The Art State

The other day I was listening to somebody cover Van Morrison's Into the Mystic. The guy pulled it off, but damn he had to work hard. Van makes it seem so easy. The difficulty with the song is that it shifts into a much higher intensity in the chorus. The cover man achieved this intensity with a Bluesman's vigor, requiring what is essentially a throaty scream. Van does it some other way, not with energy so much as a state of bliss. It is this state that intrigues me. I think it's the same state one enters to write a great poem. It is the irrational phase of a larger process.

People who don't realize that there is a larger process create crappy poems. What they're missing is the preliminary phase, in which the artisan learns his tools. Through practice, he knows their use so well that when he enters the art state he can use them without thinking about it, allowing his entire brain to safely enter the irrational. Then there's an additional step after the irrational phase. This is the one I have the most difficulty with. I would call it the revision phase. For Van, he can't go back and revise his performance... but he can make adjustments for future performances. Clearly, he's done this over the years. For a poet, it means going back to the same poem and revising it.

Here's where it gets fuzzy for me. The rational mind is brought into play, analyzing the work, but somehow the irrational must still be consulted, so that the whole damn point of the piece isn't ruined.

Many of the Web's dilletantes, including myself, are obsessed with genius, because the genius somehow has all the rational steps taken care of for her. She simply enters her art state and comes out with pure gold. We dilettantes are more likely to come out with pure you-know-what. And it's splattered all over the Web! I think that some people, in reaction to all this scat, corrupt their art state or skip it altogether, creating pieces that are cold or for whatever reason do not compel the reader. And as silly as touchyfeely irrational types are, there is nothing sadder than someone who has lost touch with the irrational. These are the most lost of all, because the irrational still guides their actions, they just can't see it.