Theos-Talk Archives (November 1996 Message tl00301)

TOWARD A THEOSOPHY OF ART

Despite my silly posts, I am not really obsessed with sex so much as art.  How
are they related?  How are they spiritual or capable of being SPIRITUALIZED or
theosophical in the sense of echoing in a NEW way the Ancient Wisdom.

I would like to suggest that it doesn't take a lot of effort to be influenced
indirectly, unconsciously by art of the Ancient Wisdom tradition.   It is really
all around us, not just in coded hidden esoteric form, but out in the open as
the CODE itself.  Our alphabets and number systems, Egytian, Hebrew, Roman,
Phonecian,  have allowed the creation of our dynamic, one might even say
monstrous technologies like the Internet which we are now sharing and which  are
nothing more than the dew jewels in Indra's net of consciousness crystallized,
mechanized and elecrified to create a new kind of old linking of our very
consciousnesses which CANNOT be separated from our SPIRIT.

Try as we might, we are all hapless dupes and victims most of the time and
active Masterful coocreaters some of the time of the same basic elements of
communication as art whether the elements be sound, light, color,
electromagnetism, number, letter, biological DNA markers etc.

I picked up GIOVANNI GENTILE's book "The Philosophy of Art"  synchonistically.
I had no idea that his life was his ART, his philosophy was ultimately his
DESTINY, tragic and beautiful like art itself.  I only skimmed in an accelerated
learning style his translated work.  The translater apologized that Gentile's
style was to prolix, diffuse and ITALIENATEDly ROmanTic for our dry scholarly
plane fair ENglish tastes.  He was verbose not logical.  He accentuated, some
would say over- accentualted the possibilites that were inherent almost immenant
in the operatic style of Italian.

I would like to go on to echo some problems he uncovered and lived out.  They
haunt our world today like an uneasy Zeit-Geist that is in no way paltry or
polter.  I am talking about his collusion with Mussolini's regime of fascism.
Like Ezra Pound, he did the UNforgiveable.  He suggested even deified a style of
art, a style of life that we can no longer even CONSIDER in this age of
political CORRECTNESS.   How could he have betrayed us, the future artists, the
future citizens that were and are and will be starving for MEANING.

Fasten you seat belt fellow theosophists, his life and thought weren't pretty,
warm, fuzzy or new agey at all. Shirley McClaine and Jane Fonda wouldn't go near
and I fear I shouldn't either.  But the I am definetly not in their league or
John Algeo's either, so I have a certain freedom, to dare, to know, to will and
FLAP my FACE.

What was his fearful message?  He dared to suggest that the artist cannot will
to be silent.  That art is not so much thought in the Aristotielian Appollonian
formalistic logical mode, but IS a priori, de facto FEELING before it is
anything.  That feeling, not form or matter or thought arises ex nihlo.  Who can
look at this?  Who would consider the fearful consequences of acting from
FEELING, not neurolinguistic programming of the political correct and
righteously spiritual in a theosophical mode.  What is the brotherhood of
humanity?

Whoa!  No I am not apologizing for the jack-booted (a term that has amazingly
reappeared in the STRANGEST mouths and other orifices) juggernaut of genecidal
madness.  Yet fate moves us from within.  Then moving finger cannot help but
trace a line that is not fully under conscious control, but is under the control
of FEELING before form.

Before we judge and think and talk, we feel.  We are doomed to art more than
sin.  It is original and drives the market at Southeby's daily.  Jackie O's
sheets are not my sheets and for valuable reasons.  President Kenndy, not to
mention Aristotle, never slept in MY bed even as platonic ideals, believe me!

The very people that kill and maime and feed and fuel the world economy and
death mills are the first to send troops to Africa on HuMANisamaritan
(sic-sick) missions of mercy.


Mercy, is right and amazing grace to boot!  Society always puts it best face
forward, but it always sends someone else son's to the war zones and gas
chambers.   Can we worry about issues of ART and FEELING before we FEED the
starving minnions of the juicy jungles of tribal jealousies of Hatfield and
McCoy rivalries that would make the Irish blush with Republican terroristic
shame.

Art is commerce, is politics, is economics, is spirit, is theosophy.   Gentile's
look at Leopardi's poetty among other things lead to a very uneasy truce with
Musulini that ultimately lead to his assasination for standing up for
anti-fascist propagandists in the underground in 1944.  Like Bernardo
Bertulluci's anti-hero (if there ever was one) in THE CONFORMIST, Gentile like
Mussolin and perhaps even Hitler helped the WORLD PROCESS OF ART in a way that
is tragi-comic in the worst way like a Borsht belt comedian trying to imitate
Stridentsand for an Eva Peron encore?  Madonna, the truth is we never loved you,
only we couldn't take our eyes and ears off you, you PROGrAMMED our soul! I
don't want my MTV anymore, not like that!     Was his/her/now our  song and
thought worth her salt?
The sulffer dioxide fumes of hell leap around his soul tormented by the thought:
what if I DIDn't have to do it just that way.  Could he escape our condemnation?
Cound we put him up there we the greats like Juddu Krishnimurti not to mention
Col. Ollcott or even HPB?  Yet all are great just because they did what they had
to do despite the judgements of history, but with de-infinite help even from the
likes of the 3rd Reich, Spagetthi fascism (oxymoronic, I'm sure) and MTV (heard
any music there recently?).

Does Gentile's spirit live today?  Tyger, typer burning bright, in the armies of
the night, what immortal hand or art could frame thy fearless symmetry?

What would a theosophy of art (not theosophical art, whatever that might be) be,
look like, feel like?  What heartfelt movement is rumbling just under the
surface of the fabric of time ready to emerge?  With a roar or whimper, by fire
or ice, it is all the same and can be no different.  Let the Feelings be with
you, fellow artists unite (Alan are you listening?).

Namaste
Keith PRice