5.3.24

And what do we mean by “becoming immortal?”

In the damning, powerful conclusion to Lolita, which has been quoted here before, Nabakov’s anti-hero Humbert speaks of extinct aurochs, the secrets of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, and the refuge of art. He tells his doomed and already dead lady-love that these are the only immortalities they may share together.

Rushdie returns to the idea again and again, speaking of the power of poetry to preserve forever something of Victory City, now only present in the breathtaking ruins of Hampi. He talks about the power of Russian writers, executed by Stalin for their dissidence, but whose work has outlived the USSR. He harkens back to a Cairo poet, stabbed to death by a medieval radicalist. He conjures the specter of the dead cartoonists of Charlie Hedbo, reminding us that je suis Charlie remains as a cry of support for creators, even when those who murdered them are long forgotten as a footnote to the dying gasp of medievalist theology.

I suppose these thoughts – the notion that the art created can outlive oppressors and make up for misdeeds in life may be particularly appealing to a pedophile like Humbert (or a subversive like Nabakov) or to a writer like Rushdie whose works of tragic-comic subversion have made him a hunted man for so many years of his life. But in reflection, I think the hopeful truth advanced here is more broadly applicable.

Does all art have to be long-lived, or at least have the potential, to be valuable?

I am reminded of two forms of art which stick with me though they were inherently designed not to.

Once in Beijing while walking near the White Degobah on a lovely lake near the center of the city, I watched an older man with a large brush painting. The brush was nearly the size of a broom, and he was drawing the most beautiful calligraphy. Complex brush strokes of elaborate Hanzi, each word or letter beautifully crafted, though their meaning was indecipherable to an ignorant laowei like me. And after each character he would dip his brush into the water of the lake, and soak up more of the water that was his ink.

When I saw him he had clearly been at it much of the morning, and the characters behind him were evaporating. Was he writing an ancient epic poem? Critique of the government? A personal confession? I will never know, and after an hour or so, no one else would either, I suppose. This was one of the most beautiful displays of intentionally temporal art I’ve ever witnessed.

I think too though of friends who get together to jam improvisational numbers with bandmates. While some of the riffs they employ may have earwormed their way into our collective psyche and live on and on, most of their creations are defined by the serendipity and inherent fleeting nature of something created really just for the short term delight of the creator and any witnesses lucky enough to be present.

So some acts of creation are valuable – wonderful art even – but have no chance at immortality.

There is a certain caprice and wry acceptance of one’s mortality in this kind of creation. I would love to talk to a performance artist who loves this kind of thing. I’d like to ask them why they employ such skill and craft only to create something that cannot possibly last, and will inherently disappear without touching too many lives.

The act of creating many things (though not everything) has power to outlive the mortal span of the creator. And while even the great works of Ozymandias may eventually turn to decay, lost in the lone and level sands, the words of Percy Shelly will not. The stories of Rushdie, the verse of Kahlil Gibran, and the writing each and every one of us can do has at least a chance of touching lives, being reprinted, transmitted, and living forever.

Mighty stone edifices will eventually be worn down by wind and water, sculptures crack are swallowed up by fissures in the earth, or are left behind when the ships leave for the new world. Even the secrets of durable pigments may prove to be less durable than the painters who wielded them might have hoped. These are all still very worthy acts of creation; far more likely to endure generations than your 401k.

But because they can capture and transmit an idea, the form of art which is both the easiest and cheapest to use to at least try for immortality is the Word.