When Art Deals with Pain and Suffering

[Armida]

How do we balance our perceptions?

[Mat Osmond]

Hi Armida,
I'm not quite sure of your question, but I thought if one were to ask "How does art balance our perceptions?" then the work of the Jungian Art Therapist Shan McNiff has much to offer. Eg.:

“The making of a painting is an expression of that aspect of the psyche that changes,
transforms, and constantly creates new life. The psyche is itself restructured in response to the influences of its own creations.

By shifting the discourse, we actually experience changes in our persons. We do not exist independently of the things that we experience. We are shaped by our dialogues.

Dialogue assumes interactions between differences. It permits contradictions, conflicts, sudden shifts, vital exchanges, and there is no need to follow a single thesis.”

Shaun McNiff : “Art as Medicine – Creating a Therapy of the Imagination”
(Shambhala 1992)

Edit: I have grouped these short passages - they are not one continuous passage.

[Armida]

In view of 9/ll, I was thinking in terms of looing at art that portrays suffering.
As Buddhist practitioners who create such art to portray that emotion (as an observer), what tools do we use--not hypothetically--to balance our perceptions as we create? Are we always equipoised?

[Mat Osmond]

I am very interested in your question Armida, although I'm not able to add much because I myself haven't ever treid to make work that portrays an emotion in this way.

I do, though, love much work that does just this - from Wilfred Owen, to Ani de Franco's (song about 9/11) "Self Evident".

I wonder if the act of rendering deep emotion into a wrought language itself requires an act of balancing, as you put it? The difference between giving birth to something alive, that speaks to and so redefines our experience of the subject, and mere catharsis or ranting.

Where does that kind of language come from? To me it seems to require a bringing together of intense emotion with a 'balancing' quality: of detachment, of attentiveness, of devotion to language itself as the medium of experiencing or re-experiencing the world.

Language that literally 'holds' emotion, rather than merely alluding to it, or throwing it out.

[Armida]

I like what you have written and agree with it. There are all these "referencing."

[Robert McCarthy]

I'd like to highly recommend some very sorrowful music. actually the most sublime piece of music i ever hear. best heard with candles and ample volume. Gorecki symphony no. 3- symphony of sorrowful songs.