Anabelle knew she could ring the doorbell and see Michel, but she could also do nothing. She did not know that these ten minutes were a concrete example of free will; she knew only that they were terrible and that when they had elapsed, she would never be quite the same again. Many years later Michel proposed a theory of human freedom using the flow of superfluid helium as an analogy. In principle, the transfer of electrons between neurons and synapses in the brain – as discrete atomic phenomena – is governed by quantum uncertainty. The sheer number of neurons, however, statistically cancels out elementary differences, ensuring that human behavior is as rigorously determined – in broad terms and in the smallest detail – as any other natural system. However, in rare cases – Christians refer to them as acts of grace – a different harmonic wave form causes changes in the brain which modify behavior, temporarily or permanently. It is this new harmonic resonance which gives rise to what is commonly called free will.– Michelle Houellebecq, from The Elementary Particles
I dunno, but I sometimes think I write this blog for people who secretly harbor some kind of artist’s hankering over novelty, the challenges of change and varieties of aesthetic experience. At other times I think I do it for those I think who should, and don’t know it yet. I see them, and I wonder. I want to get in their faces and help them awaken to the fact that there is a very thin gauze between the world they think they’re living in, and that other world.
And who are those people? Well, just about anybody. Joseph Beuys not only believed that everyone was an artist, but he invited just about anyone who wanted to attend his classes at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. And largely to the protest of the rest of the staff, who had a much more elitist view of art than he had.
Most of his students did not become professional artists, but likely benefited from what they learned in applying that understanding in whatever other fields they pursued, whether it was a social work, business, medicine or anything else. That’s because in their very core, these things are not so different. The reason we are all artists, according to Beuys’ way of thinking, is because we live necessarily in a creative flux of life that demands it of us. In is our engagement in life, all of the problem solving, the variations in behavior, and learning to see differently so that we can respond differently. It’s you at your desk job, or whatever it is you do.
To Artaud, however, art had a very special purpose, which is also relevant to your desk job in a different, though parallel way, as I tried to explain previously. I think of what Artaud was after as being a parallel to Rinzai Zen Buddhism, where the practitioner will attempt to create a specific type of cognitive dissonance to provoke a change that liberates them into a state of blissful wakefulness and spontaneity. He wanted to provide propitious opportunities to create that different harmonic wave form.
It’s all about innovation and change, which are two things either on a spectrum, or where one is special type of the other. In our work lives we are hired to create some change in the environment, take a situation from one state to another, or to alter the effect of entropy, either to halt the way things would normally fall apart, or to redirect and utilize those tendencies. These are all creative pursuits, in a sense, though we may not think of them the way we think of a Monet’s Water Lilies, or a song we hear on the radio.
You hear a lot about innovation and disruption, and people who are trying to sell them as products and services, as if they were theirs to sell. Real freedom and innovation may be two sides of the same coin, and yes, there may be a reliance on disruptive forces and behaviors to produce either and both. But perhaps it’s more about how we each engage the forces that disrupt and traumatize our own work, and the rest of our lives, those moments like Annabelle’s above, in the midst of a dilemma or conundrum, where we seemingly have no good choices. At least none that have occurred to us yet.