Art is Rain for Thirsty Souls

I believe I know what the Void feels like. Do you? It's cold.and very lonely, because it's wanting creation and nothing exists there as of yet.Spend enough time there, and you may fear that you could die of it. Too much emptiness for the soul to endure; too much nothing.

Until you hear (or see, or feel) it.the voice of one who has been there, too - endured it and survived to tell the tale.I believe that we love artists most when they get us in touch with our inner selves in a way that the world outside us cannot.

Much has been said about the price that they pay for their wondrous creations: loneliness and misunderstanding, addictions, emotional imbalance and depression, the life of a misanthrope. What are seldom conjectured, though, are the reasons for the artists' sufferings.Well, they're living somewhere beyond the safely-defined place we call reality. They are the frontier explorers of the unknown.

And that means that they exist in a place where they have nothing but their own intuition and insight to guide them.because they got there first! No one else has experienced what they have; these impressions are new, hard to fathom and even much harder to articulate. No wonder the visionaries of our world are oftentimes so lonely and desperate. Who can they confide in, and who can offer them condolences? Mankind may not catch up to the place where the artist succumbed until long after he or she is gone.When we DO reach that place, we feel the chill too.

But we have one consolation: the words or music or visual images bequeathed to us from one who has gone before. The art of our visionary creates a veritable map for us to find our way. We are no longer in the void where nothing makes sense; Art has given form to our world.I never believed that art and science were at such odds with each other. Both are approaches to structuring our universe, and neither are strong and true for all time. Evolution continues - art offers up new inspirations, and science gives us new explanations.

Joseph Campbell said that the motifs of myth had to be constantly reinvented, lest the life-giving forces slip away. Our artists keep that mythic fire alive so that it can be passed, intact, to succeeding generations.And each generation must make its own journey into the unknown and face the long stretch of trials. Perils lurk in the wood, upon airy mountain heights and deep within the bowels of the Earth. But we will have help: the wise old guide, the maiden who knows the way out of the labyrinth.

And we'll know that we're embarked upon the only noble adventure left for modern man: the exploration of the inner world. Where else can we go? Everything has been settled and claimed, turned into megamalls and urban sprawl. We have to take the classic hero's lead, and trust that the way within will illuminate the way out.I doubt that our political leaders can offer us much in the way of good advice for that journey.

But Tolkien provided me with some useful roadmaps, as did Stephen R. Donaldson, Arthur Rimbaud, Joseph Campbell, Rumi, Kandinski, and so many others.Art is rain for thirsty souls.

Seth Mullins is the author of "Song of an Untamed Land". Visit his complete blog at http://www.writingup.com/blog/seth_mullins.

By: Seth Mullins