Why Every Painting is a Prayer

While listening to Pandora you often hear artists make comments before a song actually begins. One day recently while listening to one of my "awesome female folky" vocalist channels - maybe Joni Mitchell, or Judy Collins, or Joan Baez, one of the "flower children" types - I heard her complain about the fact that audiences always wanted to hear their favorites. "Nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Hey! Paint Starry Night again!'"

Well, maybe nobody actually asked Van Gogh, "Hey, paint Starry Night again!" But he did. Most sites quote 21 versions of Starry Night, different weather, times of year, angle of view, but all the same framed patch of sky. And then, of course, there are the sunflowers - 7 to 15 of those depending on the criteria. "OK," you say, "but wasn't Van Gogh painting a lot of those works while a patient in a mental institution?" Yup. But before we write off these multiple versions as fixations of an unbalanced mind, consider this.

Munch painted 4 versions of The Scream, which thieves kept stealing. Rembrandt did some 80 self-portraits - versions of the same subject, not? Even DaVinci did two versions of his Madonna on the Rocks, and, of course, Monet painted some 250 works featuring water lilies. "What," I said to myself, "is going on here?" The answer I came to tends to natter on a bit, so get comfy.

First I need to clarify what I mean by the divine and the function of prayer. The long version of that clarification can be found in my 2008 book, The God Chord: Physics in the Landscape of the Heart, which I just learned can be bought through Amazon/Goodreads for four bucks! But I'll try to save you digging through my search for a "theory of everything," in that book and cut to the chase.

The God Chord rests firmly on string theory. In it most basic iteration string theory persuasively asserts - in my mind, and the minds of others far better versed in theoretical physics - that virtually everything in the universe is made up of incredibly tiny vibrating strings, far too small to be detected by contemporary technology. In The God Chord I assert that the idea that vibrating strings - no matter how tiny - make music. Hence, everything in the universe is made of music.

OK, I realize that may seem a bit of a stretch, but consider the fact that we were largely blind to much of the universe until we invented telescopes that enabled us to see beyond our eyes. It does not seem to me unreasonable to assert that we will remain largely deaf to the vibrations of these tiny strings until such time as we are able to invent the technology that will allow us to sense, if not actually hear, this pervasive music of the spheres.

Furthermore it seems equally plausible that, just as the current tools of cosmology allow us to peruse the cosmic microwave background (CMB) -which is a faint glow of microwave radiation that fills the observable universe and is a remnant of the Big Bang - a bit down the line aways technology could allow us to discern a kind of celestial symphony that would reveal the Central Organizing Harmony of the universe, the COH, or as I more whimsically call it the God Chord.

Alright, if you are with me so far let us take another step down this road. If everything in the universe is made up of these tiny vibrating strings, that means we as well are made of vibrating strings - are made of music. That is one of my favorite suppositions, that we are made of music and hence do, existentially, conform to certain aspects of music theory - we are in harmony with some other individuals [their strings] and may find ourselves discordant with others. But that is an issue for another time that I play with rather extensively in The God Chord.

Right now I want to focus on our relationship with the COH, The God Chord. Think of resonance, of a tuning fork. You hit a tuning fork and rest it agains any surface, a table top, whatever, and that surface resonates with the pitch of the tuning fork. Obviously this works best if you place the tuning fork against the sound board of a musical instrument, a piano, violin, viola, whatever. And then you adjust the strings to cause the instrument to vibrate in concert, in harmony with, the vibrations of the "tuning" fork. Get it? Tuning it!

And now another jump. We are the instrument and the COH, the symphony of the universe is the tuning fork. And it is when we achieve a "state of grace," "nirvana," "inner peace," call it what you will, that we exist in, are at one with, we resonate with The God Chord.

Continuing to jump along. Our lives chronicle our relationship with The God Chord.  Any life, any occupation, either resonates with, or mutes, the influence of the god chord in our existence. This notion could take us down any variety of paths, but for this post I want to focus on the special relationship that "creatives" bring to the process.

"Creatives" seems to be the current term to define folks whose life is devoted to the arts - painters, poets, sculptors, dancers, musicians, photographers, writers - in short anyone who sees the major activities or expressions of their life as "art."

So now, let us jump back up to the title of the post, "Why Every Painting is a Prayer," and consider those multiple, seemingly redundant, images created by those most excellent artists. Why paint, seemingly, the same thing over and over? It is an attempt to get "it" right. And what is "it"? The symphony of the universe.

It is commonly said of creatives that they do not chose their art, rather their art chooses them. Their parents and partners often ask when they will get a "real" job.  And except for a - sure talented, but mostly lucky - few, creatives are not fated for fame and fortune. Consider Van Gogh who is said to have sold one painting in his entire life, and for what would, compared to his current market value, have been less than pocket change. But he kept painting those Sunflowers, and those Starry Nights. Monet kept on painting waterlilies, over, and over, and over, and over. Why?

It is my belief that "creatives" sense the symphony of the universe, The God Chord, more deeply than most. It is through their art that they seek to express, and hence become one with, that symphony. Yet in their minds they often fail to "get it right." So they continue to try again and again, painting after painting, prayer after prayer.