"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or
whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." -Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
(This picture
captures the essence of the divine madness in nature and life.[1])
“What is it that makes a great artist great?”
Dion’s eye’s widened as he thought how to answer the deep and abrupt question, “I don’t really know… I guess someone who forces me to look at the world in a different way. What do you think?”
“Someone who has the ability, the unfathomable power to stir me up, to change me in ways I could never have changed myself; someone who can penetrate the autonomy of my mind and in turn, shake me up so violently that I have no choice but to submit. Someone with the courage and integrity to scream in my ear, ‘WAKE UP, YOU ARE ALIVE, YOU MAY NEVER BE AGAIN… WAKE UP.’”
Vibrating through Dion, these words left an unimaginable impression on his consciousness: the emotion in the speaker’s voice, the intensity in his eyes, and the gravity of his answer gave the moment itself a surreal pulsation, a pulsation which Dion would never forget…
Over a decade after these words were spoken, Dion knelt beside his closest friend’s—his mentor’s—hospital bed. The doctors did not expect him to survive the night and Dion meant to be present at the end. A tear welled up in his eye as he watched Apollo cough and gasp for air in a deep sleep. His skin was so pale and wrapped so tightly around his bones that he better resembled a breathing skeleton than a dying human being. Cords from various machines and IV’s ran all over his body making his appearance even more morbid.
“We have accomplished so much together,” Dion thought to himself as he ran through memories in the eye of his mind, “the chapel—as it is today—would have never become a reality if it wasn’t for him. The chapel was my idea, but it was him that wanted it to be a non-profit organization open to the public. It was him who believed that the chapel could attain the power to enlighten humanity in general. I merely wanted to give artists a safe-haven to exalt art as a practice to inspire their own personal enlightenment.[2] If it wasn’t for him I would have used the chapel to flee from the world… If it wasn’t for him—”
Another paroxysm of coughing shook Apollo’s chest and forced Dion’s inward contemplation to dust. It sounded as if Apollo’s lungs were about to come directly out of his chest onto the hospital bed. “He is struggling just to breathe. The pain must be unbearable,” reflected Dion as tears cascaded down his cheek, and as he concealed his face in his hands.
“Why do you cry? Do you not know that I have lived a beautiful life?”
A little startled Dion wiped the tears from his eyes, then smiled and said, “But does that mean that I can not feel sorrow when that beautiful life is coming to an end?”
“Of course it doesn’t… But I would rather we had a meaningful conversation than wallow in sadness. Tell me, how is the chapel?”
“It’s fine. I haven’t been back since I gave the grand opening speech a few weeks ago.” After pausing to wipe his eyes and take a deep breath, Dion continued, “I really wish you could have been there for the speech.”
“That is not the first time you have expressed such regret. Why was my absence so important to you?”
Dion’s eyes widened in confusion, “we founded the chapel together; we have watched it grow together. Why shouldn’t I want you to be there?—besides part of the speech was dedicated to you.”
“Tell me, does this sound familiar: My friends, I have a hope of the highest nature, a hope that art can unify the difference’s of humankind, a hope that through its practice and contemplation, art can raise humanity beyond the confines of its purely egotistical controversies. This hope permeates all that I do and this chapel seeks to realize that hope, to ascertain that dream not for the benefit of its founders but for the benefit of all humankind. A friend, a close friend now dying once asked me the question: what makes a great artist great? My answer was not worthy of such a question, but his…his answer was tremendous. He said to me, ‘a great artist has the power and integrity to shake me up, to scream in my ear, “you are alive, you may never be again…wake up.”’ Deep down in every human, there is a drive, a need, ‘to be the poet of our own life.’[3] So I say to you, in this chapel, I don’t want to hear some rambling industries ‘norm’. I want to hear the soundtrack of our lives, the epic of our existence. I need to be moved by the poetry of our purpose, the prose of our possibility, the opera of our consciousness: the pain, the guts, the blood; the joy, the peace, and the love. My friends, push to move the world and in turn the world will move you so intensely, so passionately, so profusely that you will have no choice but to move everything you touch and see until the breath of your lungs leaves this answerless epic, this mysterious soundtrack, this painful poetry, this beautiful prose which we have all been set to behold…”
Astonishment riddled Dion’s face as his speech was recited back to him. “You were there? You must have seen the building?”
“I saw it… It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The architecture is a timeless piece of art all on its own and that picture at the entrance was breathtaking.
(The pictures on the wall at the entrance of the chapel…[4])
Alex Grey’s ‘Sacred Mirror’s’ were also a perfect touch.”
(Alex Grey’s “Sacred Mirrors”
symbolizing the levels of existence.[5])
“I’ve come here almost everyday since the grand opening. Why didn’t you tell me you had been there before now?”
“Dion, my time here is ending. What I have seen or not seen is no longer important. I didn’t tell you for a reason, but I do not wish to express that reason here. Rather, let me share something with you in these final moments. In founding the chapel and in attempting to use art for the greater good, it has become ‘so thoroughly [my] habit to reject [my] impulsive choice,’ that entertaining sporadic desires now seems, ‘cowardly and selfish’.[6] I have spent decades strengthening my mind and exploring various philosophies and art forms, for, ‘the eye of the mind, of which the object is truth, is the work of discipline and habit’.[7] When one is attempting to do something great, ‘one must see things gather experience, ideas,’ in short, one must, ‘enlarge the mind’.[8] The current of purpose has always pushed me to expand the ever growing expanse of my horizons. This current whispers, ‘you have something to say: find the means to say it…’ One can find a voice through art and lead with that voice and even make that voice a habit, but, ‘in a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits’.[9]
“As creative people, the habits we seem to form are almost always through some art form, but I realized something the other day when you finished your speech. As your last words faded to silence bouncing off marble and stone, I breathed in deeply. Water filled the corners of my eyes. I beheld the chapel with tears of exhilarating joy. All thought subsided into a keen awareness which was infiltrated with an overarching peace that I had never quite felt before… And this awareness—this witnessing—was, ‘not attached to a particular outcome’.[10] Rather, it embraced the ecstatic nature of the moment for what it was: un-named and un-caged. Hundreds of others witnessed this radiance on my face as I bore witness to the scene before me. Later one person told me, ‘that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that [I] looked sublime and prophetic’.[11] In that moment it became painfully obvious to me that the most profound impact that I ever had on anyone was not ascertained through art—it was not accomplished through discipline, through habit, or even through rejecting my impulsive choice. Rather, it was accomplished through a conversation, through reaching out to another human being and passing on the wisdom that life once bestowed upon me. I have had more of a profound impact on those that beheld my face in that chapel then I ever did with my art. And just as much as I changed them, they changed me. Certain moments in life have a heightened intensity which forge an everlasting mark on a consciousness. What we take from these moments defines who we are. Forming habits is like putting the world into a box and closing ourselves off to the brilliance that each and every moment could manifest within us—that each and every creature could bellow to our experience. Do not get too lost in a dream of formal art. Do not forget that life itself can be an art: that feeling of overarching joy and contentment comes from an awareness not boxed in by concepts and habits; that joy comes from embracing an openness to the ecstatic flux of existence itself and from a courage which thrives on giving meaning to those pulsating, vibrating experiences. Now le—”
The systematic beeping of the cardiac monitor, suddenly transformed into a constant yell signifying a flat-line. Two nurses rushed on the scene to revive Apollo’s life. Moments later, the upper part of the skeleton flung forward with a severity that almost knocked one of the nurses to the floor. Cords attached to his flesh were torn out and the IV stands were thrown all over the room. Immediately, the muscles in his face formed an unforgettable expression. This expression was comprised of an unimaginable dread and a dreamy, other-worldly exhilaration. His eyes flew open so wide so quickly that it appeared as if they could’ve flown directly out of his head. Dion read extreme intensity in that face and in those eyes. It appeared as if he was being sucked back to consciousness from a place no one else on Earth could possibly fathom. Conflicting emotions dominated Dion’s being. Tears rushed forth as uncertainty splashed over. Anxiety infiltrated and crippled him. Fits of sobbing shook his chest and forced his hands to his face. Convulsions consumed him for several minutes until a whisper broke his self consumption.
“Please
do not worry yourself about me. A man
only has so much control over his destiny: we all must meet our demise…we all
must meet that mysterious end to which no one has ever come back, for, ‘we are all condemned to death with an
indefinite reprieve’.[12] I would rather we take our previous
conversation a step farther than wallow in the sadness of something so uncontrollable
and definite.”
“Go ahead,” responded
Dion as he wiped the tears from his eyes.
“If you were here, where
I am, right now, if you were about to breathe in your last breathe on this
Earth, what would you have to say for yourself?
What statement would you choose to echo out into time for all the
generations to come?”
“I’m not quite sure… I’d
have to think about it for a minute.”
“Don’t answer the question now, take it home with you, sleep with it, live and die with it…” After coughing violently he continued, “The other day I felt a need to answer this question and so I did. Now, I give my answer to you: Everyone builds an enclosure, everyone erects a box, but no one except us sets a limit on how deep and how wide that structure is constructed. Everything sounds out and dances in the canyon-lands of eternity. Every movement fades into the valleys of forever. Laugh at the old boxes and let the exploding of your enclosure echo out into eternity. Let the blasting of your edifice bleed into forever. Let the new boxes we build be shattered by the strength of those who are next: those who chose to catch the echo on the canyon walls; those who bathe in the blood of this valley’s floor. Let them laugh out into the canyon and let their laughter echo into every crevice of eternity, let it fade into every corner of forever. For their laughter is like our laughter: it echoes on every canyon wall, it provokes more laughter, more building, more exploding, more echoes, and even more laughter…” A few moments passed, as Apollo’s eyes fought the gravity of impending sleep. Rolling his eye’s around, he took in a deep breathe. Finally, his eyes settled and staring directly into my eyes he continued, “Embrace that laughter—fight for the exploding of this generation’s enclosure. In short live and die—take your last breathe—for something, anything greater than yourse— ”
The machine screamed flat-line again as Apollo’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. His muscles went limp and an explosion of emotion rocked Dion’s body as the nurses rushed to the room. It was no use. His time on this Earth was complete. Fading into the echoes, he became a whisper in the minds of those he’d affected, a vibrating energy in the canyons of time.
Those moments in the hospital left an impression on Dion’s consciousness that he would never forget. Those pulsating, throbbing minutes transformed his world into ice and mountains.
For weeks and weeks, his consciousness was drawn into deep contemplation. During this time, he didn’t dream of entering the chapel.
Finally, after months of thought, after all out bouts of extreme pain and inspiration, Prometheus—the name Dion seemed strange and foreign to him now—walked to the podium with a power that no one had seen before and began in a soft yet emotional voice, “Bathing in the ashes of a purpose, long since extinguished, modern man, entrenched in the dreams of everything man-made, celebrated the birth of a ‘new’ age, of a new millennium. Like all the other periods in recorded history, this age has accomplished little more that placing new barriers on the boundaries of human understanding. But this feat is not small and at bottom, all we can hope for is a wind strong enough to scatter our ashes, and those created by so many before us, across the coming ages, for it is only on ashes that new temples are built. And it is only ashes that any new temples can aspire to, for temples will never be experience itself.
“We swim in the pools and narrow rivers of grammar trying desperately to reach the wide ocean of experience: words and edifices built up on top of meanings only guide us lost on the winding rivers of desperation. They keep us craving the spaciousness of the open sea, while manifesting contentment with the mediocrity inherent in the rivers of systematic structure. Language can attain nothing higher than a complex cynosure seeking to lead beyond the confounds of itself.
“With blood stained hands, we seek to create a moment which is nothing more than a faint whisper, a fading echo, a moment which cannot be defined, which cannot be encaged, but which can only be subtly hinted at. The ebb of this moment brings forth the unfathomable waves of value. These waves crash down upon us, filling our veins with an experience of indefinable purpose. It is in this ebb, when waves of heightened intensity splash over our flesh and wash over our veins, that our-selves are defined. It is in these pulsating, vibrating, exhilarated moments that our character is formed. In these slow-motion throbbing experiences the chaos is formed into a chaotic order, a chaotic order which takes on a life, a destiny, an indefinable purpose all on its own. Here, our actions, ‘our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will…they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness’.[15] Our deeds and the deeds of others constantly collide forging an inextricable web of human relations, relations which force us out of the confines of our narrow selves and open us up to the true brilliance inherent in the chaotic order of existence itself.
“For what are we but agents attaching random effects to random causes? The fact that we can have a hand in which causes we attach to which effects, means we can have a hand in the life, in the destiny of that chaotic order which helps define ourselves. Though it seems no matter how far our hand reaches, answers are only a semantic illusion of more questions, questions which, depending on how answered, either force a consciousness into some form of narrowness or open it up to the tragic beauty of that impermanent ebb that forces us to be a flux with everything else. It forces us to be a chaos and a world, to form the chaos and yet let that same chaos be an unending forming of our selves… Embrace that Divine Chaos, take that exquisite madness into your bosom, and echo that Divine laughter in everything you do. In short live and die—take your last breathe—for something greater than the pleasures of your own flesh…take your last breathe in pursuit of opening the minds of all the generations who are next…” His words echoed through the main hall of the chapel eventually fading to silence. Walking from the podium, the entire church went into an encore that touched the very foundations of Prometheus’s being. The moment itself seemed surreal. Tears of exhilarated joy fell from his face, as an overarching peace spread its power through his body. All thought subsided into a keen awareness which left an unimaginable impression on his consciousness…
Prometheus went on to live a
beautiful life. One filled with pleasure
and pain, love and peace, anxiety and exhilaration, pain and darkness, chaos
and order, art and contemplation. He
watched the chapel spread its fingers into almost every crevice of the Earth:
first in
Word Count (total): 3185
Word Count without quotes: 3037