One of my favorite pastimes to amuse myself is to examine books and songs that are part of a greater conversation.  Creations that are normally judged in isolation take on a vastly larger importance when they are viewed in the context of a conversation.  Different accounts of the same battles or events, for example, turn out to be Rashomon-like and full of contradictions as well as distinctly remembered details based on one’s perspective and focus that seem on the surface to be apparent contradictions but are not really so (as is the case with the four Gospels, for example).

Why does this interest me?  I’m not entirely sure why.  Nonetheless, it is something that interests me in music as well as literature, and so it is a fairly consistent trait, one that has appeared from time to time on this blog as well, examining (rather critically) different accounts based on their bias.  I have my own perspective and bias as well.  This blog is my part of the conversation from my perspective, and if you desire to tell your own side of the story, get your own.  It is for this reason that I believe that blogs have proliferated.  Everyone wants to tell their side of the story, passionately and fiercely, and is becoming less inclined to take the perspective of others at face value.  This has led to increasing fragmentation as traditional elites have lost the ability to monopolize the conversation, whatever political worldview they may represent.  In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

I would like to consider this aspect at some length later, but let me begin with something less massive and more mundane that brings out the point.  A few years ago I purchased the cd “Dignity” by a young adult singer named Hillary Duff.  Included on that song, and the second single from the album, was a song called “Stranger.”  In that song, she comments (about her then-boyfriend, the lead singer of the band Good Charlotte) about a boyfriend who hides his feelings but pretends in public to be all about her and buying her expensive things to show his love.  Knowing that both of the parties involved were creative people, I was curious to hear the other side of the story.  And sure enough, soon thereafter came a song “I Don’t Want To Be In Love,” where that ex-boyfriend sang about a drama queen who wouldn’t return his phone calls, broke his heart, even though he bought her all these fancy and expensive items that she mentioned.  Oh, and then he knocked up Nicole Richie, the “gypsy woman” referred to on Hillary Duff’s same album on a different song.  Hillary Duff 2, Joel Maddon 0.

A few years earlier I had a humorous experience with a rap battle at a church event.  While bowling with some fellow teens and young adults from my local congregation, the bowling alley played two songs in a row.  The first was the #1 hit from TLC entitled “No Scrubs.”  This song complains about freeloading, good for nothing men who sponge off their (more successful) woman.  The second was the follow-up hit from the rap group Sporty Thievz, entitled “No Pigeons,” which turns the song around to complain about freeloading women who front to look decent but in reality are gold diggers.  It was interesting to see the young women sing the first song boldly but then get upset when the young men (myself included) responded with the second song.  In reality, a good man won’t be a scrub and a good woman won’t be a pigeon, and there are problems with members of both genders in terms of how they act in relationships.  Do we take advantage of others or work for mutual benefit?  Different people have different opinions on how they and others act in this regard, and it can cause a lot of problems, and I speak from personal experience.

In both of these cases, and many others (think, for example, of the entire “Rumours” album by Fleetwood Mac), music serves as a conversation for different people to tell their very different interpretations of their own actions and the actions of others.  No one is unbiased, but everyone has a perspective and a bias that affects how they justify themselves and how they condemn or criticize others.  As someone who tends to be defensive about criticism but also someone who tends to be rather critical about others, I am very aware that people can have violently different interpretations of events, and that passionate people (like myself) do not tend to deal with these differences necessarily in the best manner.  Musical conversations are fine, but often they cross the line into knock-down drag-out arguments in court, in internet flame wars, and even in fistfights.  I can’t say I am a calm or rational enough person to have entirely avoided these traps in my conflict-ridden life.

You see, we create out of ourselves.  Our works, whether they be poems (like songs), or plays, or essays, or novels, are the workings of our heart and mind, our own psychodramas, our own rumination.  If we create, we cannot help but show our worldview and perspective.  By creating we engage in a great conversation about far more than our own small and often unimportant creation.  We reveal far more than our command of rhyme and meter or other literary or artistic conventions when we create.

This is an important point to realize, because a lot of us (myself included) often create works without paying attention to the context that they are created in.  But in looking back there is a context nonetheless.  My works show a particularly dark worldview that focuses on dealing with the messy and unpleasant and unmentionable aspects of my own life (and those of others).  They also show the influence of a rigorous and deep reading of scripture and a pretty fierce moral standard at variance with the world around me, along with a strong concern for justice and equality of opportunity, as well as more mundane longings for love and belonging.  In addition, they show my debts to the Bible, Shakespeare, and plenty of giants of history, philosophy, and literature on whose shoulders I stand.  And the same is true for everyone else, no matter what they create.  Their creations, like mine, tell the world their worldview, their view of art and its place in the world, and their own stance in the great conversation.

And what is the great conversation?  Without waxing too philosophical (I hope), the great conversation is contained of all philosophers and artists who, either directly or indirectly (through their art) speak of truth and beauty, love and law, passion and reason, mercy and justice, art and science, personal integrity and accessibility to the outside world.  Whatever we create gives at least an implicit (and often an explicit) answer to our own stances in these questions.  We all, at different times and in different ways, are at different positions among the many questions that divide artists.  But we all make a stand simply by making anything.  We can’t help but be political–everything we create is itself a political statement, a moral statement, a religious and philosophical statement.   To those of us (myself included) who are compelled to create to maintain any sort of sanity, we cannot help but be deeply interested in moral, religious, political, and philosophical questions, whether we realize it or not.

And that gives both great power and great responsibility.  It gives great power because to be an artist makes one a spokesman of your given worldview.  This is why actors and musicians consider themselves political experts and are given that credibility by others.  To be a creator is to live, whether one’s life is lived in harmony with our Creator God and His moral order or not, in imitation of (or rebellion against) our Creator God.  As a creator, or sub-creator as Tolkien put it, we can either choose to submit to our Lord and Master above or to seek to be our own authority, to be autonomous and choose and experience good and evil for ourselves.  And it puts us right back in the Garden of Eden again, to see if we are wiser than our fathers.  What greater responsibility exists than the responsibility of choosing life and death and blessing and cursing for ourselves, as well as for how we teach others through our works, through our lives, and through our preaching and example.  It is a heavy burden, but one we cannot avoid once we take up our implements of art and engage, however accidentally, in the Great Conversation of human existence and its terms.