The Mystery of One Another, Episode 254
Whenever we speak, there's a something from which speech arises which is not itself yet, quite, words. And when we make art, there's a something from which the art arises that is itself not yet, quite, art. And it's in this vast unspoken background of before and between, of body and world and story and imagination, that so much of who we are and who we can be is found.
Can we learn to see and hear each other as the unfolding, budding, opening works of art and worlds of possibility that we are? And might not this be a greatly powerful act of dignity and care, countering the narratives of fear and separation of our times?
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's our source for this week:
We’re always rationally explaining and articulating things. But we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs - or doesn’t - in that instant. What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we ‘know’ something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple. But the ‘knowing’ at such moments, though happening without language, is real. I’d say this is what art is for: to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it’s superior to our usual (conceptual, reductive) way.
George Saunders
From A Swim in the Pond in the Rain
Photo by Inge Maria on Unsplash