how I was getting on, my mother put an
abrupt end to my artistic ambitions by exclaiming, "Gosh, what a cute
little chimp!"

It was a rude awakening for a nine-year-old artist.

About a decade later, I asked myself was art was all about. One day I
found this sentence in a biography of Burne-Jones, and I jotted it down
in my diary and pondered it for a day or two, "I mean by a picture a
beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be —
in a better light than any light that ever shone — in a land no one
can define or remember, only desire — and from forms divinely beautiful."

Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888.
<http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=28>

Art as it used to be, when painters knew how to paint. This would now be
considered kitsch.

When I read that sentence, I almost fainted. I was a sensitive girl,
given to fits of swooning at the slightest opportunity. It was then I
realized there was no real difference between poetry and painting,
between painting and music. All, in their own ways, sought for God —
albeit a God who might not exist — but a God nonetheless. God was
beauty. God was longing. God was the fire in the rose.

That's what I thought then. I was young and foolish.

Art, I found out later, was about making money. Organized Jewry taught
me this. Art dealer Paul Rosenberg says, "A painting is only beautiful
when it sells." Jewish president of the Marlborough Gallery, Frank
Lloyd, confirms this: "There is only one measure of success in running a
gallery: making money."

The question we need to ask is: Who runs the Art Market and how did it
become a freak circus?

Art Should Make You Miserable

Let's take a little trip round the art world with Israel Shamir. Mr
Shamir, after all, is not only well-informed about art but is also a
tour guide in Jerusalem. He agrees with me about the sacral nature of
art. "No art without Christ," he says. By "Christ" he means much more
than the historical Jesus. He means the Logos, or Christ Principle, the
rule of law in a divinely ordered universe.

Since Darwin and Freud, there has been a complete "revaluation of all
values." Everything has been turned upside down. We can mostly attribute
this parlous state of affairs to the machinations of organized Jewry, in
particular to a group of revolutionary thinkers known as the Frankfurt
School. (For a detailed introduction to the ideas of these neo-Freudian
Marxists, most of whom were Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany who
fled to America, see Chapter 5 of Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of
Critique).

Just as one of these Frankfurters, Theodor Adorno, set out to destroy
Western music, assuring the world that atonal music was a good thing
because it was discordant and ugly
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Whitcombe-AdornoI.html>,
others in the group set out to destroy art and push it to its reductio
ad absurdum: lights going on and off in an empty room, unmade beds with
condoms and bloodstained panties strewn around, and sealed cans
containing the artist's own excrement.

Tracey Emin's My Bed

Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Manzoni.jpg>

One of the founders of the Frankfurt School, Georg Lukács, asked
rhetorically, "Who will save us from Western civilization?" He began the
rescue operation himself, convincing himself that the best way to do
this was to create "a culture of pessimism" and "a world that has been
abandoned by God." Cool.

Another of these mental giants, Walter Benjamin, believed that the
purpose of art was to make people as miserable as possible, for
pessimism was an essential preliminary to world revolution. "To organize
pessimism," he pointed out portentously, "means nothing other than to
expel the moral metaphor from politics." Benjamin succeeded only too
well in making himself miserable. He committed suicide.

Marxist revolutionary Willi Munzenberg made no bones about his mission
in life. It was to destroy Western civilization. No kidding. To
accomplish this, he said, the Frankfurters would have to "organize the
intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only
then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible,
can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat". (My italics).

To summarize: Let's create a culture of pessimism. Let's make Western
civilization stink. Let's create a godless world and drive people to
despair. Let's corrupt society's values and make life impossible. In
short, let's create hell on earth.

It will soon become clear to you, if you are a struggling artist, that
the art world is dominated by Jews who are only too anxious to bring
about this hell on earth. Their control over what now passes for art is
as tentacular as it is terrifying. Art has morphed into Anti-Art. "For
Jews," Israel Shamir points out, "their group interest lies in
undermining visual art, for they can't compete with it. Even deeper
group interest is to undermine Christianity, their main enemy."

To undermine. To corrupt. To create discord. To drive crazy. To destroy.
Verbs to remember. Let's begin our tour of the art world, with Israel
Shamir as our guide, and try to gain an insight into what is going on.

Gallery Hopping With Mr Shamir

One day, Shamir finds himself in the Basque capital of Bilbao in Spain.
He has come to check out the museum of modern art built by the
fabulously rich (Jewish) Guggenheim family. The biggest building in
Spain, the Guggenheim Museum impresses Shamir profoundly — it's like
something out of a science-fiction movie — but once he steps inside
the building he is acutely disappointed.

Hey, what on earth is all this junk? Pieces of corrugated iron lying
around like in a scrap yard. Rusty iron plates in one corner. Video
screens blinking away inanely. Bare geometric forms. And, believe it or
not, an entire floor devoted to a collection of Armani suits. Boy, I'm
outa here! Shamir mutters to himself, making a beeline for the Exit.

And what does he do next? He hops on a plane to Venice, and now we see
him poking around the famous Biennale Museum, trying to make sense out
of a collection of trashed cars on display. Mopping his brow feverishly,
he needs to sit down to collect his wits. No, don't sit there, sir —
those chairs are a precious work of art! You want to read a good book,
Mr Shamir, to take your mind of all this junk? No problem. Here's a
bookcase full of books. Help yourself. Or rather, don't help yourself!
This bookcase, crammed with moldy old books, is also a sublime work of
art! Yes, all the way from sublime, artistic Israel!

One might have thought that, after suffering all these disappointments,
Mr Shamir would have packed it in and gone back to Jaffa, determined
never to set foot in an art gallery again. But no, a glutton for
punishment, our art guide now decides to visit a museum in Amsterdam
where he is confronted by a collection of decomposed pig trunks. To his
astonishment, he learns that a cadaver immersed in formaldehyde, on
display in this same museum, has been purchased for $50,000 by a rich
American. Wow, a corpse collector!

His disillusionment is total when, on visiting Copenhagen, he finds
himself in the church of St Nicholas. Being a convert to Christianity,
maybe he goes in there to pray. If so, he is saddened to have his mind
polluted by the pictures he sees on the walls of that venerable old
church. Here's a color photograph of a naked old woman, withered and
sick. And here, right next to it, is a huge blown-up picture of the
female genitalia. And what's this? Oh, nothing to worry about! Just a
photo of a couple of guys having oral sex. Hey man, c'mon! This is a
healthy and natural act! What better place for the celebration of joyous
pagan sexuality than a Christian church?

"Whatever they proclaimed as art, was art," Shamir concludes ruefully.
"In the beginning, these were works of some dubious value like the
'abstract paintings' of Jackson Pollock. Eventually we came to rotten
swine, corrugated iron, and Armani suits. Art was destroyed." [My italics.]

The Jewish Connection

So what does all this have to do with the Jews? Plenty. If you want to
play that fascinating game known as Cherchez le Juif, let's continue our
tour of the contemporary art world.

You will meet many artists, quite a few of them pliant and accommodating
non-Jews, who are prepared to jump through the hoops set before them by
their Masters: the ubiquitous Jews lurking in the shadows. The men who
call the shots. The men with the money. The men whom the artist must
learn to please and flatter if he hopes to get ahead and become rich and
famous.

The ambitious artist will find himself drawn inevitably into a Jewish
world. He will learn to pepper his conversation with Yiddish phrases. He
will never breathe a word of criticism against Israel, no matter what
atrocities that country is in the process of committing. He will sneer
at Muslims, the Qur'an and the Palestinians. He will find it pays
dividends to insult Christianity, the religion of his forefathers. He
will mention the Holocaust, whenever possible, with moist eyes; and he
will paint as many pictures of Auschwitz as he can, preferably with
chimneys belching black smoke.

All this has been done by goy artists. The proof for these claims can be
found here in this enormous archive of art information
<http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/26art.htm>. I have drawn upon it heavily.

Even the great Picasso knew he was appeasing the Jews when he embraced
his friend Pierre Daix and confided in a low voice, "To think that
painters once thought they could paint The Massacre of the Innocents!"
He was clearly echoing or anticipating Adorno's "There can be no poetry
after Auschwitz." If there can be no poetry after Auschwitz, there can
be no art either — certainly not Christian art.

Andy Warhol knew better than most how to ingratiate himself with the
Jews. His 1980 series, "Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century,"
features ten portraits of what Warhol referred to as "Jewish geniuses,"
one of whom was Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir — the "genius" who
said there were no Palestinians, adding with her famous flair for the
witty phrase: "How can we return the occupied territories? There is
nobody to return them to." Another "genius" was Sigmund Freud, whom
Kevin MacDonald has described as having perpetrated the greatest
scientific fraud of the 20th century — a fraud that was very useful in
constructing the culture of Western suicide.

{photo} Warhol's portraits of Gold Meir and Sigmund Freud, from his Ten
Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century series {end}

Warhol seems to have put his considerable charm to work with Henry
Geldzahler, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art — an influential
Jew who happened, like Warhol, to be homosexual. "Although they were
never lovers, the relationship became intimate," we are assured by one
of Warhol's biographers. "Andy spoke to Henry on the phone every night
before he went to sleep and every morning as soon as he woke up." I am
not saying that Warhol and Geldzahler were lovers, though others have
said so. That's of no interest to me. All I'm suggesting is that Warhol,
a notorious opportunist, found it helped his career to cultivate the
Jews. His appeal, in the words of film critic Carrie Rickey, was to the
"synagogue circuit."

Transvestite potter Grayson Perry — here he is receiving the Turner
Prize for his inspired pots — knew his success depended less on his
talents than on the advertising genius of his plutocratic patron Charles
Saatchi. He was well aware, moreover, that Islamophobia can always be
relied on to win friends and influence people in the Judeocentric art
world. "The reason I haven't gone all out to attack Islamism in my art,"
he confides fearlessly, "is because I feel real fear that someone will
slit my throat." Avoiding controversial political statements in the
interests of discretion, Perry decided to devote his life to producing
ceramic pots depicting "explicit scenes of sexual perversion." It must
have been a tough decision.

{photo} The potter wore bobbysox ... Grayson Perry poses with his wife
Phillippa and daughter Flo after winning the Turner Prize. (end}

Non-Jewish artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski and
Christopher Williams have been almost as prolific in their production of
Holocaust paintings as Jewish painter RB Kitaj, a man whose obsession
with Auschwitz has often been noted. "The chimney in a Kitaj painting,"
art pundit Juliet Steyn informs us, "functions as an indictment on
Christianity." Translation: After Auschwitz, who needs Golgotha?

RB Kitaj's Passion (1940–45): Cross and Chimney

Entrance through the Gate Exit from the Chimney by Joseph Bau

As for Andres Serrano with his Piss Christ and Chris Ofili with his
dung-bedecked Holy Virgin Mary — the Madonna surrounded by pictures of
the female genitals cut from pornographic magazines — both these
emotionally immature artists were clearly aware that contempt for Christ
and his mother is often pleasing to the Jews.

Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/ofili-serrano.jpg> and
Andres Serrano's Piss Christ
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/ofili-serrano.jpg>

Artists? These men are more like circus dogs, trained to jump through
hoops and beg for bones from their masters. It's the men with the money,
the Saatchis and the Guggenheims, who crack the whip.

Dr. Lasha Darkmoon (email her) is an academic, age 31, with higher
degrees in classics. A published poet and translator, she is also a
political activist with a special interest in Middle Eastern affairs.
'Lasha Darkmoon' is a pen name.


The Plot Against Art, Part 2

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Darkmoon-ArtII.html

Dr Lasha Darkmoon

September 20, 2009

I hate to tell you this, but if you like modern art there has to be
something radically wrong with you. To feel hostile towards it is as
natural as being repelled by incest.

Modern art is out to corrupt you.

If it doesn't do this, it will have failed to achieve the primary
purpose of its elitist promoters. It will have failed to undermine
traditional values. It will have failed to produce a "culture of
pessimism." It will have failed to destroy the sacral core of life. It
will have failed to poison your mind and give you the sickness unto
death. It will have failed to make you what Big Brother finally managed
to make Winston Smith in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: a mindless zombie.

The Wheelers and Dealers

That the Jews dominate the art world, as they dominate the mass media
and every other area of influence, is the best-kept secret of the
twenty-first century. One is not supposed to mention this. It is
anti-Semitic to do so.

In 1989, an erudite academic volume appeared called Sociology of the
Arts.In it the authors discuss who is who in the art world. "Blacks,
Orientals, and persons of Spanish origin constitute about 7 per cent of
the art audience," the book informs us helpfully. So what about the
other 93 per cent?

What ethnic group owns most of the art galleries? Who are the museum
curators? Who are the art historians? Who are the art critics? Who
publish the magazines in which art is reviewed? Who determine what is
good art and what is rubbish? Who are the dealers and big collectors?
Who run the auction houses? Who set up the art competitions and raise
the prize money? Who appoint the judges? Who are the judges?

Not a word. Total silence. Scary, isn't it?

As far back as 1930, it was noted by French author Pierre Assouline:
"According to dealer Pierre Loeb, four art dealers out of five are
Jewish, as are four out of five art collectors. Wilhelm Unde added art
critics to this list." In 1973, it was estimated that 80 per cent of the
2500 core "art market personnel" — dealers, curators, gallery owners,
collectors, critics, consultants and patrons of the arts — were
Jewish. In 1982, Gerald Krefetz (Jewish) let the cat out of the bag even
further. "Today, Jews enjoy every phase of the art world," he admitted.
"In some circles, the wheelers and dealers are referred to as theJewish
mafia."

Writing of his experiences in New York City, Jewish author Howard
Jacobson revealed that art critic Peter Schjedhal had told him, "Just
about every gallery we go into is run by a Jew. Even the women gallery
owners whose wine we absorb are Jewish."

Riki R. Nelson, Girl in a Box, Girl in Cherry Silk, from the Saatchi
Gallery, London

In 2001, ARTnews listed the world's Top Ten Art Collectors. Eight of
them were Jews. Ponder these staggering statistics: A people who
constitute 0.2% of the world's population make up 80% of the world's
richest art collectors. Out of every thousand people in the world,
roughly two are Jews. To be precise, one in every 457 people are Jews.
Yet go to a conference at which 1000 of the world's wealthiest art
collectors have gathered and you will find, to your amazement, that 800
of them are Jewish! Phenomenal, isn't it?

Nigerian-born Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary, from the collection of
Charles Saatchi, an influential Jewish art collector. The painting is
described as "a carefully rendered black Madonna decorated with a
resin-covered lump of elephant dung. The figure is also surrounded by
small collaged images of female genitalia from pornographic magazines."
The painting caused a public uproar and media frenzy when exhibited at
the Brooklyn Museum of Art as part of the Sensation exhibition of
Saatchi's collection in 1999.
<http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/ofili.jpg>

If you require confirmation for these citations, see here. This huge
cache of outré information has been particularly useful to me in
researching the Jewish influence on modern art.

The art world is so densely populated with Jews that one way to get away
from the goyim, if you are Jewish, is to take up art. That way, with any
luck, you won't bump into a non-Jew for days! In 1996, Jewish art
historian Eunice Lipton confided somewhat tactlessly that the only
reason she became an art historian was that she wanted to hang out
exclusively with Jews. "I wanted to be where Jews were — that is, I
wanted a profession that would allow me to acknowledge my Jewishness
through the company I kept."

On the face of it, she noted, art history would seem to be a gentile
profession, if only because the study of Christian art was its hub and
center. And yet, she says, "the field was filled with Jews. One might
even say it was shaped by them."

She was doubtless thinking of the great historian of Renaissance art,
Bernard Berenson, whose influence has been seminal. Berenson once
described himself as "a typical Talmud Jew" who longed to drop "the mask
of the goyim" — hardly, one is tempted to think, a fit interpreter of
Christian art to the hated gentiles! Though he had converted to
Christianity in 1885, here we see him, almost half a century later in
1944, writing an "Open Letter to the Jews" in which he warns them about
"envious Christians" who would persecute them "even if you were innocent
as the angels." To my mind, this sounds more Talmudic than Christian.

With the rise of German fascism, Jewish art historians began to flee
Nazi Germany, along with those Marxist revolutionaries known as the
Frankfurt School. Most of these Jews ended up in America. At New York
University alone, the following Jewish art historians were to take up
residence: Richard Ettinghaven, Walter Friedlander, Karl Lehman, Alfred
Salmony, Guido Schoenberger, Martin Weinberger.

Art historian Lipton probably also has in mind — when she says she
wanted to live in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere — the two most
illustrious art critics of the twentieth century, Harold Rosenberg and
Clement Greenberg. Like Berenson, Greenberg appears to have had a
distinctly Talmudic cast of mind. Convinced of Jewish superiority, he
once remarked, "The European Jew represents a higher type of human being
than any other yet achieved."

Both these influential critics, Rosenberg and Greenberg, were members of
the Frankfurt School and helped to reshape the aesthetic perceptions of
the gentile masses.

Bending Art to Jewish Abilities

All art henceforth was to be "Jewish". It would break free from its
Christian roots. Whatever Jewish artists were good at, that would be the
art of the future. If Jews were no good at drawing, good drawing would
no longer be necessary. Representational art was out, abstract and
conceptual art was in. Actual unmade beds, not pictures of them, now
became works of art. Marcel Duchamp's famous urinals — bought in a
store and transported to an art gallery where they were magically
transformed into works of art. Cans stuffed with the artist's own
excrement. Photos of crucifixes stuck in glasses of theartist's own urine.

Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, photographed in 1917 by Alfred Steiglitz, an
early 20th-century Jewish photographer and promoter of modern art. "It
does not take much stretching of the imagination," gushes Calvin
Tomkins, art critic of the New Yorker, "to see in the urinal's gently
flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a
seated Buddha." In 2004, this inspired pissoire was voted Most
Influential Work of the 20th century by 500 "art experts" — sorry,
"piss-artists." <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/Duchamp.jpg>

"Preparation of these items places no demand on artistic abilities. They
can be done by anybody," Israel Shamir points out, adding somewhat
cuttingly, "Such art is perfectly within Jewish capabilities."

In order to succeed in this difficult profession, the visually
challenged Jews had to "bent art to fit their abilities." It is as if,
unable to excel at athletic prowess, the Jews had somehow managed to
gain control over the Olympic Games and decreed that, from now on,
sprinting and marathon running were no longer important. What really
mattered was winning the sack race or the Spitting Competition —
accomplishments, possibly, which Jews were particularly good at!

"The Jews were extremely ill equipped for their conquest of Olympus,"
Shamir instructs us. "For many generations, Jews never entered churches
and hardly ever saw paintings. They were conditioned to reject image as
part of their rejection of idols." In short, the Jews were visually
handicapped. Trained in Talmudic dialectics, they were marvelous with
words. They had a verbal IQ of 130. Their IQ for patterns and pictures,
however, was dismally low: only 75.

The Jews of course don't wish to acknowledge this. To suggest that they
tend to make lousy artists is anti-Semitic. If Jews didn't make more of
a splash as artists in past ages, it is argued, it was because they were
"held back" by their Christian oppressors. Unfortunately for the Jews,
the great Berenson will have none of this argument. "The Jews have
displayed little talent for the visual," he states tersely, "and almost
none for the figure arts."

How, then, you might wish to know, are there so many Jewish artists
around nowadays? To what can we attribute this fantastic efflorescence
of sudden Jewish pictorial genius? The answer, we are told, lies in
Jewish networking and hustling: Jewish predominance in the mass media,
Jewish economic dominance of the art world, Jewish power, Jewish money."

How Anyone Can Be Famous

Andy Warhol once said that everyone in the future will be "world-famous
for fifteen minutes." What he failed to point out was that almost
anyone, including the village idiot, can be made into a celebrity with
the help of public relations. All it takes is constant attention in the
mass media. Charles Saatchi, advertising mogul and art collector
extraordinaire, spells it out: "An unknown artist's big glass vitrine
holding a rotten cow's head covered by maggots and swarms of buzzing
flies may be pretty unsalable. Until the artist becomes a star. Then he
can sell anything he touches" (my emphasis).

Interior of Everyone I have ever Slept With, 1963–1995, an iconic work
by Tracey Emin, owned by Charles Saatchi until being destroyed in a fire.

Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years (1990). Richard Lacayo of Time
Magazine: "A Thousand Years is a large glass box in which real maggots
hatch into flies that appear to feed on blood from a severed cow's
head." Charles Saatchi and Hirst had a "symbiotic relationship" as
collector and artist from about 1992–2003.

How does one become a star? Who gives the Emperor his new clothes and
helps to suggest he is remarkably well dressed?

An unmade bed is transformed into a consummate work of art once it is
bought by Charles Saatchi and placed in a prestigious art gallery. The
artist acquires a mystique created out of the power of suggestion. You
must be a genius if everyone is raving about you and your unmade bed.
Mass hypnosis does the trick. Advertising and persistent persuasion work
wonders. See hereand here and here.

Let me ask you a question. If someone tried to sell you his excrement
for $10, would you buy it? Probably not. Well, consider this: on May 23,
2007, a can labeled Artist's Shit, purportedly containing the excrement
of artist Piero Manzoni, was sold at Sotheby's for €124,000 (US$ 180,000).

How is it done? Is a can of shit worth its weight in gold? It obviously
is — if people are fighting to buy it.

A larger question: If you can con people into buying shit, can you also
con them into evil wars in the Middle East and mass cultural suicide in
their own homelands? Nothing easier. It's being done right now.

Talent helps, but is it essential?

You will be surprised to learn that some Jewish artists, despite
Berenson's sweeping dismissal of their visual abilities, are actually
quite good at painting. For example, Modigliani and Chagall. Shamir
attributes some of their excellence, however, to the influence of
Christianity. These two Jewish artists became Christians. This helped,
Shamir thinks, to make them good painters. At least they had something
to say now. Life had taken on a new meaning. They weren't just
scratching their existential sores and whining "God is dead!"

On the other hand, there were other artists who remained firmly within
the Jewish camp and managed to distinguish themselves: notably, Pissarro
(impressionist), Soutine (expressionist), Max Ernst (surrealist), and
Tamara de Lempicka (art deco). To succeed as an artist in the new
milieu, it helped if you were Jewish. Thus both Frida Kahlo and Gustav
Klimt arguably owed their initial success to the fact that everyone
thought they were Jewish. They were not, but somehow managed to give
that impression.

The important thing to remember in all this is that artistic talent had
become, strictly speaking, non-essential. It helped, but promotion by a
good publicist helped more. The artist had to be a showman rather than a
skilled craftsman. Neither Tracey Emin (patchwork quilt) nor Damien
Hirst (shark preserved in formaldehyde) found it necessary to create
their own works of art. Cheap manual assistants were often hired to do
this for them. The vital thing in their art was the original concept.
The end product was of secondary importance.

Tell Me Something Beautiful is a patchwork quilt stitched up entirely by
eight-year-olds from Ecclesbourne primary school, London, with Emin in
the classroom offering advice. When the school wanted to sell the quilt
for £35.000 ($60,000) to an art dealer, Emin threw a fit and threatened
legal action, demanding the quilt be "returned" to her at once.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by
Damien Hirst (1991). Saatchi sold this work to collector Steven Cohen
for $12 million, who in in turn donated it to the Museum of Modern Art.

The successful contemporary artist needs to be a person devoid of moral
scruples. Confidence trickster, hustler, prostitute, pimp, he needs to
mix with the right crowd and know whom to cultivate. "The artist who
would be known," wrote the great folklorist Joseph Campbell, "has to go
to cocktail parties to win commissions, and those who win them are not
in their studios but at parties, meeting the right people and appearing
in the right places." Campbell was later accused of anti-Semitism, but
Jewish artist Julian Schnabel backs up Campbell's claim. "Much time is
spent nurturing liaisons with creatures of the art world," he notes
gloomily. "There is no time for friendship. Later, there is no capacity
for it."

How does a really talented artist succeed in such a rat race?

Painter Helen Frankenthaler had to sleep with art critic Clement
Greenberg, but it was worth it: Greenberg gave her good reviews. Willem
de Kooning let his wife Elaine bed down with art critic Harold
Rosenberg, but it was worth it: Rosenberg gave de Kooning good reviews.
Jackson Pollock had to pleasure nymphomaniac Peggy Guggenheim, but it
was worth it: her patronage helped to get Pollock good reviews. After
all, her daddy owned the Guggenheim Museum.

None of these artists slept around for love. They did it for money.
Jackson Pollock famously said of Peggy Guggenheim, his plutocratic
patroness: "To -flick- her, you'd have to put a towel over her head. And
she did want -flicking-g."

"Incestuous collusion, mutual back-scratching, under the table wheeling
and dealing, nepotism and clique allegiance are intrinsic principles of
the modern art world," art expert Sophy Burnham concludes ruefully.

That's how it is. C'est la vie! It's so heartbreaking you have to laugh.

If you wish to succeed as a modern artist, be prepared to lie and cheat,
to be a confidence trickster and sexual exhibitionist, to flatter your
Jewish patrons and churn out Holocaust paintings to please them, to sing
the praises of Israel and vilify the Palestinians, to knock Islam and
the Qur'an and show contempt for Christianity. Unless you are Jewish,
you must lose all allegiance to your people, your religion, or your
traditional culture.

Be prepared to prostitute yourself if you're a woman or pimp your wife
if you're a man. Be prepared to do a Piss Christ like Andres Serrano or
a pornographicHoly Virgin Mary like Chris Ofili. Be prepared, like
Grayson Perry, to dress up as a woman and produce sexually perverted
pots. Be prepared to pull a paper scroll out of your vagina like Carolee
Schneemann. Be prepared, like Vito Acconci, to titillate a jaded public
by masturbating for them in a prestigious art gallery — and calling it
'art'.

Leonardo must be turning in his grave.

Let art critic Clement Greenberg have the last word: "I've decided the
kind of people attracted to art are often psychopaths. You can quote me
on that."

He should know.

Dr. Lasha Darkmoon (email her) is an academic, age 31, with higher
degrees in classics. A published poet and translator, she is also a
political activist with a special interest in Middle Eastern affairs.
'Lasha Darkmoon' is a pen name.
 
Hmm positive dissociative events... I can think of a few movies where I learned something intrinsic about the nature of reality, Labyrinth/Neverending Story/Matrix have already been mentioned and also had a huge impact on my understanding of parallel worlds and how we view them (IE through books/movies/shows). Any adventure story where the hero has to face impossible odds, LotR/Eragon/His Dark Materials come to mind.

I also think old skool RPGs, where you had a character sheet, dice, a gamemaster and your imaginations could be considered positive dissociation. Problem solving, team work, critical thought all come into play. It would also depend on the individuals involved of course.

Most video games I have played are pure escapism, however there can be some skills acquired there as well. Specifically realm time strategy games can teach one how to prioritize, manage resources, and creatively adapt to a threat. I haven't played video games in a long time, but if i were to do so again this is probably the only type I could still enjoy.

'Sports' have that dualism also, they can be escapist, or they can be employed creatively as an expressive outlet, a way to train one's body and mind, to focus on being in the moment. The sports I'm pondering are snowboarding, paintball, martial arts, dance and bike riding/running. Team sports can also teach one cooperation, how to allow others to fill in when your weak in one area and how to utilize your strengths so that overall the team can achieve its goals and win. This is a big strategy we employ in dodgeball.

When I write this can happen, although the creative spark seems to come and go of its own volition. Some of the blog entries I do feel complete, and just flow from my mind onto the screen, it's usually a synthesis of multiple elements and it has its own thesis or concept, using each individual source as a part.

In all of these above, I find I'm better able to focus on the activity if I'm able to zone out and be completely subsumed by it. It's as if I become a medium for the concept, in snowboarding for example it's important to be in the moment, to concentrate on your speed and balance, but it takes a familiarity and self trust to be able to not think and just do it. You can react faster, perceive more, which makes you a better 'snowboarder'.

MC said:
[quote author=Ana]. . .doing it busy letting the motor center act unconsciously

Actually for artists expression is limited when other centers are employed in the technique itself. With advanced training the motor (itself conscious) functions skillfully on its own, allowing emotional and intellectual input for a deeper quality of expression.
[/quote]

That's exactly how I feel about dissociating during a 'sport'. Perhaps Zoning In would be a better description. I mean, we do have the expression "In the Zone" which applies when someone seems especially into a given activity and able to produce dramatic results.
 
Tigersoap said:
I've never seen anyone perform objective art that I know of or I am probably unable to see the difference ?
Can`t say I have either :lol:
An interesting theory by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi might or might not have something to do with the question posed.
The following is from wikipedia (_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi)
wikipedia said:
In his seminal work, 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience', Csíkszentmihályi outlines his theory that people are most happy
when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. The idea of flow is identical
to the feeling of being in the zone or in the groove. The flow state is an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, where the person is fully immersed in what
he or she is doing. This is a feeling everyone has at times, characterized by a feeling of great absorption, engagement, fulfillment, and skill—and during
which temporal concerns (time, food, ego-self, etc.) are typically ignored.[6]
In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away.
Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're
using your skills to the utmost."[7]
To achieve a flow state, a balance must be struck between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. If the task is too easy or too difficult,
flow cannot occur. Both skill level and challenge level must be matched and high; if skill and challenge are low and matched, then apathy results.[5]
The flow state also implies a kind of focused attention, and indeed, it has been noted that mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and martial arts seem to improve
a person's capacity for flow. Among other benefits, all of these activities train and improve attention.
In short, flow could be described as a state where attention, motivation, and the situation meet, resulting in a kind of productive harmony or feedback.

I have to say that I find it very difficult to get into this flow state. It`s really hard work. How this pertains to Gurdjieff I have no idea!
When I draw I NEED to get in a somewhat dissociated state. The VERY LAST thing I need when drawing is my intellectual centre.
It`s important when conceptualising, but during actual drawing/painting the intellect/ratio is anathema. Drawing, as all creative work, osit, might be a kind of
channeling. One may open a channel to ???, from where creative stuff gets channeled through one`s mind and then expressed through the filter of the
person`s biography, mindset, believe systems/lack of etc.

I have also no idea* why I`ve always been drawn to disturbing novels + movies, especially from the Dark Fantasy+ Crime genre:
David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy etc. Reg. visual art I`m equally drawn to the enchantment of turn of the century art
(for balance?).
*well, I`m thinking about that for years while not arriving at a conclusive answer.
 
MC said:
[quote author=Ana]. . .doing it busy letting the motor center act unconsciously

Actually for artists expression is limited when other centers are employed in the technique itself. With advanced training the motor (itself conscious) functions skillfully on its own, allowing emotional and intellectual input for a deeper quality of expression.

Fwiw

[/quote]

Just to clarify the above sentence is from Tigersoap... :P
And, I don’t understand how can an artist be creative without the full use of emotional center, and how is able to show it to others without the full function of the intellectual center.
 
Breton said:
I want reality! My SOUL cries out for objectivity! I want the lights turned up bright!

And then you bring up willful use of imagination? Dissociation? Arrrrghhh!

<snip>

Actually, I know exactly how you feel. But I am also a very practical and pragmatic person and one thing I have learned over the recent years is that this reality really is a madhouse and we not only need to face up to it, we also need to find some way to give the physiology/lower emotional center some relief. That is what "they" offer with their "bread and circuses."

Okay, we see what they are doing: utilizing a characteristic of humanity to put them in a certain state with addictive entertainment and then, VERY subtly - oh, so carefully - twisting ideas and values and meaning so that gradually, over time, you don't really know what is good and decent a truly creative/STO and what is not.

So, my question relates more directly to: Okay, we know that we have this need to get relief, let's figure out how BEST to utilize it to undo the damage that is being done.

The problem is - as with everything else on this god-forsaken planet - we have been under this influence literally for thousands of years and how the heck are we going to be able to really identify what is good and decent with the way we think, with what we are familiar with, with all the lies our heads are full of?

This has been really brought home with the "Creating a New World" thread. We actually know almost nothing about how to live in an STO world... not only do we not know, many of us are incapable of even imagining. I noticed all kinds of odd, selfish, self-centered, jealousy based, little imps popping up over on that thread. It's even more interesting since I have been spending some concentrated time of gathering every single detail about that 20,000 year period of "peace" that I can, emptying my mind of assumptions, and really trying to connect with those minds back then to figure out what they saw, what they felt, how they interacted with one another. A big part of this has been studying the cave art - and a lot of other prehistoric art - and making connections between certain archaeological evidence of the arrival of psychopathy and the change in art style and substance and ability.

I hope that gives a little background.
 
Just to clarify the above sentence is from Tigersoap..
oops :-[

And, I don’t understand how can an artist be creative without the full use of emotional center, and how is able to show it to others without the full function of the intellectual center.

The full functioning of the emotional and intellectual centers is available when the motor functions more or less on its own during the art. Otherwise they are limited by their participation in the technique itself.
 
To me, the kind of movies/books/etc. that would do that are those speaking about the human experience. Stories about life, death, loss, love, suffering, happiness, etc. I think that the movies/books/etc. that are really worth it are the ones you want to discuss with friends and family afterwards, because you need to understand, to dissect, etc. Here are some examples:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my favourite movies ever), which offers you to think about whether you would - if you could - erase your memories of someone, good and bad, should the relation end? Or would you be prepared to keep the bad memories so that you can remember the good ones forever?
Gattaca: so touching to see that man, whose fate is chosen from birth by society, give everything he has (his life, basically) to change his destiny and make his dream come true, even if it is the last thing he does.
American History X, about how your choices have an impact on your life, and your family's, even years later, when you think you've paid your dues. To me this one shows that there is no free lunch in the universe.
Boys don't cry: I'm always touched by stories of people who feel they are misfits (because it's close to home?).
Into the Wild, for the wonderful landscapes, the freedom of the traveler. The story in itself is very touching (all the more so since it is inspired by a true story), but what touched me the most, the thing that made me think the most is when, at the end, Christopher knows he is condemned and his last gesture is not one of anger and frustration but a good-natured goodbye, wishing everybody well. That was so beautiful, it haunted me for months.
Some of the cartoons by the Gibli studios (Like Chihiro/Spirited Away) are wonderful and bring you to places you would never dream of, both wonderful and scary, a bit like life..
As for books, Lord of the Flies, Tennesse Williams' plays, John Fante's books (about a narcissistic Italo-american trying to make it as a writer but only succeeding in sabotaging every relation he has).
The series Six Feet Under was great as well, because you get to know the characters, you see them for their whole life, seeing them go through joys and deaths, through births and diseases. I was really attached to the characters.

Lots of the things listed above may seem sad and ending badly, but like in life, they're really a mix of joys and pains, of learning and forgetting.

Thank you Laura for this thread, because until I read about positive dissociation, I thought I had wasted most of my youth: I was an avid reader (and still am of course) but I mostly read novels. I thought all this dissociation, that living with the characters, my thinking about them, etc. was a pure waste of time. I thought I had been lost in wishful thinking all this time.. I might actually have been positive dissociating (a bit)! Thanks!
 
Laura said:
Here is an essay in two parts by Lasha Darkmoon which is partly based on
Shamir's Study in Art:

It was indeed edifying. I agree with"Lasha"'s analysis; I'm one who loves what would be considered as "cheesy" today ie: artists who could paint!

Most of what passes as art today is "trash art" to me; it's the ultimate STS: degrading, pervert, nihilistic, meaningless, absurd, destructive, and even
sadistic, like this guy who used a starving dog for his exhibition and called it art:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Vargas

To quote Lasha:
I hate to tell you this, but if you like modern art there has to be something radically wrong with you. To feel hostile towards it is as natural as being repelled by incest. Modern art is out to corrupt you. If it doesn't do this, it will have failed to achieve the primary purpose of its elitist promoters. It will have failed to undermine traditional values. It will have failed to produce a "culture of pessimism." It will have failed to destroy
the sacral core of life. It will have failed to poison your mind and give you the sickness unto death. It will have failed to make you what Big Brother
finally managed to make Winston Smith in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: a mindless zombie.
--
Back in high school, I took a course in visual arts, as I was considering entering an art school. I was pretty soon disillusioned and discouraged by the
teacher: drawings and paintings I showed him were not ABSTRACT enough. I was showing him real, concrete things like still life or cartoon type characters; but this is NOT art. Art is supposed to be abstract, "intellectual", conceptual. In short, cold, distant, and inhuman --something that the man in the street, the "vile populace", can't comprehend or relate too. This kind of art is indeed pathological.

After witnessing one of my friend's very negative experience with art school, I'm glad I didn't choose this path. Students as well as teachers were just a
bunch of narcissistic navel gazing and arrogant people who thought they were the creme de la creme, just because they took a bowl, filled it with water and exposed it in an empty room -- and teachers called that art...
This experience was very destructive for my friend, and she fell into depression after the teachers trashed her school year project (I witnessed it, and they were really nasty to her). She had to give up. And yet, I think she had potential.
Another student of that school was also trashed for taking pictures which the teachers deemed as "too esthetic". That sums it all up, I think.

Another of these mental giants, Walter Benjamin, believed that the purpose of art was to make people as miserable as possible, for pessimism was an essential preliminary to world revolution. "To organize pessimism," he pointed out portentously, "means nothing other than to expel the moral metaphor from politics." Benjamin succeeded only too well in making himself miserable. He committed suicide.

This reminds me of another "anecdote" regarding that particular art school my friend attended to. There was a story running in that school, that several years ago, one of the final year students hung himself… as part of his "final year school project". I don't know if it's true, but it just gives an idea of the
kind of mentality being promulgated, where suicide is considered as artistic and where art has to be pessimistic, nihilistic, driving people into despair.
 
Maybe listening to certain music or watching a movie containing picturesque scenes, symbols, intense glowing objects, deep humming sounds - asian directors emphasize the power of holy objects with bass synth humming and large "etheric" shockwaves nowadays, creating for ourselves an emotional release, effecting a liberation we can finally change into higher gears, open a connection to something that is more than the sum of our basic thoughts and feelings, there is a need to reach our higher centers [?] and get a whiff of the real thing.

We want something that is holier than us maybe by inducing these mild hypnotic states. Eiriu Eolas does it much better. However when i have to work, i select music that contains elements of these emotional openers, any combination of instruments or music laced with human or animal sounds that lead me into the needed state.

Sort of shamanic activity in our modern times?
 
Regarding:
Laura quotes L. Darkmoon said:
Here is an essay in two parts by Lasha Darkmoon which is partly based on
Shamir's Study in Art: The Plot Against Art, Part 1 ...
I think there may be some truth in that article*. The Art World, of course. would call that provincial at best.
I firmly believe that the Art World is mainly based on Marketing Concepts.
It can also be an expression of (corrupted) power:
The following is a requote from the article "Art and the CIA" by Robert Cummings:
In the play ART, someone buys an abstract painting at an enormous price, while his friends ponder
how they are going to tell him that it is inherently worthless. In the debate about abstraction and whether
it was entirely some sort of hoax, the new traditionalists ridicule its "flatness" and its absence of narrative,
while defenders of abstraction insist that representative art is a form of nostalgia that modernism sought
to eliminate. The defenders are definitely losing ground, but one wonders why they were ever regarded as credible.

The point that most art critics miss is that art is also a form of commerce, and not antithetical to it. The god of art
is the art market. And so one might ask, "How did a Jackson Pollock get to be worth so much money?"
Part of it had to do with the Cold War, which not only bloated the military budget, but distorted the art market as well.
Faux genius and con man Clement Greenberg was at the center of the scam. A former itinerant necktie salesman,
Greenberg teamed up with struggling abstract artist and mountebank, Barnett Newman, to promote a vision of art
that conveniently coincided with the objectives of the US Cold War Establishment. Indeed, Greenberg argued that
the avant-garde required the support of America’s elite classes, a self-serving concept that would promote his personal
interests as a collector.

As the competing ideologies of capitalism and communism clashed after the Second World War, the question of "What is art?"
became a significant issue in the struggle for dominance. Was art a vehicle of state propaganda to glorify a proletarian
revolution or depict an evil Hitler in his bunker at the end of the heroic struggle against fascism (never mind about the
Hitler-Stalin pact), or was it the product of individual creativity unrestrained by governmental control and censorship?
But since America was then in the throes of one of its tedious puritanical backlashes, the sensuality of great Western art,
as represented by say, Goya’s "Naked Maja," was out of the question. Deriving their central thesis from Islamic art that
representation of the sensual human form was interdicted by the sublime, the new Abstract Expressionists fit neatly into
what the American intelligence community desperately needed to rebut Soviet representational propaganda; an art that
was highly individualistic but which did not offend the sensibilities of conservative religion. A Baptist preacher or Bishop
Sheen could laugh at a Pollock, but he could not condemn it as obscene. Yet because "modern art" was widely derided,
it needed a boost from an invisible sponsor, which would turn out to be the CIA.

In this milieu Clement Greenberg came forth in support of the new art. Yes, the canvas was flat, and it should be covered
flatly by paint in abstraction, so beauty would be destroyed in the name of the sublime. And Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
director Richard Barr heralded this view when he quoted Greenberg’s co-conspirator, Newman, who infamously proclaimed,
"The impulse of modern art was to destroy beauty." Barr went even further – God was dead and had been replaced by
Abstract Expressionism.
The more Greenberg wrote in promotion of the Abstract Expressionists, and particularly Pollock’s "action painting," which
involved dripping paint on the canvas, the more he collected them at minimal prices before he had made them famous.
And as he increased his own power and influence, the more people wanted to buy these paintings, which served Greenberg’s
real personal objective; to make himself rich.

Fortunately for him, like the military industrial complex, he had a helping hand in the federal government. As Frances Stoner
Saunders explains in her brilliant book, Who Paid the Piper – The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, the CIA covertly supported
the Abstract Expressionist movement by funding exhibits all over the world in promotion of the idea that the culture of freedom
was superior to the culture of slavery, and by covertly promoting the purchasing of works by various private collections.
Indeed, the CIA named its biggest front in Europe the Congress for Cultural Freedom. It worked. Soviet art became a laughing
stock, and New York became the center of the art world, not Paris, where Picasso, a long-time member of the Communist party
and winner of the Stalin Peace Prize (who can forget his doves of peace?), still reigned supreme.
The CIA had stolen the show from Picasso, taking art a step further into a near mystical expression of unfettered human liberty
in the spirit of free enterprise. Nelson Rockefeller, whose family created the MoMA, actually referred to Abstract Expressionism
as "free enterprise painting." But like so many Rockefeller ventures, it was state supported, so that his own collection of Abstract
Expressionist works ended up being worth a considerable fortune.
*Apart from the jewish thing I have long tended to agree with the critique in Darkmoon`s article but was always afraid of being provincial,
literal and naiive. I don`t think ALL modern, post-modern and abstract art is "bad", but the article definetly gives food into my prejudices (?).
Can that be a good thing?

Mrs.Tigersoap said:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (one of my favourite movies ever)
Same here. You also partly answered my question about why being drawn to disturbing movies:
Mrs.Tigersoap said:
To me, the kind of movies/books/etc. that would do that are those speaking about the human experience.
Stories about life, death, loss, love, suffering, happiness, etc. I think that the movies/books/etc. that are really worth it are the ones you want
to discuss with friends and family afterwards, because you need to understand, to dissect, etc
Some more spontanous examples:
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch)
Dogville (von Trier)
Who`s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (Nichols)
Gone, Baby, Gone (Affleck)
Million Dollar Baby (Eastwood)
Milk (Van Sandt)
 
Lúthien said:
Back in high school, I took a course in visual arts, as I was considering entering an art school. I was pretty soon disillusioned and discouraged by the
teacher: drawings and paintings I showed him were not ABSTRACT enough. I was showing him real, concrete things like still life or cartoon type characters; but this is NOT art. Art is supposed to be abstract, "intellectual", conceptual. In short, cold, distant, and inhuman --something that the man in the street, the "vile populace", can't comprehend or relate too. This kind of art is indeed pathological.

After witnessing one of my friend's very negative experience with art school, I'm glad I didn't choose this path. Students as well as teachers were just a
bunch of narcissistic navel gazing and arrogant people who thought they were the creme de la creme, just because they took a bowl, filled it with water and exposed it in an empty room -- and teachers called that art...
This experience was very destructive for my friend, and she fell into depression after the teachers trashed her school year project (I witnessed it, and they were really nasty to her). She had to give up. And yet, I think she had potential.
Another student of that school was also trashed for taking pictures which the teachers deemed as "too esthetic". That sums it all up, I think.

Another of these mental giants, Walter Benjamin, believed that the purpose of art was to make people as miserable as possible, for pessimism was an essential preliminary to world revolution. "To organize pessimism," he pointed out portentously, "means nothing other than to expel the moral metaphor from politics." Benjamin succeeded only too well in making himself miserable. He committed suicide.

This reminds me of another "anecdote" regarding that particular art school my friend attended to. There was a story running in that school, that several years ago, one of the final year students hung himself… as part of his "final year school project". I don't know if it's true, but it just gives an idea of the
kind of mentality being promulgated, where suicide is considered as artistic and where art has to be pessimistic, nihilistic, driving people into despair.

I went to college in order to get a degree in communications/filmmaking which was a bit of a joke in itself (it turned out that I didn't need the degree to start working. Anyone can work for free on a film in New York if it's small enough.) While working on these films, I became greatly discouraged at the arrogance and just plain meanness of many of the people involved (and these weren't even studio productions). I knew very quickly that this wasn't the environment for me and basically let it go.

I also wonder about this whole artist temperment that many people subscribe to. I consider myself to be creative and don't go around screaming or insulting people. It made me think recently if people just used this as an excuse to display bad behavior.

In reading some of the replies concerning creating art, I was reminded of this post

[/quote] From Laura in "Creating A New World" http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13795.360 (reply 374)
The Shaman is, after all, on one side, a normal human being who has another side, the Shamanic capacity. It requires that they walk between two worlds and try to help those in this world see and understand that other world. At the most basic level, this is done by a kind of sacred drama.

Quote from: anart on September 29, 2009, 02:09:33 AM
Quote from: sote
When we do the Work, the breathing exercises, and other methods of esoteric practice, we seem to be clearing the emotional center to get to that which is eternal/creative. Therefore, we may be taking on an aspect of what it would be like to become a shaman.

Yep, I would agree, we are definitely clearing the emotional center in order to make potential contact with the higher emotional center and what is real, and I think it can certainly be linked to the beginnings of a shamanic journey, as it were. At least that's my current understanding.
Years ago when I was doing hypnotherapy regularly, another therapist sat in on one of my sessions with me. It was a pretty dramatic one with the individual going through some seriously cathartic stuff which required my total, undivided attention, creative direction and thinking to help that person through this process.

For example, when the person began to cry and moan about a particularly horrible event, it was my job to help them get some distance by suggesting a scenario where they could look at the situation in new ways. I took them through several such mini-dramas to make the point, and then we went back to the situation and the person was a lot calmer and was able to process and metabolize the event.

When the session was finished, this other therapist said to me: "Wow, I could almost see you wearing the Shaman's mask and shaking rattles and beating drums ..." her point being that my interaction with the client were similar to that process. And she was right. Whenever I did hypnotherapy, I felt a sort of higher self descend into me, a kind of Divine Grace, that gave me super sharp senses so that I could see the elements behind the troubles of the client and know how best to direct their attention. My voice changes, my entire persona BECOMES something more than I am when I'm just wife and mother and friend. The same thing happens when I am teaching... I may start out as just myself, but something "descends onto me" and contact is made with that creative center, and I find myself seeing and hearing on more than one level, walking between two worlds, and looking for ways to convey that to others in a way that most effective. So, indeed, it becomes a sort of Divine Drama - I am, at one and the same time, myself and myself in the future.

So, in a way, that is indeed like the cleaning woman who created the illusion of Carmen. The main difference is that one is done for entertainment, the other is a conveying of spiritual verities. But the dynamics of the process are quite similar.

I think this is what is experienced by myself and others who "get into the zone" when they are working in any capacity. It doesn't have to necessarily fall under the category of art. It can be accessed even just doing the dishes I think.

I'm really glad this thread was started because I was thinking over the last 2 weeks about the subject of how ponerology corrupts creative energy. What started me thinking about it was the movie "Edward Scissorhands". I think it's a perfect example of how this happens. You have the main character who is not only a creation (sort of like Frankenstein) but is incredibly creative as well. In the film, he encounters two characters who try and corrupt him (one through unhealthy sexuality and the other through violence and lies. There's also a third character who believes he's the devil (the religious aspect). In the end, they end up turning the town (that is very bland and flavorless) against him and they run him out of town.

It just caused me to reflect on just how much of life has the flavor sucked out of it by people seeking to control...

There's also another quote (I think by Laura also on the "Creating A New World" thread) that has to do with how the further removed we are from physical work we are, the closer we move towards inertia. I just can't for the life of me find it right now. This might also be something useful to throw into the discussion. Perhaps it's a fine line we need to walk between linking physical/mental work with divine creativity if that makes any sense.

I also wanted to add that you see very often two things happening in society where typical artistic endeavors are concerned: The best music, art, fashion etc. is usually from people that never make it big and also when the ones that are creative get famous, the first work (which is usually the one that is the most heartfelt) is really good, then the ponerization process begins and the music or films that come out afterwards are distorted to look/sound like everything else that's out there.

edit: I just saw Forge's comment regarding Shamanism - we're posting at the same time!
 
I'm reminded of what Joseph Campbell said in the Power of Myth:

" [A sacred place] is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen….

Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Get a phonograph and put on the music that you really love, even if it’s corny music that nobody else respects."

I've found that I have little use for watching movies, reading fiction these days unless it crystallizes the truths I and others, especially here, have uncovered. If a movie or book starts to be a dogmatic view based on lies of the director or author I usually toss it aside. On the other hand, if it embodies the "Hero's Journey" in a new and enlightening way that helps us see our way out of the darkness then I can watch the movie over and over again. The Wizard of Oz comes to mind. I can't say I've read a book over and over again except Lord of the Rings as a teenager.

I think it was James Joyce who broke down art into improper and proper. The improper is further broken down into pornographic and didactic . Anything that makes you want to possess it is pornographic and anything that is repulsive is didactic. Proper art is "static" and holds us in an aesthetic arrest of the moment. I'll steal the rest of the description from here:
In this definition, if a work of art is true, it uses the forms of time and space in terms of contemporary life (people, objects, and their relationships to each other) to blow apart the illusory divisions that allow us to exist as individuals who are born from the great blank, grow old through similar stages of life, and die back into the great blank. And here we finally get to the Holy of Holies.

The Great Blank is the space between thoughts and it is what proper art is concerned with--leading the individual observer back to The Mysterious Ground of Being. We are talking about a sublime and complete dissolution of the individual and collective ego into the great void of creative energy from which all life springs. All great art that has moved individuals, and hence the world, along from social epoch to epoch has been rooted in The Great Blank.

But here's the catch--Proper Art is a near impossible thing to plan out and achieve. It's a divine gift of inspiration so rare that only the most foolish of artists would claim that they actually set out to create it as such.

Joyce himself never completed his master work of art--a tetrology of books beginning with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man moving into Ulysses (a book banned the US for a short period of time), then into Finnegan's Wake (an almost impenetrable book without Campbell's own A Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake) and finally what should have been a fourth novel that brought the reader back through the void into the waking moment of life where their ego would be released to roam from the aesthetic arrest between books three and four. But the fourth book was never completed as Joyce died at too young an age.

By using this definition of proper art as an analytical device, it is easy to see that most of the art produced these days is that of the improper variety. But there are also a few shining gems among us and while we as artists may never get lucky enough to be struck with divine inspiration and the passion to see it through to completion, we can prepare ourselves to enjoy and partake in those works which can lead us into bliss. The experience on either side of the creative process of a Proper work of art is enough to change our lives and replenish the world that was once only a wasteland.
 
This thread really has me thinking...

There's also another quote (I think by Laura also on the "Creating A New World" thread) that has to do with how the further removed we are from physical work we are, the closer we move towards inertia. I just can't for the life of me find it right now. This might also be something useful to throw into the discussion. Perhaps it's a fine line we need to walk between linking physical/mental work with divine creativity if that makes any sense.

Maybe what has to happen is that we need to allow ourselves the "time" to access our divine creativity. Perhaps that's what makes the difference between any task that's worthwhile and one that's not.
 
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