Something Beyond— At West End Gallery
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life ; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw — but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of–something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it–tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest–if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself–you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say ‘Here at last is the thing I was made for.’ We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1947)
I included a portion of the passage above from C.S. Lewis in a post from a couple of years ago that concerned itself with the painting at the top, Something Beyond. It seemed appropriate to revisit it today and expand Lewis’s passage.
I have been thinking lately about how each of us is drawn to certain writing, music, and art that speaks to us in a singular way, that has certain words, phrasing, and forms that make up a connecting thread that runs through them, one that instantly binds us to whatever we are experiencing in the work. The writers and poets I read tend to deal with subjects that speak directly to me and with a rhythm, pace, and clarity that communicates with me instantly. The same with songwriters and visual artists.
With writers, poets, and songwriters, there are words and phrases– I guess you might call them buzzwords– that communicate more than their singular meaning in the context of what you are reading. With visual artists, this comes across in form, contrasts, and color. You read, see, or hear certain things that connect with you instantly, before thought has a chance to catch up.
It is a form of instant understanding, a recognition that there are shared ideals, values, and desires that are not the same as what is considered the usual, something that extends beyond the ordinary and the everyday. Words, music, and images that express real depth, not just skim the surface of what we are. Things that speak to that part of our secret selves that we barely know ourselves.
As Lewis expresses it, this is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want.
This connection sometimes occurs with people you meet, those who are to instantly able to communicate with you in mere gesture and inflection, as you are also able to with them. People who somehow express a desire to speak of things beyond the mere small talk you share when you meet.
I feel a bit like I am floundering this morning as I try to describe something that remain fairly indescribable. I think that must be as it should be. My and your secret signature is mostly a secret to us, after all. How can one easily write or sing or paint that which they don’t fully know?
That secret that lies forever beyond us, hidden in buzzwords and rhythms and forms and people that inexplicably attract us.
Again, not sure that this makes sense. That’s the risk you take writing in this way– put it down as it comes to mind and put it out. I’ll catch the grammatical errors somewhere down the road, probably in a year or two when I reread this for some unknown reason. The errors in logic, well, that’s not something I can correct.
That’s part of my secret signature, I guess…
Here’s a song from a favorite Glen Hansard. I feel the connection I tried in vain to describe above with his work. Sometimes it the connection comes as much in the effort he put into the performance of each song. It always feels like a total effort, as though each might be his last. That’s something I understand and try to emulate in my work. For him, I think it comes his years busking on the streets of Dublin where baring your secret signature was the only way to make people stop and listen. This is an acoustic performance, without audience, of Didn’t He Ramble. I am throwing in a version of Say It to Me Now from the same session only because I like how things go wrong in it and how he reacts.
Redtree Times 