ARTS REST
Wherefore art thou? Art at rest? To pause, to remain, to support, art. Rhythmic silences. Steps at starets. Sartre’s stare. The rest is silence. But art at rest re-starts, again and again. The books I have written rest and re-start, not hesitating like Derrida, or like he says Freud does in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, not taking the step. I take the step, of faith, of hope, of love, of arrival, of action, positif, still possible, against the deconstruction of the ideal and the real, when nothing became possible, and the possible became impossible. The books are St. Sartre’s re-start, reclaiming both the existentialist’s freedom and the dialectical critique for today. It may be that Jean-Paul will make it in before John Paul II. It is up to God, but Christ says the prostitutes and sinners make it in before his opponents in the
official church of His day. The gospel does not pass away, because it always applies. Our situations (Sartre’s word) never change. The church needs change. The church needs Christ. But like the young man at the seminary told me, God’s hands are tied. How can the One with the whole world in His hands not be free? He hands us freedom without losing His. As long as He has hands, there will still be a world to hold. He is free and we are free, radically free, free of Popes and popularity, of politicians, and of history, since that ended sometime during the last fifty years. With the end of history in the post-modern period, an abrupt thing faces us: we do not have to be tied to the time we are in, we are no longer historically conditioned. Therefore: Re-start the arts. St. Sartre would. Stress the Tessera, the era of fragmentation, in order for the mosaic to be made. I do not give a rat’s ass how you do it, but put the pieces together again.
Establish the stars. As the poet said, nothing will have taken but the place, except perhaps for a constellation. He conceded the power of imagination to still make patterns, despite the deconstruction latent in his poetry, which Derrida found and expounded. Poetry in arrears, as we all are, and myself especially, let us give the word. Arrest, art rest, then re-start, begin again, like Finnegan, waking, say yes, say thee and thou and thine, not I and me and mine. Buddha said he was always at the beginning. To connect the end to the beginning, a very hard thing to do. To sign, without resignation, to name, not for fame, to put words in books, like they did in the nineteenth century, before, ere, erstwhile, previous to motion pictures, records, radio, television, computers. Rasters, scatter patterns. Rather, Easters, homeward, by the book, for why not then be of another time? Time itself has ended as such. It is
time to begin again, beginning with time. The world still turns at the same speed, though there is no world to turn. Rare stars, rear yourselves, rise up sires, roses risen: The rest is not silence, but fire.
Michael Bolerjack