All our language to describe God and eternity and stuff. They are imminent words they have to be. They can't be anything else. And Jesus, by becoming human, becomes imminent himself in order to communicate to us, because otherwise it would just explode our brains. We wouldn't know what it meant, let alone be able to hear it. So the whole at one level, the entire gospel is metaphor. But many people hear that and they think, oh, he's saying it's
not true. Quite the reverse. It's more true than you can possibly imagine.
Welcome to the Habit podcast conversations with writers about writing. I'm Jonathan Rogers, your host, Marc Mennel, is a freelance writer and speaker based in the UK. He's the author of Life After Life and A Wilderness of Mirrors. He's a co-host of the triptych podcast, and he's an aficionado of Cold War spy stories. In short, he's a polymath and an excellent conversationalist. I recently read the doctoral thesis that Mark wrote at Covenant Seminary, and I had some questions.
I thought you would enjoy listening in. Mark Mendel. I'm so happy to have you on The Habit podcast. Thanks for being here.
It's great to be with you. I wish I was with you in person, but that.
Would be.
Excellent.
If.
And beyond the habit budget, probably.
Well, in, uh, I'll have to check in with human resources in the in the fifth floor of the Habit Tower.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry. The north tower. Um. Um, okay, so I, I'm one of the few people who has read your, uh, doctoral thesis.
That's very kind.
And there was there were just ideas in there that I wanted to talk about. And I guess any listeners want to read your doctoral thesis, they can send you an email.
Yeah, I would obviously be delighted.
So you wrote about, um. well, borrowing from Charles Taylor, the idea that, uh, people live in 21st century people live within an immanent frame, um, that I'm going to get you to explain here in a minute. And that artist or art is a way to sort of break through that immanent frame and, um, awaken people to the possibility or the plausibility of transcendence.
Mhm.
Um, so that's kind of a mouthful.
Yes, it certainly is.
Yeah.
So tell me about, uh, let's start with that idea of the immanent frame. And, and then we'll get to the, the idea of art breaking us out of the immanent frame. So tell me about about that idea.
So Charles Taylor has particularly become known for his work on secularism and what it means to live in a secular society, a secular context. Um, I think, um, certainly I would have been among those and many others, uh, who before reading Taylor, would have thought that secularism is basically just kind of atheist, um, anti-God, anti-religion, um, just strip, you know, life and worldviews and stuff of all the God stuff. And, um, and we can just get on
with just being human in this world. Um, but his work has shown that that really isn't enough, that in some ways was a phase of secularism. But we've really moved on from that. And once you have his explanation pointed out, it makes total sense. So just to to sort of give the thumbnail sketch of what he's talking about, he says there are effectively three different stages of secularism. The first is an exclusively Christian idea, and it comes from the Middle Ages. And, um, it could only have
arisen in a Christian context. Um, and so he would say, what's going on there is in a Christian worldview, you have, um, the things of God, the, the heavenly, um, realities and the things that those heavenly realities affect on earth as being so-called sacred. And then anything that doesn't come under that umbrella, just like daily living, you know, going shopping, um, milking your cow, whatever it is that is secular, that is, um, it literally comes from a Latin word meaning the age,
the period, the era. So to be secular is to be focused on this era as opposed to the age to come, which is the next one, the so-called sacred. And in the Middle Ages you get this sort of working its way out in sort of European Catholicism in all kinds of ways. But for example, if you're a priest, you're part of the sacred realm. And in European countries all over, they would have separate courts, a court system,
a legal system for priests. And then you would have the, the, the world, the secular part of life in a completely different bracket. And there wasn't really overlap. And when you became a priest, you moved from one to the other.
But the is is the difference.
Between the contemplative life and the active life. Is that A does that map on to that, or is that.
Yes, that certainly would that totally would. Um, and so basically it's within a Christian framework. And it doesn't mean anything to do with saying, I don't believe in God. It's just saying, yeah, God might be over. Lord, over all of these things. But actually, he's really interested in the sacred stuff.
Okay.
Now the Reformation, you know, really attacked that and in some quarters put that to bed. Um, and Protestantism really worked hard to to break that barrier down. But it also set in motion a whole set of processes that actually arguably led to, um, what Taylor would call secularism to. Now, this is what we would traditionally think of secularism. This is the kind of consequences of, um, enlightenment philosophy of Darwin, Freud, um, and all of these explanations for reality in the world
that don't need God. We can, you know, we can put God outside, um, the conversation. We don't need to do that. And actually, everything is explicable and meaningful without God. So that's secular too. And that would be represented. I guess the last gasp of that would be the so-called Four Horsemen of New Atheism. So the Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris's of this world, um, but they're the last gasp
of it. And what Taylor really Explain so well. Is that actually in terms of how people live their lives on a day to day basis, what they're conscious of, what they're thinking about? That's not reality. Um, very, very few people are thoroughgoing, consistent new atheists. In fact, it's arguable that even the new atheists aren't really that atheist when it comes to it. Yeah. So, you know, Richard Dawkins will still like going to carol services at Christmas. Well, okay.
And he knows that's inconsistent. But he just he quite likes it. Well fair enough.
Yeah.
So what is the third stage. And um, this is actually the the innovation that Taylor has made. And it's basically saying we live in a world without God. Um, you know, every our education in the West is telling us this. Um, society is telling us this. So we talk about issues that are in the public square that you can debate in Congress or in Parliament or in a philosophy lecture. Um, but then the God stuff that's sort of, um, resigned, um, to, to issues of opinion,
personal belief and stuff. And that's, that's nice for you, but I, you know, I don't share that view. Blah, blah blah. And you just have to keep it private. Yeah. Um, but and this is the point, Taylor is saying there are all kinds of things in life and experience that kind of sort of prick the balloon. They kind of shake you out of that sort of confidence of a godless environment and say, every now and then there are things that take you beyond yourself, and you're thinking like,
what's that now? It may be that that feeling is, you know, instantaneously gone. Um, but something's going on. And he would say that we are, um, haunted Ted by the transcendent. In other words, we live in. Imagine living in a closed house. All the windows and doors are sealed shut, so your existence is entirely bound by the four walls and roof.
Okay.
But every now and then you hear something from outside, or the ground shakes. Maybe there's an earthquake or. Or whatever. Someone slips something through the letterbox, and it's a beautiful picture or whatever it is, and you think, oh, there's something out there. Yeah, but you can't be sure about it. These little hints, and they're saying, they're suggesting to us there's much more to life than what we can see or feel.
Yeah. Okay.
So secularity three is the idea that the. You said transcendence questions of what is not immanent. That is right here with us. detected by the senses. I guess it's all a matter of opinion. It's one option among many.
Right.
Options. Um. And. The point, if I understand correctly, is that, uh, whether you are a theist or not, a theist, you still live in the immanent frame. If if you are in this era of secularity three.
Yes.
Um, but and here's the new thing, um, in contrast to, to say in the US, UK in the 50s, 60s, society was much more monochrome. Um, and I use that literally as well as metaphorically. But there wasn't the exposure to different ideas, different belief systems, different worldviews. Views. Um. Uh. Taylor has the rather sort of grandiose phrase of social imaginaries. In other words, what he's trying to do is go
beyond a worldview because a worldview is too cerebral. What we're talking about is you live your life with this sense of reality, and today we are just bombarded by literally thousands of different ways. And the internet has, you know, magnified that. And so nobody could possibly get to the point where saying, well, I've tested everything, I've tried everything out, and now I'm absolutely certain I'm on the right track. It's impossible. Nobody can do that. Not even the most
hard headed Christian. Yeah, but you have to accept the provisionality of it because there's so much out there. And that's what he talks about, being cross pressured. Every day we're going to meet somebody with a completely different way of thinking about life from us.
Yeah. Okay. And so the immanent frame is I'm living in this sealed house.
Mhm.
Um. Imminent. I am, I am a an ent so.
Yes that's it.
Right. Uh, as distinct from the transcendent.
That's right. And so there have been maybe hints that there is a reality outside the front door. But I can't get there. I can't see it, I can't experience it. But every now and then, this is the thing. There are hints that it might exist. Um, and I and I don't know how to to get there. It's it might be out there. It might not. And there are plenty of people inside the house telling me there's nothing to think about there. It's a nonsense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so those little hints of transcendence, I guess this is directly related to, uh, the idea of zinc. If I'm saying that word. Right.
Mhm.
How do you say that word? Okay. All right.
Well I'm not German speaker either, so who knows.
Uh, but the idea that there is an ache and a longing. Um, you know, as Lewis said, uh, we have this desire that nothing on earth can fulfill that suggests that maybe that we're made for something besides.
Right? Earth.
Um, and that longing, that desire is, um, is more pleasurable even than having a desire, an earthly desire fulfilled. Um. And yet.
In other words.
We were made to to to venture outside the house.
Uh.
We weren't meant to be cooped up.
Aha.
Yeah. That's good. Okay. And so you are suggesting, are you make the case in your doctoral thesis that you, that art and artists have a what a particular role a particular um, ability uh to. Conjure up that transcendence.
So.
Yes. Um, you know, being most generalized terms. Um, one of the things that needs to happen because basically, before pluck a date out of the air before 1500, the idea that there was a god, that there was a life after life, that there was heaven, that God might come to earth as a man in Christ. All of these things perfectly acceptable. You wouldn't. No one would blink at them. Um, if you said there wasn't a God, they would think you were mad.
Yeah.
Um, because it was as plausible as normal as gravity, you know, it just wasn't an issue. Nobody really questioned it. Um, and that's one of the things we can't quite get our heads around. You know, pre the modern age. Um, but it wasn't an issue, so nobody had any trouble ball with the idea of the beyond, even though they knew full well that they couldn't imagine and describe it as such. But they had all kinds of means at their disposal for pointing ahead to it, for alluding to it.
And you think of frescoes, you know, some of the Italian Renaissance frescoes, um, say Giotto, um, he he painted an amazing series of the life of Saint Francis, and then he did another one of the life of the Virgin Mary. And there's one I can't remember. I think it's in the Mary, um, uh, story. Um, and there's a point where, um, in this telling of the story, it's not a biblical idea, but Mary's mother has a visitation from an angel saying that she's going to give
birth to to her. Well, you know, who knows where that comes from? But the way Giotto depicts it is that, um, you have Mary's mother in her room. And then there's a window in the wall and there's an angel poking through the window. But, um, on the other side of the window, and he's got all his, uh, perspectives and everything lined up. But on the other side of the window, there are no legs for this angel. So it's like the window itself is a kind of portal from another dimension.
So he's deliberately left off the legs. It's not because he's bad. It's actually because he's brilliant. And this angel is sort of poking his head into the house. It's kind of comic in a way, and saying hello. And what what Johto is trying to do there is to say, look, here is a point at which the beyond the eternal, the transcendent has invaded the imminent, invaded our world to bring a message from there or whatever. So there's just
a very simple sort of visual illustration of that point. Um, but they would have seen that kind of thing happening all the time, even within, say, the poetry of pagan poets from pre-Christian times. Um, whether it's Homer or Virgil, I think you know what's Christian about that? Well, they would say this is part of this creative world that God has made and that's a gift of God, blah, blah, blah.
So all these different things have ways, have their internal language and logic, if you like, for communicating things that normal language and normal experience don't know about, and you learn the conventions, you learn if you like the code. Yeah. And they're pointing beyond.
And so is the role of the artist different in secularity three our current time than it was in, say, the era of Giotto?
Um, um, sorry. Just repeat that as in contrast to which to the secular two or.
Well, I'm.
Saying to, to, to secular one or, you know, the, the era in the era when we couldn't imagine a world that wasn't haunted. Did they did the role of the artist? Was that different than the role of an artist now?
Um, I think maybe we need to distinguish between what artists have always done, which is basically in some ways as sub creators to create something out of nothing.
Mhm.
Um, whatever that might be, whether it's musical, um, verbal, visual, whatever. Um, and they've always done that and they'll carry on doing that as opposed to the agenda that people give them.
And this is where I think it gets tricky. So if people say, well, you've got to reach this generation because they've gone secular or whatever, we need artists to do X, Y, and Z. That's when we get into hot water, because I think that's when we are in danger of pulling what artists have always done, pulling artists away from what they've always done and what they're they're
good at. But I do think that at their best, they have a unique opportunity, sort of incidentally, to connect with people today because so often they are producing things, whether they realize it or not, that are themselves haunted and that do point beyond even the simple fact that, you know, you can read a poem written 338 years ago, whatever, and you can read it and it's like, that's me today. And you think, I've never met this guy? Perhaps he
was written in a different language. Maybe their, you know, their life experience is completely different. And yet you think, wow, that's me. Now, maybe I've misunderstood it and I need to to check my interpretations and blah blah blah. But there's a connection there that is very hard to explain. If it's not something bigger than you know, the sum is bigger than its parts.
Yeah.
So are you suggesting then, that the role of the artist is not different now than it was?
I think so.
In Giotto's time?
I think so. I mean, I would say, what do artists what do you need to be a great artist? Well, quite apart from all the technical skills and so on, I think it boils down to at least two things. One is to be able to see better than everyone around you. And I use sight there, as you know, maybe, maybe perceive as better. It covers all the senses, the awareness to, to, to, to see better than everybody else
at a particular moment. So you're noticing stuff. Um, but that's, that's only half the battle because lots of people could be really good at noticing stuff, but they might be completely inarticulate, Or they might be the only one of only four people who speak their particular language. So, you know, three other people benefit, but nobody else does.
Yeah.
Or they.
You mean like.
I'm sorry? Do you mean like a scientist who is really good at noticing but speaks in a scientific language.
Who.
Just speaks in equations? Yeah. That's weird. I mean, I don't know what that means. Um, but, um, but what you need is, um, an ability to communicate it. Now, that does not mean with words, necessarily. In fact, a lot of creative people are not able to do that in words, and that's fine if they've got an outlet somewhere else. So it might be, um, an abstract painting, Mark Rothko or something. You think, whoa, what's he saying there? And he wouldn't necessarily be able to tell you, but
he's painted it. That's what he's told you.
Mhm.
Or a symphony that lasts 73 minutes of just solid, pure noise. That's as abstract as it can possibly be, you know, 76 minutes of pure music. Or it could be a novel that actually hits the zeitgeist. You name it. So it's the combination of those two things. And now that's why I think the church really needs artists, because we are not very good at noticing things are happening around us, and they're impacting on us all the time. But it often takes the artist to notice either its
negative effects or just say the fact of it. They could be like the canary in the mine, and they say, there's something on here. I don't know what it is. I don't, I, I don't know what to do about it, but it's happening. I can breathe it in. And then other people are alerted to take action when they don't necessarily know what to do. But I certainly think that happens. I mean, you look at 20th century art. I mean,
I'm reading. It's fascinating. Um, you know, al Qaeda, the the Islamist terrorist group, they, absolutely swept up stuff that was anti-Western and and saw the, the corruption and, um, you know, the hedonism of, of Western society. And, you know, they were not wrong. So I read somewhere that, um, you know, in the caves of Afghanistan. And then when he was finally caught and killed in, in Pakistan, they found a copy of T.S. Eliot's Wasteland there.
Mm.
Because Eliot was a canary in the mine, he's saying something really is not right here. We are living in this wasteland. But isn't that extraordinary? Now, the bin laden solution is not one that is remotely, uh, positive. But, you know, it's interesting he picks up on that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, a phrase I'm surprised hasn't come up yet is the buffered self. Um, which I guess is just another way of saying living in the immanent frame. Um. Is that. Is that fair? Is that a fair?
It's it's more it's it's more a kind of defensiveness about it. So, um, you're in the immanent frame. You're living inside this sealed house, and basically you resist any of those hauntings or hints. Okay, so you hear, I don't know whether it's, um, uh, you know, um, a nightjar singing outside, and then you just cover your ears and go, la la la la la, and you refuse, or someone slides something in the letterbox, a beautiful picture. You just rip it up, say, I don't want to
deal with that. So it's it's more than just being. It's a, it's a kind of resistance to it to say I'm not going to deal with that.
Okay.
And you suggest that beauty can sneak past that buffering.
Because.
It catches you unawares.
Mhm.
Um, and and, you know, it might come in a sort of hit TV show. Um, it might, you know, I can't remember what it was, but there was an episode of House, you know, with Hugh Laurie as the sort of, um, Sherlock Holmes type doctor, hence his name. Get it? Um, and, um, very irascible and unpleasant, but there are 1 or 2 episodes where, uh, almost despite him and despite the kind of secular world of the show,
there were things that actually just pushed against that. And they were often to do with end of life moments and, and stuff, and they were dealing with sort of the big questions often in the show, and you come away thinking, wow, that was really moving. And they weren't saying what you might have expected them to say. And, and, you know, so somebody might watch that kind of thing because it completely fits with their worldview, very sort of negative view
of human nature. But then suddenly bang! Catches you unawares. And you think, oh, I haven't thought about that before.
Hmm.
Uh. I love that idea that that beauty is unexpected. Surprises. You blindside you. Um, the between beauty, truth, and goodness. You know, truth and goodness are something that I have some responsibility to, you know, to align myself with truth to to be good. But beauty is something that comes to me. I can put myself in the path of beauty. Certainly. Um, but I think there's, there is a a passivity or
beauty requires a receptiveness that is maybe different. I'm curious to know what you think about this is is does beauty require a receptiveness that is different from truth and goodness?
Mm.
It's interesting. Um, when I was sort of finishing off the thesis and, you know, I wanted to give it a trendy name, um, uh, just for my own, sort of the little pleasures of life. Anyway, um, and, um, I was really stuck for ages to, what, to call it. And then, um, it was a quotation from Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which is just a wonderful book. I know so many people whose lives have been, you know, transformed by that book. Um, and it's just a little phrase. I completely forgotten all
about it. Um, but it was quoted in another book I was looking at, and he was in this section advocating for the arts, um, as being essential to life, not a kind of luxury, but really necessary. And the phrase was, um, a wild whisper from something originally wise. And I thought, ah, Eureka! That's the one. Um, now, what I love about it is it works at different points.
So it's a wild whisper. So most of the time, if you're full of noise and activity, um, and you are filling your life with you, name it, then you don't hear the whispers.
Mhm.
It's wild because you can't control it. You can't. You may be able to divert it a little bit, but it does what it does. It's, it's akin to Jesus talking about the Holy Spirit. Like being like a wind. You see the effects of the wind, but you can't see the wind.
Yeah.
Um, but it's it's a whisper of something originally wise. He means original in that sense, as to do with our origins. It's a foundational. It's it's the DNA of the cosmos that has wisdom Some absolutely ingrained. In fact, the foundations of the cosmos are divine wisdom. And when something beautiful crosses your path, which you didn't invite or control, it's wild.
Yeah.
It taps into something from the very origins of reality.
Yeah.
And therefore is wise. So it says so much in just those classic chestertonian.
Yeah.
Phrase. It just says so much and says this takes you into her bigger world.
Yeah.
Um, and and so I love that that kind of formulation because it, it says touches on so many elements of what happens when you're stopped in your tracks by something.
Yeah.
Um, a song on the radio or whatever, you know, you name it, you know?
Yeah.
Well, you mentioned that that a the the picture can be slipped through the the mail slot and you can rip it up, but eventually you feel like. I feel like eventually something, something makes it through. There's that scene in, I think it's Harry Potter where a letter comes in and I think maybe the the step parents or the foster parents.
Yeah, the.
Dursleys.
Tear it up.
And then finally, there are so many envelopes coming through the door that they can't they can't tear it up.
Yes. And that's actually.
That's a kind of picture of what is originally wise.
Yeah.
It's about undeniable reality.
Yeah.
And that's what's scary about a lot of contemporary Western politics, because it seems to be built on magical thinking.
Mhm.
Because I want X to be true. Therefore it is true. And I'm going to make policies on the basis that x is true. But the thing is x is not true.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um, without getting into specifics.
Yeah.
Right. Well, rather than aligning myself with reality.
Yeah.
You know, there certainly are reality. There are smaller realities that can be made true by, um, by human language, uh, human effort. Um, but ultimately there is a larger reality that if we don't align ourselves with it, it's going to it's going to snap back on us.
That's right.
And I sometimes imagine it like a, um, I don't know if you've ever seen footage of what it's like in the towns and villages around Chernobyl, where the, the nuclear power station blew up. Um, and of course, it's still many of the areas around there, and it's only it's only 100km from Kyiv, so it's pretty central to Ukraine. Um, uh, but, um, you know, there are still areas where you cannot go
because it's still far too dangerous, um, and radioactive. But isn't it amazing that here you have these concrete perpendicular towns created to be part of this sort of communist utopia?
Yeah.
Um, and they're evacuated and crumbling, but there are weeds coming up through the pavements. There are trees, there's grass, there's there's all kinds of wildlife. Admittedly, some of it really badly affected by radiation.
Yeah.
But to me that is a picture, though, of original wisdom.
Yeah.
Getting through. In the end.
You.
Buffer yourself for so long, you might do it all your life, but there'll be a reckoning. And the weeds, the plants, the blossoms will come through eventually. You can't stop it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that that idea of of big reality snapping back, you know, you can call that karma or you can call it the coming of the kingdom of God.
Mhm.
I certainly would go for the latter.
Yeah. Okay. Let's let's do that.
Um, okay. We haven't even talked about, you know, central to your, to your thesis is the idea of propaganda.
Mhm.
Um, and so you said in a, in a um, um, what's the word in that imminent frame when we're living, when we're living in the imminent frame, the artist has a unique ability to make the transcendent seem plausible.
Mhm.
And then you say, and that doesn't require propaganda. Um, you know, avoiding the pitfalls of propaganda. Um, so I want to talk about propaganda, but I don't know any artists who think of themselves as doing propaganda.
No, I'm sure that's true unless they live under a, say, a Stalinist regime where they have to.
But.
Um, the reality is. 99 times out of 100. Propaganda makes for bad art. I think there are 1 or 2 occasions in history where that's not the case. So I would argue that a lot of Renaissance art in Italy was church propaganda.
Okay.
They were they, you know, where did the the bottom dollar come from? Well, it came from the Vatican.
Yeah. Um, the Aeneid.
I think, is the the greatest.
For Augustus. Exactly.
That's that is some really, really excellent propaganda.
Yeah.
And it works. Um, and I'll come back to why I think it works, but, um, I would say also say the first 4 or 5 years of the Soviet, um, communist revolution in Russia. Um, there was amazing stuff. I mean, I think the optimism, excitement of those. Yeah, that was a scary time. They were crazy stuff going on. And there was a civil war in Russia. Um, but the artists who got swept up in the fervor of this
revolution were making amazing things. And you can see they're doing it to glorify the people rising up against their oppressors and whatever. And it's great art, but it doesn't last very long. And, um, it's not long before basically, they have to swallow the authority of commissars and committees that decide what is acceptable and not. And the thing is, I think it comes back to this idea of the wild whisper.
Mhm.
Um, one of the things in the, in the research I interviewed about 8 to 10 different people in different artistic fields about how they go about their work. One of the universal themes that came through very clearly, and it included, uh, a poet, a filmmaker, composers, painters. So it was a whole range of different, um, work They never quite know what it's going to end up like.
Yeah.
They start. They might have a question they want to answer or they they've set themselves a puzzle, you know, can I use just three colors in my palette to make this, or can I write a whole novel without using the letter E or whatever it is? So they set themselves, um, this constraint and then they work according to it. It works. Sometimes it doesn't work. And even if they're doing something they've done a hundred times, maybe today it doesn't work.
Yeah.
Um, now, a propagandist doesn't work like that at all. A propagandist sits down and says, this is the message. Not that I want, but that the audience or hearer or whatever must receive.
Mhm.
And there's no ambiguity. There's no give or take. Um, there's no deviation So you know the party, whether it's the Republican Party, the Democrat Party, the Labor Party, the Communist Party, the Fascist Party, whatever they have set in advance, this is the message people must receive. And therefore, all the open mindedness and the kind of groping around for something is completely gone. There's none of that. You know
where you're going and you will get there. And therefore, a lot of what is so-called Christian art is just propaganda because they said, right, we're going to make sure people understand penal substitution of the cross. Uh, by the end of this song, painting drama. And if they don't get it, then there's something wrong with them.
Mhm. Yeah.
That is propaganda that, that is basically constraining art to something that it really is not. Um, it is much more provocative, ambiguous, unpredictable. Wild.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was just I was just thinking if if the creator is not open to that, to the wild whisper, then the wild whisper can't be heard by the audience.
Exactly. It. Yeah.
And very often then it's it's not so much the creator who's not open to it. It's the commissioner, the one commissioning the piece.
Mhm.
So this is I want what I want it to achieve instead. Actually um, most I'm sure most artists, writers or whatever would agree that it's a, it's difficult to work to a commission anyway. But B if they have to, they have ideally been given some criteria to which they're going to work. But the, the one commissioning must trust them. Say, well, there's a reason why you've asked me to do this, because I've got a track record of doing these things.
I'm therefore trusted to, to to produce something good within the constraints that you've set. But you've not set the end product.
Yeah.
So it may be that, you know, for the last ten years I've painted six foot by six foot paintings, but this commission has done something to me where actually I think I'm going to do four miniatures that are the size, you know, I don't know of an envelope. It's, you know, and that's, that's got to be okay at one level.
Okay. But. Working on commission is one thing. Working, working I'm sorry to a commission is one thing. More interesting, I think, are the ways that we assume that we receive or take on limitations, you know, whether that's market limitations or or we believe there's some message that we are required to, you know, it's that sort of self censorship isn't the word, but it's it's the, the same spirit.
Self-limitation self.
Limitation. Right. Um, and you know, I live in Nashville, Tennessee. So my famously said, or I don't know if it's famous or not, my said, here we make the best music in the world and the worst and the worst because there is a, uh, a commercial. Uh-Uh, there's a a commercial approach to music that's also assumes the worst
in the listener. Right. And, and I think, you know, uh, one thing you said in your, your thesis, um, was that the that when we instrumentalize art, whether that's commercially or, you know, whether we think we've got to save people's souls or whether we think I'm going to I want to buy a lake house with this country song. We end up, Um. Uh. I'm sorry. I'm looking here for my quote. Uh, you describe it as a flattening. Um, that anything that makes demands on performers or audiences is avoided.
Right.
Um. And I think that's that's so. Important and relevant. The idea that that we don't make demands when we're being propagandistic or when we're instrumentalizing art. We're not making demands on people that would be good for them to have some demands made on them right now.
I think that's exactly right. But the interesting thing is, the artist doesn't necessarily know what those demands will be. If you sort of.
Mean they.
Can't, they can't articulate in advance where it's going to Provoke or impinge. It might they might have a pretty good idea, because let's say they're trying to expose materialistic lifestyles that are just vacuous and, and, and empty are hollow. And so they're presenting a contrast to that, perhaps. But they don't necessarily think, okay, so people who have a vacuous, materialistic lifestyle are going to be challenged whenever they use
a credit card at Walmart or whatever. I don't know, whatever it is, they haven't got a kind of template or a flow diagram for what's going to happen. They don't know. And sometimes and you and you know, so how often do you hear, say, a novelist at a book signing or whatever, and somebody who loves their work comes and talks to them and they say, you know, I saw this in that book of yours. And and
it really changed my life and it helped me. Uh, and the novelist says, gosh, I'd never thought of that before.
Yeah, yeah.
And for the novelist, that's really exciting. It's is not illegitimate at all. It's. Yeah, that really makes sense. I wasn't thinking of that. But now you mention it. Yeah. Um, or I saw an interview with Steven Spielberg quite recently with a BBC guy who just said, um, just asked him a fairly inane question at one level about how his films were very often trying to deal with the conflict in his parents marriage, and it just stopped him in his tracks.
Yeah.
And tears were welling up. He said, you're right.
Yeah.
It was an incredibly moving thing to watch because he wasn't ready for it. And but pointed out, you think, yeah, that is exactly what's going on.
Yeah.
I think a part of part of the reason that's true is that the world is metaphorical, and metaphor works in literature because it's the way the world works.
Right.
And, um, and so the artist who's making metaphor doesn't have a. Monopoly on that metaphor that he or she.
Made, right?
They're only drawing on connections in the world that the reader has access to those connections as well.
And, and therefore can have, you know, a word is, is multivalence. It's got many different layers of meaning simultaneously. It's not it's not a zero sum.
Yeah.
So, um, there are legitimate interpretations that can sit side by side at the same time. And actually when you start spotting them, even in the Bible, they're all over the place. So there are places where you cannot say this verse means just one thing.
Yeah.
Um, John's gospel does that all the time. Um, but then here we come back to what we were talking about at the beginning, when we're talking about metaphor, you see, of course, if you're going to live in an imminent world inside the sealed house Mhm. Any time you begin, you even try to imagine, let alone describe outside the front door, it's going to have to be in relation to your experience from inside the house. So you're going to have to say I know you know the experience
of being in the kitchen. Well there's something kitcheny out there but you. But if you're in the house, you have you have to deal with that. And that's exactly the same when it comes to issues of transcendence. All our language to describe God and eternity and stuff. They are imminent words. They have to be. They can't be anything else. And Jesus, by becoming human, becomes imminent himself in order to communicate to us, because otherwise it would
just explode our brains. We wouldn't know what it meant, let alone be able to hear it. So the whole at one level, the entire gospel is metaphor. But many people hear that and they think, oh, he's saying it's not true. Quite the reverse.
Us.
It's more true than you can possibly imagine.
Love it. Okay, I'm going to change the subject.
Whoa. Okay. Yeah. I want to hear about your.
I want I want you to tell me a little bit about your podcast.
Oh, yeah.
Triptych. Triptych. Conversations. I have that right.
Yeah. Triptych.
Triptych. Conversations. Um, so it's been something that's been sort of brewing in my mind for about a year. Um, and it does, you know, kind of flow out of this stuff. Um, taking seriously the fact that people make really amazing things out there, and we want to work out what they're seeing that we haven't seen. And, um, do they help us understand our lives better? Um, and my experience even before I became a Christian is that the arts do that. And that's why I'm a total
sort of culture vulture. Really. I can't get enough of it. But I was just thinking, you know, we are all human. So we whoever's making things, we have that fundamental thing in common and they might live on the other side of the world, use a different language, have all kinds of different experiences from me. But if they're making something within this world, then there's going to be a connection somewhere.
And so I was thinking, well, what would happen if you take three completely different artworks in different styles, different genres? So there could be a song, a painting, a novel from different centuries or different places or whatever. Let's throw the three completely separate random things together and say, okay, let's think about these three things. Is there anything that connects them other than that they're made by people?
Mhm.
Um, and see what happens. And so hence triptych. Um, because the idea of a triptych in medieval painting was a sort of three paneled artwork that it's a bit like a strip cartoon.
Mhm.
But you see these on, you know, medieval altarpieces and stuff, and they tell the story of the gospel or whatever. Um, and you're meant to read them as a group. Let's see if we can do that with really random things. And it literally is random. We try to be as random as possible. So, um, the fifth episode is coming out in the next, uh, ten days or so, and we're having a lot of fun.
So it's you and Sophie Billingsley and Joel Bayne.
That's right.
Sophie killing Lee.
Um, Joel.
Bayne.
Yeah.
And he is an artist in somewhere in the UK. A visual.
Artist? Yes.
He's actually about an hour from where we live. Um, and Joel is a pastor in Jamaica, um, in Kingston. And I met him years ago. I was doing some teaching in Jamaica, and he came to one of the things I was doing, and we kept in touch. Um, and I've done 1 or 2 things at his church in Kingston, um, in the last few years.
Well, it's.
Really fun to hear you all talking about the, the artwork together, the, the various kinds of art. We all have a great chemistry with one another. And, um, anyway, I just I love what you're doing with triptych.
Thank you very.
Much. Well, we're having we're having a lot of fun. I, I look forward to it a lot. And and the interesting thing is, um, so what we do is we take each of the three things and discuss them in turn. So each of us has one that we bring to the table. And we worked on, although we've all, um, spent some time in those things beforehand. And then we come to the final segment, which is the convergence. And we absolutely do not plan that. Um, we don't know
where it's going to go. Um, and it's quite nerve wracking. When we recorded the first couple, we thought, well, we'll do this and just see if it works. Otherwise we'll have to be a bit more intentional and plan it. But actually we've not needed to. It's been a lot of fun and we and we really did not know where things were going to end up each time. So there's a bit of jeopardy for us there. I think it probably keeps us on the edge of the seat.
Yeah.
All right. Well, Mark thanks. It's always great to talk to you. And so glad we got to do this together.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's great.
The Habit Podcast is brought to you by The Rabbit Room, where art nourishes community, and community nourishes art. You can support their work including this podcast, by becoming a member. Visit COVID-19. Special thanks as well to Taylor Leonard for letting us use her song diamonds as the theme music for The Habit podcast. You can learn more about Taylor and follow her work at Taylor Leonard. Com. The Habit membership is a library of resources for writers by me,
Jonathan Rogers. More importantly, the habit is a hub of community where like minded writers gather to discuss their work and give each other a little more courage. Find out more at The Habit Co.