Indentity, the Self, and Art: random musings

What am I? I'm a body/soul composite. What's a soul? Well, a soul gives life to the body, and it's also a spirit. What's a spirit? That thing that thinks and wills. What is thinking? It's understanding, reasoning, and judging. This is kind of an empty road-map to the Self. But something is missing from every road-map: the one making the map. A movie-projector can project everything but the projector itself. You can't understand every fact about yourself, because you have to understand that, and then there's an infinite regress of understandings. Only the author truly understands the characters; not the characters.

What is this 'I'? Who is this "I"? Out of the heart comes all the issues of life, says Solomon; it's a fountain, and all the water comes from the fountain, but the fountain isn't just more water. It is that out of which the water comes. But it's very mysterious. Can Art give us any clues?

I want to talk about the connection between our identity and art. How do we know what we look like? Well, we look in a mirror. But in order to look in a mirror we need eyes. How do we know who we are? Can we look in another kind of mirror? How about the mirror of art? C.S. Lewis talks about a secret thread that binds together the books we love. But this can include other things as well. How about movies, poetry, painting, music, etc . . . Are these spiritual mirrors at which we can see 'through a mirror darkly' a dim image of our Selves? But to see these unique visions, we need eyes to see. This might be why Christ asks His hearers to listen if they have ears to hear, and to gaze if they have eyes to see; then they will hear His voice, and see His revelations. Chesterton says that all we call practical, rational, or technical means we forget that we remember; but all that we call Spirit, passion, or Art, means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot! Forgot what? Who we are! Nietzsche said, "We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, we ourselves, to ourselves…we are not ‘knowers’." And yet Socrates asks us to Know Thyself.

How? It seems Art plays a pivotal role here. I'm inclined to agree with Chesterton. In the back of our minds, we feel - as Pascal says - like dispossessed kings and queens. If Christianity is true, this makes perfect sense. Eden, after all, is that undiscovered country that is the satisfaction of our deepest longings. It's no surprise that when moving Art affects us, our thoughts reach for Something that we've never experienced; and yet the experience is always arousing It. It seems like like Art is giving us a clue about who we are. And since we're all unique reflections of God, we can find His image in our Selves, and through Us, grope for Him.

St. Francis of Assisi said our bodies are dumb asses, useful for practical matters. But could there be a connection between bodily movement and our Selves? Why do we move our bodies when we listen to moving music? If it moves us too much, why do physical tears come from our tear ducts? Why does our blood pressure rise? Why might our eyes close, or our head look up or down? Why might we smile? How can Art have such power? Why did Plato think it was so powerful it needed to be censured by the Government? Lenin said you could judge the quality of a city-state by its music. Is that why Hegel thought Music could give a clue as to the direction of the Zeitgeist? Why is it we 'look down' when we pray? We almost feel it indecent to pray, say, while shaving. Why do we go down on our knees? Why do we lower our voices if we talk about something serious, even if no one's around? Our bodies seems connected, somehow, to our identities.

Back to our analogy. Mirrors are to bodies what Art is to our Selves. I stress this because it's hard to directly look at it. It's seems like a mirage, an illusion, unstable. It might not even be essential. We humans can be inhuman; we can fail to achieve our Nature! Our Selves can fail to be. Boethius said that if we become evil, we cease to be what we were; we lose our essence. Virtue can lift us above our nature; and vice lowers us. And so Man bound by vice are ex-men, a wolf, a dog, a fox, a lion, a deer, an ass, a bird, a sow. Different vices can make you different kinds of beasts, and not a man. We then can lose that image in us of God. Charles Williams said that in Hell we no longer have the capacity to say 'I'. Tolkien made Gollum say 'we', not 'I'. 'We want the Ring, the precious.'

Jesus says something paradoxical and puzzling; if we save our Selves, we'll lose our Self; but if we lose our Selves for His sake, we will find our Selves. If we save our Selves, we somehow make our Self an idol, and then the idol possesses us, and we end in slavery. If we surrender our Selves to Him, our true Selves are given to us. Finding our true Self is another way of saying that archaic word 'salvation'. The tricky part is that 'finding our Selves' can't be a motive for finding our Selves. We almost have to lose our Selves; we forget our Selves. But we lose it in serving others or God . . . And then, magically, our Selves are given to us. Lewis says it's the same with originality; if you bother about originality, you'll never be original. But if you just say as clearly as you can what you want to say, you'll accidentally be original. It's the same with making impressions on people. As long as you're thinking about what kind of impression you're making while you're talking to someone, you're probably not going to make a good impression. But if you're just interested in what the other person is saying, and you forget about your Self, you'll probably make a good impression. This principle seems to involve alot of things.

Jesus asked what good is it if a man gains the whole world but loses his Self?