(This essay is about Ash Wednesday and is thus a few weeks late, but as it's still Lent I thought it was fit to edit up and print.)
I had a couple existential crises last month, one was career related and so I don't think it's smart to reprint here, but the other, and perhaps deeper one had to do with the onset of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. In the Christian tradition, Ash Wednesday is a time to remember our own mortality. For a man in his early 20's it's especially easy to forget the reality of death. It's a terrible, nasty thing - so terrible, in fact, that it's hard to believe it will happen. And yet, surely, it will.
The natural implication of this somber Ash Wednesday truth is that all human glory will die as well. The things humans make do not escape our own cycles of birth, growth, and decay. There will come a point when every great work - civilizations, governments, families - will have passed away, and eventually be forgotten entirely. That includes the art we make.
Brad Bird, director of the perfect animated movie, once said
"Film is forever, pain is temporary."
But Ash Wednesday says he's wrong. Sure, the films we make may linger a little longer than the pain, but both are destined for the same end. Some art, like Homer's works, have lingered an exceptionally long time, but even The Odyssey has an expiration date. The burning of the Alexandrian library proves that even the most cherished pieces of art can be reduced to dust in seconds.
Thus pain is temporary, and art is temporary.
So perhaps now you see where my crisis was coming from. I'm breaking my butt to make art - working a draining studio job, and instead of resting when I return home, I put more hours in on Bearpuncher, attempting to make something beautiful that's truly my own. But one day, the world will forget about both Bearpuncher and the Wingfeather Saga. So why bother? Why not just go and watch TV, and spare yourself the trouble?
I wasn't able to answer this question right away, but I think I found the beginnings of an answer in the essay On Charon's Wharf, an annual lenten read for me. The whole essay is about the importance of encounters in time being the things that will ultimately survive the decay of time. Using a poignant example from the movie The Seventh Seal, the author, Andre Dubus, calls attention to a moment when the protagonist, a knight told by Death that he must die, shares a meal with a lady. Although Death will later take both that knight and the lady, it can't erase that moment of shared connection and kindness. Dubus writes, "In the face of time, the act is completed. Death cannot touch it now, can only finally stop the hearts that were united in it."
What if sharing art is like that meal? What if art's value is found not about its technical prowess, its enshrinement in a Criterion Collection, or its ability to spark discussion among film students 200 years from now? Maybe art's value is found in its ability to create encounters in those who view it. Encounters that spur them to be a better person, empathize with another, or noticed an overlooked beauty. Perhaps Brad Bird was missing a step: our pain is temporary, our films are temporary, but our audience is eternal.
Because while Ash Wednesday says that we will return to dust, it also promises our resurrection from the dirt. I believe that we will follow in Christ's resurrection. And maybe in the same way, our artistic works will come along for the ride. I can't say for certain whether Toy Story will be in eternity, I do know that people affected by Toy Story will be. To sum up all this armchair aesthetic theology: in art we create encounters between us and our audiences, and those encounters will be what lasts, even once every canvas is burned, and every .mp3 deleted. They'll last as unalterable moments in time, and imprints on our audiences, who, CS Lewis argues, are no mere mortals.
I think this stuff really hit me because I mostly create art for the good of the art - to make something really beautiful and good and true. I hope that an audience will get something from it, but that concern is secondary. However, if I animate with skill of Glen Keane and James Baxter and have not love, perhaps the work is just a clanging cymbal (even if it is a pretty one).
Therefore, it's even more important that we love thy audience, and make work that respects them, challenges them, and opens for them a broader delight in God's Kingdom. Ash Wednesday forces us to reckon with our work, it changes our focus from achieving glory to conversing with our audience. Perhaps the eternal worth of art is not in the artifact itself, but in the powerful encounter between the artifact and audience. It's not the movie that is sacred, but the watch party.
Happy Lent, everybody.
-dh
