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Where there is a lack of soul, there is a lack of art.
Art has the transcendental ability to make us become sensitized again; we need this now more than ever. We need to find ways to make meaning, rather than consume meaning, in this epidemic of meaninglessness.
The modern stream of content is a shallow black hole devoid of the most important qualities of humanity: mystery, complexity, and depths. Our consumption is leading us to a numbed state of existence. We are suffocating with the weight of all that we are leaving unsaid as a generation; we are drowning in a sea of feelings unexpressed, not seeking out mediums that make us connect with them and bare our souls in a healthy way. The black hole we are in is muddying the details of the world around us until the days are passing by in a meaningless blur. It’s becoming impossible to listen when we are trapped in the deafening void of this vacuum.
In my creative writing class, one of our major assignments was to write a short story. Our professor was shocked that we had all built these elaborate fictional worlds for our short stories, when there was so much material in our present, everyday life that we could have written about. Yet, we chose an alternate reality.
We all choose to numb ourselves and scroll right past the traumas of our generation.
In this digital age, our ways of thinking ultimately remain the same because the messages—laced with absolute certainty—are not challenging us; we are not challenged by what we are seeing and reading. If we are not challenged intellectually, how can we ever grow? How can we connect with our core selves—our identities—if our souls have been dormant?
The rise in aesthetics is a testament to this emptiness; we are living in an age where we adopt manufactured identities. We are no longer searching for truths or values. We have stopped making meaning for ourselves, not delving deep into the uncharted territory that is our minds and souls; we want to quickly consume, know, and become without reflection or introspection.
Neatly labeled and quickly defined, we have become our own Sparknotes: parading around with summaries of our identities.
When we become apathetic and desensitized, all that’s left of us is a hollow shell. As Annie Dillard writes, we need to poke at wounds, which is what good art does, until we can expose the injured tissue and heal properly. Good art allows us to regain a sense of self and re-awaken the senses that have been dulled.
With the decline in liberal arts degrees, it seems that as a society we are less interested in engaging with not just art, but the world, critically. Our need to escape from the traumas of our generation has led to a certain facility with media consumption that is passive in nature. As masses, it seems as if we prefer art and discourse that is easy to consume: this unchallenging, facile stream of content has become a second skin. We need to peel the layers back to expose the wounded tissue underneath in order to address the meaninglessness we find ourselves faced with. I have included a series of images from the Italian painter Modigliani, who was famous for his surrealist portraits. He often drew his subjects without pupils and so famously said,
When I know your soul, I will paint your eyes.
I bring up Modigliani because he captured the essence of mystery in his work. In the current cultural climate, the only art we seem to engage with is whatever promises the highest number of views or sales. These measures are not a reflection of quality, nor does this type of art offer any intellectual discourse for consumers to engage in. In a matter of seconds, the artist is now expected to pose questions and proceed to answer them for the viewer.
It is part of the cycle of instant gratification that we have come to expect as a generation, the type only fuelled by a quick Google search and a scroll through social media.
One of the greatest educators from whom I have received profound wisdom is Professor Bruce Powe. In his lectures, he emphasizes the art of cultivating inwardness so that we have depths. I’d like to expand on this idea to suggest cultivating
in-word-ness: not to merely consume the written word, as one would quickly wolf down a meal, but to savour every bite and allow time for digestion
in-word-ness is the idea of feeling the words of great writers, in whose works we identify parts of ourselves, allowing the words to sink into us and pump in our veins.
But sitting with ambiguity means cultivating discomfort. To listen means to sit in silence and be with silence, so that we may regain a sense of self.
I want you to ask yourselves: when was the last time you listened to someone in a conversation in order to understand them, instead of listening with the intent to respond?
Could we apply this to ourselves? Can we listen to the world around us, not for the purpose of having a reaction, but to simply understand deeply and find the parts of us that are touched by what we hear?
Moving towards a solely digitized reality is extremely dangerous. As Professor Powe emphasizes,
we criticize, condemn, and move on without thinking critically about issues in our society.
We listen to respond hastily, rather than to reach a deeper level of empathetic understanding.
The literary realm—literary fiction, especially—makes us ask questions not of the world, but about ourselves. We look inward to delve into the mysteries of human existence, to ask fundamental questions about why it is that we act the way we do. It is a rarity for us to sit in solitude with a work of literature and reflect on our own thoughts.
Great art, like Modigliani’s, is similar to great bodies of literature: it makes us leave art galleries with a million questions. It is a mystery that is never resolved, an ambiguity with open-endedness that is terrifying for a generation whose need for answers is insatiable.
I want to raise the notion of negative capability. It is a theory that was proposed by the poet John Keats, who felt that the artist’s truth would never be found in the search for knowledge. Nothing lends to this feeling of apathy more than absolute certainty. This absolute certainty leads to ideological—black and white—modes of thinking, which results in a generation of individuals who lack critical thinking skills.
... and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason ...
In other words, Keats is implying that our potential lies in what we lack: that an open mind, a willingness to doubt and remain in a state of contemplation is what will make us great.
This feeling of being overpowered by a certain sense of beauty, truth, and presence of a moment is what is called the ‘haiku moment’ in Japanese poetry. A haiku focuses chiefly on nature. In a 3-line stanza, the poet is expected to offer profound insights into the beauties of the natural world. When I was writing haikus for my creative writing class, I was overthinking the exercise at first; I was counting the syllables while trying to think of something witty and clever to say about the tree I had been staring at for half an hour. I got frustrated; I realized that I had no useful knowledge whatsoever about the tree before me. It was then that I stopped intellectualizing the exercise, and turned to writing out of reverence. After my 2nd haiku, I could not stop. I had reached the haiku moment; the tree in front of me held my undivided attention for 2 hours as I surrendered to nature’s pull. It was a tug of war that I was meant to lose.
It is when we live with ambiguity and mystery that we feel most alive, like our lives are filled with endless possibilities. The spark returns to our eyes.
It is time for us, as a generation, to break free through the surface of the water and emerge reborn.
Like relighting the wick of a candle that’s been extinguished, can we sensitize ourselves again? Sensitization—feeling alive and empathizing with others—should be our ultimate goal. It is time we started to make meaning upon which we construct ourselves, instead of relying on manufactured identity.
The practice of engaging with art on a deeper level allows us to practice radical empathy, which, ultimately, allows us to suspend our judgments and engage with real-world issues critically rather than with hostility and aggression. By regaining a sense of empathy—feeling connected with one another—we can live our lives as kinder, more benevolent, and more understanding human beings.
Great artists ignite such passions in us by rekindling the flame of our sense of mystery, an endeavor that will push us to new depths.
Through ambiguity, we are left to question our thoughts, to push beyond the boundaries of non-analogous thinking. We need to consume art that is ambiguous in nature; to challenge ourselves intellectually and emotionally; to be unafraid of sitting in gray areas. We need to find our voices again—our own unique voices.
Good art should make you feel like an insect under a microscope; the artist is peering at you through a lens and asking questions, but you yourself are questioning your world and your place in it. Good art always turns back on its audience and makes us examine ourselves—introspectively and critically—so that we may view the world in this manner too.
Born in the 2000s and being raised on the internet, I think I speak for my entire generation when I say that oftentimes, we feel like we are owed meaning.
When we finish watching a David Lynch film, we don’t sit with the silence wondering what the point of Blue Velvet was, like our parents did. We hop onto YouTube and go through videos of analyses instead.
My point is, in order to work towards making meaning, we have to understand that we are not owed meaning; it’s something we need to seek out for ourselves.
In the beginning of this essay, I included images of artworks by Modigliani. If you were completely unmoved by the paintings, you are not alone. The images featured here were generated by DALLE-E, an AI system that generates images and paintings based on keywords. The above three paintings are grounded in Modigliani’s style, but AI-generated.
Below are the real artworks of Modigliani
I shall leave you to ponder this thought. Good art holds a mirror up to your face; your reflection will get murkier and murkier the more you stare, but no other experience will ever make you memorize your features so intimately.
We need to stop plucking stalks of the weeds that the media has grown for us; we need to unearth our own roots to discover alternative routes to our true selves.
Atena Bazargan is currently completing her Psychology degree and will continue her studies at York University with a double major in English and Creative Writing. She aspires to become a professor of literature and an author.
Atena Bazargan is currently completing her Psychology degree and will continue her studies at York University with a double major in English and Creative Writing. She aspires to become a professor of literature and an author.