What happens when those we had elevated on a pedestal, those in the creative and spiritual realms whom we had revered, respected, and adored for years on end for their pure, forged-in-God’s-own-backyard kind of artistic and philosophical work of genius, stumble from their moral high ground due to sexual and financial scandals because they are, after all, mere mortals with a messed-up ego, low standards, and poor judgment?
When we had grown up reveling in the beauty of the world they created with their artwork, took inspiration from their intellectual gems, and matured on the wisdom they had shared, only to learn one day that they had burst our bubble through actions that are way beneath the worthiness they had commanded of us, how are we supposed to see things the same way again?
The wise caution us to keep the man separate from his ideas, lest he must fall from grace taking down the fruits of his brilliance along with him. “Detach the art from the artist” is our duck-and-cover strategy whenever the proverbial shit hits the fan. It is best to see art and knowledge as autonomous entities whose messenger’s credibility should have no bearing on their substance.
“I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us – albeit strangely.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
The speaker of one of my all-time favorite TED Talks, Elizabeth Gilbert, the muse whisperer, states that ideas don’t have a material body but they certainly have a consciousness and a strong will to get manifested, which they do through a human partner – “It is only through a human’s efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and into the realm of the actual.”
This sounds every bit right and is what most creators attest to when questioned about their methods. In fact, there had been several instances where I wrote a line or connected some dots spontaneously and then wondered in retrospect where the heck it came from.
If art, wisdom, ideas, and geniuses exist in the ethereal realm like Consciousness or God, we will be able to experience them as the self-contained entities they are, only if we too are a part of that higher realm where there is no I-idea separation and all exist as One. But here on the physical plane, the abstract idea needs to condense and concentrate its vastness through the mind of a human as a piece of art or a voice of wisdom for us to relate to. And when the infinite consciousness filters itself to be presented as creation through the finite consciousness of humans, it naturally gets colored by the beliefs, intelligence, mindset, fame, and falls of those human agents.
The abstract concept of Enlightenment became “Enlightenment” because the person who gave it form with words and meaning with his interpretation did so from his personal experience and perspective. To separate the words from the wise man or the art from the artist is to nullify the life energy that gave shape and credibility to the work. The seed of the idea may have originated in the ether, but for better or worse, the work came to be in its current form precisely because of both the light and darkness of the person who forged it for us. So, there can be no debate about separating the created from its creator. It cannot be done. Not if we are entirely honest about it.
Then where do we go from here? From the time our own “I” was born, we had allowed these creations that were brought forth by questionable creators to claim space in our minds and spread roots in our being. We are who we are because of the identity these creations chiseled for us. When the creative work owes its existence to its creator and when we owe our existence to those creations, how do we make sure that the creator’s cross doesn’t become our phantom cross to bear.
The answer lies with the ‘60s french literary critic Roland Barthes who coined the term ‘The Death of the Author”. His core argument is that the writer doesn’t have sway over the words he writes, rather the power rests with the reader who interprets them. A creator’s work should and can never have a singular, definitive meaning, because every time a reader reads the words, the work is made anew by the language and individual interpretations the reader makes of it. An author cannot claim his work to be original as every work is imprinted upon by previous creations, references, and influences across time and cultures, a tapestry of many threads that belongs to all of the world and not just the author.
“The text consists of multiple writings, resulting from the thousand sources of culture; but there is one place where this multiplicity is collected, united, and this place is not the author, but the reader: the reader is the very space in which all the citations a writing consists of are inscribed. The unity of a text is not in its origin, it is in its destination.”
Roland Barthes
Sometimes the most elusive revelations are the ones I’ve already learned but forgotten due to my lack of discipline in applying the knowledge in everyday thinking. Roland Barthes’ claim is simply an extension of the same teaching I have been extracting from Spira all of last year and yet have failed to recognize the connection due to my own drama over creator and creation.
Barthes’ notion of “ultimate meaning rests with the reader and not the author” is a reiteration of the established wisdom “It is what I am”. We are aware of the world, not as a separate object but as sensations and perceptions re-interpreted to ourselves in the form of thoughts; reality is what we personally experience in our awareness. Soulful music could speak for an indescribable emotion, inspiring painting might affect a newer dimension to an existing worldview, and persuasive teaching could crumble assumptions and shift perspectives. But all of these are happening within us in our awareness and not out there at the creator’s doorstep for him to take credit.
A creation has meaning to it not by virtue of its existence or its creator, but because of how we choose to see it – valuable or unworthy, influential or insignificant. There are thousands of works all around us yet we don’t relate to every piece, and when we do resonate with one, it is not due to its noteworthiness, but because something in us resonates with it. We are not obligated to the creator beyond the common courtesy of a fellow human with estimable talent. It matters not the origins of these worthy creations, much less the morals of the creator, but how we, the true subjects of those creations interpret them.
The next time an angel falls, let’s remember that it is the ripples that matter and not the pebble that caused the ripples or even the hand that tossed the pebble.
