One fall evening a few years ago, I watched my friend Lisa prepare a vegetable platter for an upcoming party. She put a brass dish of mustardy dip in the middle of a round platter, surrounding it with cherry tomatoes and bumpy cauliflower bouquets. Crinkle cut slices of dark green cucumber and bright summer squash completed the circle. Her platters were art of the most temporary sort, not something to be hung in livingrooms, but a living breathing expression of spirit. The art itself might have evaporated by virtue of being eaten, but the artistic expression transformed the physical into the spiritual.

Being round and transitory, her platters have a lot in common with Tibetan sand mandalas, like the ones in the movie Seven Years In Tibet. The act of creating the mandala, knowing it might not endure, reinforces the Buddhist message of living in the present moment. Here too, the process itself is part of the expression. Communicating with the audience may be subordinate, if not immaterial to the spiritual experience of the artist.

In a recent interview with PBS’s art evangelist Sister Wendy, she was asked her opinion of popular photographs, some of which were considered blasphemous. Sister Wendy said it wasn’t their controversial content that limited them, but the fact that they communicated only one message. Real art brings new understanding over repeated viewing.

They didn’t ask Sister Wendy about her thoughts on music, but she probably would say the same thing. She might say that many country music and pop songs are not art, because they are so dependent on cute tag lines. In contrast, Seal explains that he doesn’t print lyrics with his CD’s because he wants the songs to be experienced on a visceral level, not deconstructed into words and notes and rhythm. If you like to sing along like I do, this can be hard to accept. Fortunately, Seal’s music is sufficiently complex to warrant multiple visits. It’s not so much whether the lyrics dominate or not, as in A Capella groups like the Persuasions, but the overall depth of the piece. In fact, lyrics are often more of a counterpoint to the instrumentals, rather than the story itself.

Still, art need not be famous or brilliant to be an expression of the creative spirit. Each time you listen mindfully to a hurting friend, or drop mini marshmallows in your child’s hot cocoa, or bang out a few notes on your out-of-tune piano, that’s art, art of the flavor that is always heard by spirit.

Copyright January, 1999

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