{"id":3046,"date":"2015-11-25T05:04:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-25T11:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3046"},"modified":"2015-11-25T05:20:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T11:20:56","slug":"darger-vs-hesse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=3046","title":{"rendered":"Darger vs. Hesse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s sort of lazy for me to just transcribe text from a Hermann Hesse essay but you&#8217;re not obligated to read this post! <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s interesting to see someone writing from 1947 about a topic that feels super potent in the age of message boards, Rotten Tomatoes and the AV Club. The question I think, for a lot of people making art is &#8220;Who exactly am I doing this for and why don&#8217;t I just pull a Henry Darger and make shit exclusively for myself and the eyes of God?&#8221; By God I mean, the spirit of Art or whatever you want to call the super ideal, uncompromised motivation for creating. This is a common question, right?<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q7dgRxpx6XY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In the essay &#8220;Mysteries&#8221;, Hesse doesn&#8217;t come up with an answer but it&#8217;s comforting to see a dude pre-Internet and television addressing the compulsion to produce precious babies and then sacrifice them to the madness of collective criticism. <\/p>\n<p><font size=2><em>Why must I, apparently in contradiction to all my native feelings, place my creations, the dear children of my joy and care, the fabric woven from the finest substance of my life, before the eyes of strangers and look on while they come upon the market, are overvalued and devalued, praised and spat upon, honored or abused? Why cannot I withhold them, at most showing them to a friend but preventing their publication or not allowing it until after my death? Is it a desire for fame, is it vanity, a wish to attack or an unconscious desire to be attacked that has brought me again and again to send my dear children into the world and expose them to misunderstanding, chance, vulgarity?<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n<em>That is one question from which the artist never completely escapes. For the world pays us, to be sure, for our creations, sometimes even more than they are worth, but it pays us not with life, with soul, with happiness, with substance, but simply with what is has to give &#8211; money, honors, inclusion in lists of the famous. Yes, the world can give the most unlikely responses to an artist&#8217;s work. This, for instance: an artist works for a people who are his natural field of observation and knowledge and his natural market as well; the people, however allow the work created for them to wither on the vine, they deny the artist recognition as well as bread. Then suddenly a foreign people discover him and give the disapponted author what he has more less earned: recognition and bread. Now the people for whom the work was intended and to whom it had been offered loudly hail the author and congratulate themselves that one of theirs has received such distinguished recognition. And that is still far from being the strangest thing that can happen between and artist and his nation. <\/em><\/font size><\/p>\n<p>(skipping ahead)<\/p>\n<p><font size=2><em>Something or other is wrong in the relationship between the artist and the world; the world itself feels this at time, and how would it be possible for the artist not to feel it much more keenly? Something of the disillusionment with which the artist, even when his work has achieved every success, regrets having surrendered things secret&#8230;<\/em><\/font size><\/p>\n<p>In transcribing this chunk of text I triggered some thoughts:<\/p>\n<p>One is a memory of the day before this past Halloween when I went to gathering of witches in a cave in Griffith Park. The witches were answering questions from the Tarot. We were allowed to ask any question and the group of witches would give individual answers. <\/p>\n<p>The question I asked was something like, &#8220;Is there still value to secrecy? Or should artists embrace the new social paradigm and be completely exposed?&#8221; I was sort of implying the old Patriarchal system of withholding information, and gradual initiation into knowledge and power. Whether it was still valuable for author and audience alike to sleep at the steps of the Temple. Or should the Temple be completely accessible at all times? (It&#8217;s no coincidence that this blog is called the Temple)<\/p>\n<p>One of the witches laid out a simple analysis of why we keep secrets. I think I&#8217;m remembering correctly when I recall her list: 1.Power 2.self-protection 3.gestation of an idea; meaning the idea hasn&#8217;t blossomed yet into something worth sharing. <\/p>\n<p>All the witches agreed that keeping secrets as a means of cultivating power was no longer of value. Of course I wouldn&#8217;t expect 7 feminist witches to endorse the value of old Masonic\/Patriarchal systems of secrecy and power! Perhaps it was the wrong question anyway. I&#8217;m not interested in holding secrets for power. In fact I&#8217;m pretty disgusted by that idea! But there is the question of information access\/absorption and steps of initiation. It&#8217;s a big question that I don&#8217;t feel like mulling over at the moment. <\/p>\n<p>The second thought I have is my own experience in being exposed to and greatly inspired by other artists and writers. If I&#8217;m only in communication with God, then my time here on Earth seems pretty pointless. So by offering my sacrifice, I&#8217;m contributing to the dialog that I&#8217;ve benefited so much from in my life: Seeing lectures by Jodorowsky, studying the drawings of Jack Kirby, writing emails to Van Dyke Parks, reading the works of Manly P Hall etc&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The problem of navigating the overwhelming noise with discernment becomes a life long challenge and mysterious process of failing and hopefully growing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s sort of lazy for me to just transcribe text from a Hermann Hesse essay but you&#8217;re not obligated to read this post! It&#8217;s interesting to see someone writing from 1947 about a topic that feels super potent in the age of message boards, Rotten Tomatoes and the AV Club. The question I think, for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3046"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3052,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3046\/revisions\/3052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}