The imagination teaches us that absence is anything but empty. It also tries to mirror the complexity of the soul. In order to function, society always tries to reduce things to a common denominator or code. Politics, religion, and convention are usually committed to looking away from the raging complexity that dwells under the surface in every human heart.
The penumbral and paradoxical world of the soul is taken for all practical purposes as absent. The external world deals with the individual by first engaging in this act of subtraction. Consequently, we depend desperately on the imagination to trawl and retrieve our poignant and wounded complexity, which is forced to remain absent from the social surface. The imagination is the inspired and incautious priestess who against all the wishes of all systems and structures insists on celebrating the liturgy of presence at the banished altars of absence.
In this sense, the imagination is faithful and hospitable to everything that lives in the house of the heart. It is willing to explore every room. Here the imagination shows courage and grace. Literature’s most fascinating and memorable characters are not saints or cautious figures who never risked anything. They are characters who embody great passion and dangerous paradoxical energy. In this way, the imagination mirrors and articulates that constant companion dimension of the heart that by definition and design remains perenially absent, namely, the subconscious.
Absence is such a powerful theme and presence precisely because such a vast quantity of our identity lies out of reach in this unknown and largely unknowable region. Though predominantly absent from our awareness, the rootage of the subconscious accounts for so much of what happens above in the days of our lives. Because the imagination is the priestess of the threshold, she brings the two inner territories together. The imagination unifies the inner presence and the inner absence of our lives—the daylight outside self by which we are known and the inner night-time self whose dimensions remain unknown even to ourselves. The artist is the one who is committed to the life of the imagination.
The Artist as Permanent Pilgrim
For most roles in life, there are structures of study and apprenticeship to acquire the skill to function, be it as teacher, mechanic, or surgeon. Though certain structures exist for training in the arts, the artist is different. The artist trains himself; it can be no other way. Each artist is animated by a unique longing. There are no outer ready-made maps for what the artist wants to create. Each is haunted by some inner voice that will not permit any contentment until what is demanded is created. The artist cannot settle into the consensus of normal belonging. His heart pushes him out to the edge where other imperatives hold sway. There is great lonesomeness in becoming implicated in the creation of something original. The French poet Arthur Rimbaud said, “I have no ancestors.” In a sense, the artist is called not so much from outside as from the unknown depths within.
The invitation to create comes from elsewhere. Artists are the priestesses and priests of culture. They coax the invisible towards a form where it becomes faintly visible, silence towards voice, and the unknown towards intimacy. Artists help us to see what is secretly there. No artist stands alone in a clear space. Every artist works from the huge belonging to the tradition, but yet does not repeat anything. The artist belongs in a strange way. He inhabits the tradition to such depth that he can feel it beat in his heart, but his tradition also makes him feel like a total stranger who can find for his longing no echo there. Out of the flow of this intimate foreignness something new begins to emerge.
The artist is fiercely called to truth. Despite all the personal limitation and uncertainty, he has to express what he finds. Sometimes the findings are glorious. Rilke’s poetry gladdens the heart and makes you aware of the secret eternity of everything around you. The music of Beethoven gives huge voice to the dense cadences of creation. At other times, the artist has to name and portray the crippling and poisonous forms of belonging for which we settle: Kafka’s meticulous articulation of the surrealism of bureaucracy; Beckett’s portrayal of the famine of absence that can never be warmed or filled. In this way the artist calls us to freedom and promise. In art, we see where the lines of our belonging have become tight and toxic.
The artist is always faithful to longing, first. This willingness to follow the longing “wherever it leads” demands and enables all kinds of new possibilities of belonging. Hölderlin says: “Was bleibt aber stiften die Dichter,” i.e., What endures, / the poets create.
The creation of such permanence is the result of following longing to the outposts, beyond every cosy or settled shelter, until some echo of the eternal belonging is sounded.
A large number of our brothers and sisters are also at the outposts we never visit.
The Ones We Never Hear From
This absence also works at the social level. Society is coming more and more to mirror the media, yet the media are no innocent surface or screen on which anything and everything is welcome to appear. No. The media work with a powerful selectivity. They construct their world around carefully chosen, repetitive, and loud chronicles. Yet there are so many people we never hear from. We never read of them in the papers. We never hear of them in the news. A whole range of people are absent. They are usually the poor, the vulnerable, the ill, and prisoners. Their voices would be slow and direct and would gnaw at our comfort and endanger our complacency. Most of us who are privileged live quite protected lives and are distant from and blind to what the poor endure. Out of sight, out of mind. What is absent from our view does not concern us.
Addiction: Obsessed Longing
One of the terrible metaphors of post-modern society is the drug. The addiction to drugs is arguably one of the greatest problems facing Western society. When drugs hook you, they make your longing captive. The depth and complexity of your life telescopes into one absolute need. Regardless of the presence of others who love you, the gifts that you have, the life that you could have, your life now has only one need, the drug. The longing of the addict is a craving for which he will sacrifice all other belonging. It is astounding how the inner world of the human heart has a capacity for such absolute single-mindedness. Addiction is longing that is utterly obsessed. There is no distance anymore between the longing and the drug. The longing determines the life. The drug has the power of a sinister God; it awakens absolute passion and demands absolute obedience.
A drug is an anonymous and unattractive piece of matter. For the addict, however, this banal stuff shines like the most glorious diamond imaginable. When the eye sees it, the longing is already travelling in the direction of pure joy; no wonder they choose names for drugs like “Ecstasy.” The addict has no memory. All time is now; either the now of joy or the tortured now of longing for the fix. Far away from the dingy streets where the addict moves, probably out in the most scenic and beautiful area of the city, live the suppliers. They make their wealth from the misery of those poor demented ones for whom the city streets are an underworld. The suppliers work international routes which are the same as the international routes for arms. At a broader cultural level, drug addiction is a profound metaphor for contemporary society. The marginalized addicts are the scapegoats for the collective addiction in contemporary society. The obsessive nature of our culture comes to expression in the addict. The addict is visible, tangible, and vulnerable. The addict is always on the margins of belonging.