Writing and Transcendence

“Above all else, art is one of humanity’s highest callings. It is a higher thing than politics or economics. It marks the total expression of the creativity and freedom of the human spirit and is also one of the few paths through which mankind can transcend its earthly circumstances and approach the Divine. This is the essence that makes art eternal.”

This is taken from my novel, The City of Earthly Desire. The passage appears heavily underlined in a fictional book about art that the protagonist, Reinhardt Drixler, finds in one of the art supply cases he stumbles across in his attic. The underlined passage and the art supply cases inspire Reinhardt to become a painter, and the message the passage contains guides him through his life as an artist. I included this in the novel because it succinctly summarizes what I believe the essence of art to be as well as the supreme role of art and its ultimate possibilities.

For as long as I can remember, I have approached my writing from this perspective. Even at a young age I recognized that writing was a means through which I could rise above ordinary limitations, move beyond physical needs and realities, and begin to approach or, at the very least, begin to contemplate higher, yet tangible, realities of being. This was primarily what made writing an engaging and fascinating activity when I was a child, and it continues to be my main motivation now.

I accept that this belief strikes most people, most writers among them, as pretentious drivel or psuedo-spiritual codswallop; so be it.