Time and Beauty - Laurie Anderson

7/27/2019 Time and Beauty - Laurie Anderson

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LAUR IE A N D ER SON

Time and BeautyA mose n a trap takes a long time to reallze he's in a trap.Afier thatsomething in him never stops trembling.

J O H N B E R G E R

I A M W R I T I N G TRIS IN A T H E N S , W H E R E I A M W O R K I N G A T TH E M O M E N T . Right OUtSde m ywindow is the Parthenon, or what's left of it, up on the Acrpolis outlined against th esky. And I'm thinking about some of the really dramatic things that happened there.

Of course, th e familiar story is literally th e classic one. Roughly twenty-fivehundred years ago, in a shockingly short period of time, the foundations were laid downfor a huge number of the disciplines an d systems that have come to define Western

;lization: jurispr uden ce, philosophy, mathem atics, poetry, ethics, tragedy, satire,and sculpture, among many others.

It does seem strange, however, that while men were creating this rational worldof harmony and balance, they were simultaneously picturing a heavennot of beautyan d orderbut of chaos. M en portrayed themselves as noble, creative, an d capableof greatness, while Greek gods and goddesses w ere pictured as a squabbling bu nch ofcompetitive, preoccupied, and vain troublemakers. Heavens are typically th e opposite,full of light an d truth an d j udgmen t . The places down below ar e usually packed with

:iers. Why was this ancient world upside down? And wh y, by the way, do the archaicGreek statues smile so much like Buddhas?The next part of the story, and the one that interests me more at the moment,

hat happened to the Acrpolis as it expanded an d changed. Initially, th e fa i thfulworshipped their goddess Ath ena here. In the ft h century BCE the Parthenona glori-ous embodiment of rationality an d skillrose up around th e statue. Soon th e templegrounds were crowded with offerings, and the votive pieces became more and moreexpressive. Some of them became exquisite. The jumble of offerings had evolved into anexhibition of artwork s. Almost like a time-lapse sequence, religin had passed throu ghrationality and turned into art.

The next step here is the really strange one. It had become understandably dif-cult and distracting for the faithful to worship in the middle of the a rt show that th eParthenon had beco me. So the new mystical cults an d sects abandon ed th e Acrpolisan d left for the su rrounding reasthe woods and groves and caves. For the mom ent,faith had won out over beauty and the Parthenon and all that it stood fo r were left tocrumble, to fall into ruins, to be forgotten.

Zhang Huan, Blg Buddha, 2002NOTEThis essay was presentad at the Awake meetingon February 7, 2003. For sources , see page 119.


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Ethics is the esthetics ofthe future. L E N I N

Recently, I was talking to a journalist who said, "Who taught you what beauty is?" Atrst I actually tried to answer this question and then realizad that th e list of peoplewasso long that it would be impossible even to begin. At the moment, however, my ideasand feelings about art and beliefs (both my own and in general) seem to be in the middleof a sea change that I myself do not yet fully understand. I'm on shaky groundnota bad place to be, really. But I would like to use this opportunity to think about a fewways that art and beliefs can intersect. Do they share an aesthetic? And, if so, what isit and how did it develop? And along the w ay I want to bring in a few quotations fromhere and there, the words of my teachers who have taught me some of what they knowof beauty.

TH E TIME IT T A K E SEvery story shoald have a beginning, a middle, and an endjust not necessarily In that order.

JEA N -LU C GOD A R D

It seems like many religions go to great lengths to explain the way that time works.Sometimes I think that even more than teachings of goodness and evil, religions teachus how to Uve in time. They answer fundamental questions. How did the world begin?How will it end? Where do we fall in the long line of humans? Is there progress?

I myself spent much of my Ufe waiting for my Ufe to begin. Or in planningthings. Or imagining th e future. Meanwhile I love getting lost in memories, hopes,and daydreams. These are the stuff, the material, of my art. Do I work like this becauseI see time in a certain way?

I believewe're shaped by the way we perceivetime. So do we behave differentlyif we happen to believe in entropy as opposed to the infinitely expanding universe?Ifyou believed that you would live to be three hundred would you be living differentlythan now?

O N C E I S E N O U G H

As a young and quite strictly theoretical artist, I was almost fanatically committedto presenting my work only once. I was afraid that repetition would make it theater,which I despised because theater was about people pretending to be other people. Andthat was already so much like life.

ANDERSON 114


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However, I was also already actually playing many roles in my work process. Asan artist, when I imagine ne w images or sounds I look and listen from many angles,trying to escape my own point of view. I imagine being an od man, a dog, a fly on thewall. Later, if the work is made for an audience, I split myself further into audiencemember, analyst, performer, in an effort to see this new thing well enough to edit it.When I try to motivate myself I become an even larger group. For example if Tm discour-aged I might imagine part of myself as a small an d fearful girl an d another part as theheroic and understanding adult who rushes to her rescue.

These psychodramas go on and on. I have often found them very useful in mak-ing and understanding new forms. One of the dramas I no longer use is a carrot an ddonkey arrangement I worked ou t decades ago to convince myself to work. It was a wayto picture the rewards I'd get if only I could finish this or that project. Of course therewards never materialized, but the beauty of the arrangement was that I never had toactually think about why I was working and I could extend and renew the system eachtime it failed yet again. That is, until the donkey died and the symbiotic metaphor diedwith it. A carrot and a dead donkeyare really going nowhere.What is relative an d absolte?Master Sekito Kisen u/rites:

The relative fits the absolte as a box and its lidThe absolte meis the relativeLike two arrows meeting in midair.

Ouressential nature, ourBuddha nature, andall thedifferent manifestationsofourworldarenottwo. Subject and object are altogether as one.

Intimacy is nothing but realizing the fact that already you are as you are. Your essential nature isnothing but you as you are.See that these two arrowsare already meeting is yourown Ufe. You areno longer whatever you think yo u are, yo u yourselfare the Ufe ofthe dharma, the Ufe ofBuddha.Realizing this fact is the moment oftransmission. Transmission from whom to whomtThere is noth-ing to betransmitted from anybody elseto you, noteven your trueSelf.Thisisintimacy. Howdo youappreciateit? T A I Z A N M A E Z U M I R O S H I

I should say I am not a sitter. I am, let's say, a committed beginner ofzazen. Whatha s encouraged me as I come and go are the words of a teacher I had in 1975 in Barre,Massachusetts. I took part in a two-week period of silent meditation and at the end ofthe t ime, this teacher spoke to us briefly. He said something like: "Now, of courseyo uunderstand that when you leave some of you will continu to meditate many hoursa day, some of you will meditate only a few hours an d some of you won't meditate atall. You'll simply forget. But don't worry about this. Because next time you'll meditatea little longer and then you'll forget again. And then maybe a little longer and then

ns T I M EAN D BEAUTY


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you'll forget again." As I listened to him, I realized that this was the first t ime I hadheard eftbrt described in a way I really recognized. In a way that was really human. Ina way that described the way we move through t ime, remembering and forgetting andremembering again.

WAKE M E W H E N IT'S OVERLike many of the artists I admireamong them William S. Burroughs an d AndyWarhol1'm attracted to and fascinated by death. Death in al l its spooky goriness. Butalso in its connections to time.

And 1'm th inkin g of Warhol 's fteen minutes, his time limit fo r fame, for thespotlight. W hy was it fteen minu tes and not ten or three or a New York minute? Myown theo ry about the origin of this nu mb er is this: that fifteen was a very famous ColdWar number. I remem ber seeing it in the headlines of papers like the NewYork Post. Fifteenminutes was the time it took for an ICBM to reach New York from Moscow.

I love stories and I tell them to myself for many reasons. Some I use to snapmyself to attention. Some I use jus t to dream. I'm a collector and I have all sorts ofstories in the collectionstories about waiting, losing, imp ermanen ce, alchemy. Butalmost all my favo rites are various ways to see time, like this one, which is a sum maryof aBorge s story:

Alexander the Creat didn't die at the Battle of Maced n like people say he did .Instead he was captured by some yellow men and forced to fight fo r themas a slave. He fough t for ma ny y ears and he w as such a good ghter that eventu-ally they paid him with some gold coins. And Alexander took th e coins an don them was his own pictu re and he sa id, "This is from the time I was Alexa nderth e Great."

I also love Bob Wilson's time loops. In his LetterforOueen Victoria there is a bea utiful visualduet ab out colonialism and helplessness. And falling. From one side of the stage a man(obviously an E nglish m an) dressed in a morn ing su it and bowler hat and carry ing anumbrella walks very slowly towards the center of the stage. From the other side of thestage a woman (obviously an Indian) dressed in a sari and barefoot walks very slowlytoward th e center. As they pass, sh e falls. He gallantly helps her up and she nods herhead in thanks.They continu o n. Then th ey repeat their slow walk to the cen ter whereshe falls again , and again he picks her up, this time j us t a little qu icker. They repeatthis action many times. Each time she falls he picks her up w ith increasing im patience,then anger, and finally fury, until he is no longer helping her up b ut yan king her upwhile beating her with the umbrella.

My ow n short stories or songs I try to keep in the present tense. Especially if theyare about time. Like this one:

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What Fassbinder film is it?A one-armed man comes into a flower shop and says,"What flower expresses days go byand they just keep going byEndlessly pulling you into th e future?Days go by endlesslyendlessly pulling you into the future?"And the florist says, "White Lily."

BEAUTY AND SUFFER1NC

Some of my favorite Bu ddh ist stories are the ones that are used to initiate feelin gs ofcompassion if it doesn't arise n aturally. One of the best is one thatTenzin Palmo tells inthe book about her Ufe, Cavein theSnow. The story, more of a picture than a story, envisionsa small and helpless puppy being stoned to death by a laughing and jeering crowd. Thisstory/picture never fails to get my attention an d isto meincredibly beautiful.

I wo uldn't be the rst person to fm d herself in danger of aestheticizing suffer-ing. There are countless images of grief that ar e painfully beautiful. But the experien ceof becoming intensely aware of suering, ugliness, or even evil can be so piercing, sounbearable that it can seem complete, sufficient, beautiful. Eno ugh to simply feel it .What is this? How is it that the realization can be so intensely beautiful? Is grief so ciseto happiness?

In Creek tragedy th e more monstrous and appalling th e eventthe worse th esituationthe more intensely pleasurable an d complete the telling. The stories I fmdthe most compelling are the ones in which people suffer and must act even thoughaction m eans destruction, even though they are almost paralyzed . Am ong these arethe tragic figures of Medea, Antigone, and Electra. Each suffers in a completely uniqueand individua l way.

n Anne Carson's brilliant translation of Electra, mother and daugh ter cash. Inone scene, the mother sits with her new husband (the "brave bridegroom"), the manwho had helped her murder her first husb and, Electr a's fathe r. Electra has been in adark mood ever since the m urde r. She's been getting o n her mother 's nerves. Now thedaughter does yet another annoying thing and the mother screams:

You 'llpayfor thishowling bitchlAndbyhersideThe brave bridegroomThis lump ofbad meat.

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How amazing to draw characters in these one and two-syllable beats! Later, Electrascreams at her mother:

dort think ofyou as mother at al lYou ar e some sort ofpnishment cageLocked aroand my Ufe.

Both mother and daughter are bitter and particular. Trapped. Their situations aretwisted, bizarre, and dark.

In discussing Electra, the writer Ed ith Ham ilton arges about the ty pe versusthe individual:

A tragedy cannot take place aroand a type. There is no sach thing as typical sffering except in themlnd, a pallid image ofthe phllosopher's making, not the artist's. Pain is the most individalizingthing on earth. It is trae that it is thegreat common hond as well but that realization comes onlywhen it is over. To suffer is to be alone; to watch another suffer is to know the barrier that shuts eachofusawaybyhimself.

So what is it, really, "to watch another suffer"? When I see these plays I feel a kind ofwild grief. And this grief feels inevitable an d timeless. When I see these plays, the griefdoes extend beyond the p articular character. It doesn't seem like all it does is shut "eachof us away by himself." How does the Creek concept of fate relate to samsara? One ofthe most powerful teachings of Budd hism is that we are really so alike in o ur suffering.And in our ability fo r compassion. How does the Greek concept of pity relate to Buddhistideas about com passion?

Do no t be fooled by words an d ideas. When yo practice with a koan, take th e koan as your Ufe. Koansare not something to evalate apart from yourself. Make your Ufe itself genjo koan, th e realizationofkoan. This is what your Ufe already is . Such a Ufe is totally open an d fll, and one is not conscious ofoneself. T A I Z A N M A E Z U M I R O S H I

THAT'S REALLY PRETTY UGLY

Nobody exclaims "Isnt that aglyl I rnust take a photograph ofit."SUSAN SONTAG

In Cave in theSnow, Tenzin Palmo suggests that in praying we should invoke not only "allthings bright and beautiful," but "all things dull and ugly " too. Not to mention boring,shabby, repetitive, overworked, stupid, shriveled, and mean. F orm e, thequestion"(but)is it art?" has never seemed urgent or importan t or even particularly relevant. Especiallybecause so many formerly dull and/or ugly things are constan tly being transf erred overinto the art cam p, where they are proclaimed beautiful.

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Do yo u fm d that as soon as you pay attention to something it becomes beautiful?Is it the act of paying attention that is the beautiful thing? For John Cage, all soundswere already perfect. What kind of artists can we be ifevery thing is already perfect an dall we lack are sufficient ways to appreciate it? How would this work? What would thesemuseums look like? Perhaps not collections at all, but something made of shiftin g atti-tudes and perceptions. Perhaps these art objects will be the fetishes o f the fu ture.

IS SOME ART M O R E BUDDHIST T HAN OT HE R ART?

A lot of the art I happen to like seems to have elements tha t I associate with Bu ddhism .Somewhere in this w ork there is an understanding ofor illumination ofimperma-nence, emptiness, suffering. There is an a pproach to the world that moves away fromsymmetry (a kind of duality?) toward a simple and striking, sometimes sh ocking, singleelement. It also migh t involve a suddenness that I associate w ith the effort to be awa re,t o b eaw ak e .

Is this a kind of Budd hist aesthetic? I can easily imagine the opposite: that realawarene ss and an abili ty to be in the m om ent w ould allow us to be com pletely non-judgmental, aesthetic-free. I can imagine a way of seeing in which even our preferencesare no longer impo rtant. I can imagine being so astounded by the w orld that there isno time to reject any of it at all.

That said, I still do love certain things m ore than others an d certain artwork smore than others. M y recent favorite artwork was made by Marina Abramovic in theSean Kelly Gallery in New York in fall 2002. She lived on a shelf fo r twelve days. Nowriting. No talking. Fasting, taking showers, doing normal things. It had many of theelements of a spiritual retreat except that it was more a display than a retrea t. At leaston the surface. W hen I read abou t the piece I had already filed it in the "non-urgent"pile and wasn't planning to see it. I though t I knew wh at it would be, and enduranceart h as n ever really inspired me tha t much.

When I went to the gallery, how ever, it was a completely different story. It waselectrifying and fascinating. Time had stopped. The confrontation w ith her as she stoodon her shelf lookin g at us or sometimes around us was voluntaryand soft. Ceremonial.At other t imes it was intense and confrontational. I was there for a very long time. Ican't rem emb er ever having such an articlate and m oving wordless mee ting. A silentconversation.

The original implications ofceremony in Jdeo-Christian culture reveal how we Uve and point to whatis missing in our Ufe now. In Latn "ceremony" is caerimonia, which is related to cura, meaning"cure," the act that curesor heals, or by which something is healed. In having a ceremony or in doingceremonial action, we must ask, what is healed?By what?

T A I Z A N M A E Z U M I R O S H I

AND BEAUTY


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EMPTINESS

Another work of art I really love is a piece of music fo r solo ute that is a similar com-bination of the inten sely visceral and m ental. I heard this piece only once in a studioat ZKM, a media center in K arlsruhe , Cerm any, and I no longer remem ber the ameof the piece. Mayb e it didn't even have a ame and w as simply part of some resear ch.In any case, when I arrived at the studio they had jus t finished re cording. A lmost ahundred microphones had been used to record it . There we re several dozen positionedaround the roomsome hanging from th e ceiling, others on boom stands. The iluteplayer stood in the midst of a dozen others tilted at various angles and pointing at him.Then there were many sm aller mies taped to his body and, finally, his ilute wascoveredwith what looked like swarms of fliestiny black microp hones attached to the insideof th e instrument and on his head.

The engineers were mixing the 48 channels of sound, and they let me listen onheadphones to various holophonic mixes. Of course, I know from MRIs that my head isdensely packed with coils of what look like thick steaks and chops. Nevertheless, I oftenhave the sensation that my head is quite light and occ asionally very emp ty. But I hadnever been aw are of the space inside my head as volume, as a cavernous, empty room.

There were countless w ays to mix this piece of music, bu t all of them were basedon the thrilling motion of sound lling a large space. Sud denly , the sound of breath orair or wind went rushing into my right ear, compressing to t in the narrow channeland then flooding th e cavernous space in my head, traveling up the back wall and thenexpanding to fill the space with wh at sound ed like room tone or resonant frequency.Sometimes th e pitches would be mixed with this win d, sometimes bits of overtoneswould swirl. Sometimes, it went howling from ear to ear and back. Sometimes th esound would die and the silence would be deafe ning. Because it 's one thing when it 'squiet in the room and quite another w hen it seems to become extremely quiet insideyour head.

In fact we are already caught in the trap. Why? Becaase we are human. That means we are con-ditioned. So be aware that youare already trapped. At the same time, there really is no trap. Why?Because ou r conditioned selfis ou r trae self. Our Ufe as it is is in perfect realization.

T A I Z A N M A E Z U M I R O S H I

INSIDE O UT

It's the breath that combines and involves so many of the senses. Bu t, most of all, it isth e breath that turns you inside out. You draw the breath and are invaded by the outsideworld. The bounda ries between inside and outside disappear. Listening to this windmusic was almost like th e head was becoming a lung. For me it 's really exciting whe nI can get to a point when the senses are so mixed up that it is all just pur sensation.


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One thing I try to do for fun once in a while is to use the wrong sense. Sometimesit's easy. You can listen with your hands by putting them on vibrating surfaces. Or youcan listen w ith your eyes (som etime s called reading). B ut it's very hard to smell withyour eyes. Or hear with your nose. So I try to use these im possible exercises to explainmy lack of comp rehension of dimensio ns such as time.

TH E VISION O F D E S I R E

\Vhen I open my eyes after a long meditation period, I sudd enly seem to have about tenadditiona l degrees of peripheral visin, like through a fisheye lens. The first time thishappened, I felt like I was understanding space for the first time the w ay an architectmight. It became pur volume. No place was more important than another. The spacebehind me was just as deep as that in front. Nothing had a back or front .

Obviously I wasn't actually seeing more, but I had less desire, less of what I thinkof as the v isin of desire: I wan t tha t, focus on it, see it as if through a gun sight.The ngoge t it .Much of what I think is beautiful was shaped by the first groups of artists I worked

wi th. This was the early and mid-seventies. And in some w ays the art scene was aboutpaying very cise atten tion, recognizing an d using shapes an d forms that were alreadythere rather than inventing brand new ones, using tools in new ways.

Buddhism in many forms was in the air. Spirituality was stylish. Artists worewhite. There were a lot of drugs. Activ ism had been a Ufe and death matter because itwas fueled by the draft. There was a sense of purpose. It seemed like wh at we were doingreally mattered. W e were self-conscious, we were aware that we were creating a scene,something that was really new. It had a ame and a place. Downtown . It wasn't muchike now at all. Not in a million ways, but that's another story.

Thirty years later, I find myself in the middle of looking at how I see and what Ibelieve and realizing that ano ther new way of seeing things, of feeling them, is begin-oing to take shape. I feel so grateful to be here in Athens at the moment I grope myway along. Creece is a place where renewal seems n atural, a place w here it's part of thetradidon, to invent and shock ou rselves.

"Know thyself." "No thing in excess." W hat do these teachers give us?We build on top of our beliefs, the w ay the Aztecs bui lt on top of the pyramids

they foun d in a huge valley. The way the C atholics built th eir churches on top of theAztec temples. The way the Turks built on top of the B yzantines on top of the Chris tianson top of the Greeks on top of the Acrpolis.

And with al l these history towers I'm thinking of the teaching that speaks to memost clearly and most eloquently: that all of time is happenin g in this very moment .Exactly now.

NOTES ON SOURCESAll quotationsfromTaizan Maezumi Roshi aretaken from his book. AppredateYourLifeTheEssenceofZen Practice(Boston: Shambhala, 2001).Cave n the Snow: Tenzin Palmo's Quest forEnghtenment is by Vicki Mackenzie (London:Bloomsbury, 1998).Electro/Sophocles, translated byAnneCarson(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).The Edith Hamilton passage is from the paper-back edition ofTheGreekWay (New York: W. W.Norton, 1993).

Time and Beauty - Laurie Anderson

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