In the streets of Durham you can often overhear Bach or Mozart melodies coming out of a window. In a posh bohemian London shop I once noticed the St Matthew’s passion playing. The freaking St Matthew’s passion? The one where the opening notes literally drive me crazy, as in “running-around-the-room” crazy? The CDs I own but never play? Sometimes I wonder if we rich folks are just abusing art. Using it as a last measure to revive a sparkle of emotion in our moribund souls.
I write this as someone who is utterly dependent on the arts. Glastonbury brings me tremendous joy. The Edinburgh (theatre) festival, with a friend, is my definition of bliss. The plays we saw were magnificent: they put us in touch with the soul of this country and introduced us to the sensibilities of many great new artists. The whole thing is so inherently generous: surely this must the secular equivalent of writing hymns!
But that’s the point. I wonder if writing hymns is all that legitimate after all. By fine-tuning my sensibility and worldliness, I wonder if I’m living in a sort of wonderland in which I get to appropriate all the markers of a high culture, while I'm aware that others can remain too uneducated to be able to articulate their feelings at all other than through formless ressentiment.
These days, I feel like I’m abusing everything: art, the sacraments, even prayer. So I stand at the edge of them; I climb into my sycamore and look at the action from a distance, wondering what forgiveness would be like.
I write this as someone who is utterly dependent on the arts. Glastonbury brings me tremendous joy. The Edinburgh (theatre) festival, with a friend, is my definition of bliss. The plays we saw were magnificent: they put us in touch with the soul of this country and introduced us to the sensibilities of many great new artists. The whole thing is so inherently generous: surely this must the secular equivalent of writing hymns!
But that’s the point. I wonder if writing hymns is all that legitimate after all. By fine-tuning my sensibility and worldliness, I wonder if I’m living in a sort of wonderland in which I get to appropriate all the markers of a high culture, while I'm aware that others can remain too uneducated to be able to articulate their feelings at all other than through formless ressentiment.
These days, I feel like I’m abusing everything: art, the sacraments, even prayer. So I stand at the edge of them; I climb into my sycamore and look at the action from a distance, wondering what forgiveness would be like.
Painting by Thomas Couture
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