What does it mean to be alive on earth?
how art is how we connect to each other through time
Floating through the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I’m reminded of the decadence of human history. The flowing oeuvre of art throughout time that allows humans in the now to experience a portal of the past.
Their paintbrush techniques, the colors they administered to communicate the skies, the cherubic-ness of how they depicted Cupid, or how morose they chorused scenes with Christ.
Art appears first when I think of history. It is the way we humans have expressed ourselves to each other. It is our calling card to the universe. Each generation’s proof they have been here.
When I say art, this transcends out to all creation. To me, anything invented functions through a form of artistry. It required the creator to imagine something new about what they felt should be alive. Art is accessed feeling expressed, whether momentarily or through centuries.
Glazing through the Getty, I’m overwhelmed by these glimpses of history.
I think about humans now.
I think about myself working on my book, plagued by thoughts of what is worthy to include. Who am I to reduce my expression of writing to merely a commercial endeavor? I am doing what humans are meant to do. In fact, what I believe we are instructed to do with our time here. Express what it feels like to be alive. Whether with a lover, a friend, or on a piece of paper. I think the only ask of our lives on earth are to exclaim back to the universe what it feels like for us. So, the universe can take notes. So, the universe can make more souls. Or reimagine the same ones.
The other day, I went down a feverish rabbit hole researching what humanity would possibly be like in the next 500 years…..then the next 500 after that…..and so on and so forth until I reached the year 6000. Theories suggest, if we are still a functioning species, we will be so unrecognizable and so integrated with deep tech and universal consciousness, life as we know it would be a totally different experience. Life would be more akin to energies communicating and interacting with another.
A part of me thought this was pure, as it dually chilled me. That maybe we would not have physical bodies anymore but would render more as a type of advanced intelligence system. It reminded me of what it feels like to touch someone’s warm skin. How even though your bodies are separate, something is bringing you together. How even when looking at someone, it might feel like there is no separation between you. That you are totally and supremely connected. Maybe that’s what the future would be like. There would be no need to touch — we would already be connected.
As I brought myself back to my very human, very raw form, with my feet on the earth, and my eyes flashing against the screen of my phone, I thought of how proud I would be to give to the library of human creation. Like myself in the Getty, passing through ornate paintings and sculptures from the 1490’s, I think of some soul witnessing my writing in the future, whether they have a human form or not, and I feel so proud of the life that I am living. The life that I will give to them through my created work.
I think of how anything that was made with a pure enough connection, allows the observer a zap into a moment that transcends time. Reading a piece of writing that Clarice Lispector or James Baldwin wrote, you enter their zone of consciousness. You reach a place of immateriality and energetic immortality. Where human creation reaches a divine sector of time-transcendent feeling. Whether the creator is living or has passed on, does not affect the life of their output. Their art remains alive.
The halls in the Getty flickered with human energies. I look into the eye of the painted portraits and I witness something that is still writhing, still there, probing me. Something in the human spirit, even as it has passed on, will not rest.
I couldn’t help but think how silly it is that here in this museum, art feels like the most important indicator of our world. Then immediately around me in my life and in our current society, it couldn’t feel farther from the truth. Everything feels like it is trying to milk the artist of everything but true, pure expression.
Humans need to know themselves. We need ourselves to understand what is going on. How we will place ourselves in universal history. Art isn’t a selfish endeavor, it is a necessary framework of society. It is telling the universe our side of the story. Of what it was like to be alive on Earth.
“And it's inside myself that I must create someone who will understand.” — Clarice Lispector