Is art to the left of mankind?

A few days ago I was discussing with a friend an idea I had for a theatre play, but when I mentioned that in this play the "bad guy" was going to be a left wing politician, she said to me: "you can't do that, art is left winged".

This statement came rather as a surprise to me, and it got me thinking about this unusual posture, or to be more honest, this rather clichéd perspective of art, and I must confess that I was rather shocked at the comment coming from this person in particular, whom I thought to be broader minded, but well, she proved me wrong… anyway, as I was saying, this conversation got me thinking about the political inclinations of art, and my first thought is that art has no inclination whatsoever, not even to the center; in fact I believe that art as a universal concept is devoid of ideology, and it’s the artist who decides to which side he inclines himself, I furthermore think that we have been dominated by the idea of the “revolutionary” artist, whom I dare say has rather died out, just as social revolutionary movements have been dying out, or in cases like Colombia, turning into common criminals.

Now if we look into the furthest left a man can be, or cold have been prior to 1989, that is to say a member of the Soviet Communist Party, then we will find that in left wing nations, governments and sates, art was subverted for the use of the political class, therefore depriving it of it’s revolutionary role, for to be a revolutionary in the Soviet Union, would have meant to being anything other than leftist, and why not, a full blown right winged idealist, which obviously labeled the artist as an enemy of the state, and was sentenced to either lifelong – however brief – service in a Siberian Gulag, or a much faster and merciful firing squad, so this has brought me back to the topic I started writing about: Art’s political and ideological inclinations.

I don’t know if the reader will agree with me or not, but in the painting above, which happens to be the work of a soviet painter, Ivan Ivanovich Dubish, all I can see is an attempt by a left wing government to use art to it’s own purpose, which for me is just as bad as when the Nazis used artists for their own ends, so I’ve come to the conclusion that art it self is free of political inclinations, but unfortunately the artists are not.

The fear of a blank page or canvass

One of the biggest fears artists have is that of a blank page or canvass. After all they face infinite options and possibilities, there’s a wealth of information within their heads, bulging, pushing against their temples trying to get out, making their hands twitch, their eyes pop, and still sometimes they’re at a loss where to start.

This is a clear example of an existential crisis. This is the fear of mankind to make choices; the wider the range of possibilities, the more difficult it is to make up your mind, which is a law of economics, although I admit I don’t know exactly who stated it first. Whenever you go into a super market to buy toothpaste, it’s a real mess, with so many options to chose from that people will usually stick to the brand their parents used, or the one the neighbor suggested, just to spare themselves the need of consciously making a choice.

No picture that you have an infinite amount of possibilities, that the entire realm of human imagination is at your disposal, and then you can start to picture just how difficult it is to start writing, or painting, or sculpting, or composing, or creating in any way, even if it’s a dull monthly activities report for your boss. Albeit this last case at least has a much smaller realm of possibilities.

Now this brings me to a new and more challenging problem: how to fight the blank page syndrome? There are no magic brain chemistry pills to do it for you, and a shrink is too expensive, so if anyone has any suggestions I’d really appreciate them, although given the fact that I seem to be the only person reading this Blog, then I’ll just have to keep on looking for the answer myself.

Beds and Airplanes

Have you ever looked over the edge of your bed before getting out of it? Been overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding while doing it? After all, facing life every day can be as daunting as jumping out of an airplane; if you're not careful you can end up splattered against the ground with such force as to be an unrecognizable mass of blood...

But on the other side there’s an undeniable exhilaration, an unlimited range of possibilities, the whole world is there, waiting for that first step, that as Tolkien said in The Hobbit, can lead you anywhere; all you really need to do is just step out the door into the road, but I would go even further back, all you need to do in life is simply take that first step out of your comfortable bed, and face the world. Well, jumping off an airplane can be a little like that too; or if you are slightly less daring, so is getting off a plane once it has landed: you’re in a far away place, even if far away is only a few hundred miles, maybe you have friends in this city, or maybe you don’t, but in either case you still have to face the hassle of the traveler.
There are many other similarities, if we take into account the fact that many people travel to fulfill a dream, like the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, or the Jewish trip to Jerusalem, or the Catholic pilgrimage to Rome, or if in a somewhat more mundane fashion a vacation to Europe or the US for a Latin American middle class family; these are dreams that many times have visited their owners while lying in bed, and as John Lennon once said “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one”, so lose your fear, and simply get out of bed or jump of the airplane, after all the world is out there waiting for you.

A warm welcome

To any and all who happen to read this, welcome into the window of my thoughts. I won't say it's a window into my soul for a machine is far to insensitive to allow that, but anyway, I wish to explain a little about the purpose of this Blog: I just need a space where to store all of the ideas I have that are to disconnected from one another to be held by a coherent text, so a fragmented setting like this one is a really useful receptacle for them. Maybe some of you will find them interesting, or hate and loathe them, but after all they're just the musings of a perplexed soul in search of a higher truth, and before anyone can say anything, I'm not talking about God, I’m talking of the higher truth hidden in mankind, for I dare not try and look beyond the waking world, for my findings could be something I don't want to see or I can't handle, so I'll stay put in the world of mortal men. But anyway, as I was saying, this is just a space where I can think in a collective fashion, for I hope to create some kind of reaction with my writings, no matter what they are. And a word of caution beforehand, my native language is Spanish, so this will be a bi lingual Blog, for some of the texts I'll post will be in English and some in Spanish, and they will not be a translation of previous posts, just new ideas...Well, without further ado, let the reflection begin