Make Good Art

To say that we’re shaken by the news of the shooting in Sandy Hook on Friday would be a gross understatement. Things like that make it hard to go on living...make you feel guilty to be living, or smiling, or doing simple things like putting up a Christmas tree.
I read a beautiful post by author Shelley Moore Thomas, who reminded me that the most important thing right now is just this: Do good. Which is absolutely true. The more evil there is in the world, the more we must fight it with good.
But for those of us who feel a calling to the arts, that goes one step further. After my mother-in-law’s death from cancer this spring, Mark and I were part of a wonderful conversation with a dear friend of ours who is a brilliant composer/organist/music director. He was asked, “How do you deal with the craziness of the world? What do you do on the days when it just seems like everything is all wrong?” And he answered, “I create art. I feel that’s the one way I can bring goodness and beauty and order to the world. Worrying about the bad things doesn’t help... So I just focus on doing what I feel I’m supposed to do.”
Having sung his music in concert and having heard an orchestra play his works, I can attest that he is doing something very important. You can feel beauty when you hear that one violin solo...you can internalize truth when that last chord is perfectly resolved.
My favorite artist, William Adolphe Bouguereau, is an example of someone who took extreme personal tragedy and overcame it to bring goodness to the world. The Pieta above, undeniably one of his greatest works, was painted just after the sudden deaths of his young wife and infant son. You can’t look into the eyes of Our Lady in that painting without your heart moving. I always feel as if she’s asking me--just me at that moment--Why did you do this to him? Yet at the same time I see the peace and resignation in her posture, the way she is accepting the pain in her life, displaying the same faith with which she accepted the joys. You know that Bouguereau’s own pain is coming through in that gaze...yet his own acceptance compelled him to create this masterpiece rather than turn his back on God and the world.
People often speculate on why so many artists have tragic lives. Well, there are a lot of people with tragic lives. But then your have someone like Mark Twain--who lost almost his entire family to sudden illness or shocking, senseless tragedies--who used that pain to bring the world some joy. Lucy Maud Montgomery wasn’t the first woman to lose parents and children, to struggle with depression, or to doubt her faith. But she was the only one who could give us Anne of Green Gables to help us through our own losses and struggles and doubts. Maybe artists are no more tragic than anyone. Maybe they’re just the people who respond to tragedy by creating beauty.
So even though the world is making no sense right now, I’m going to get through the numbness and get up a little earlier to write. Maybe someday my words will give someone a little bit of hope that they really needed.
As Neil Gaiman advised: Make good art.