>Butt seriously. I was thinking about jobs in religion. Religion used
>to have plenty of jobs, and they were all art jobs. So, I have to
>reconsider this whole business. I guess that's why I was always
>attracted to the Catholics and didn't much care for the
>Protestants. Not enough jobs. Paint, plaster, some interior finish
>work in hardwoods and that was it. The Protestants just didn't have
>much to do, except stand around dressed in black and talk shit
>about other people.
>
Not completely true. 95% of Bach's work -- which sets a good part of the
foundation of western music is religious.
If you were a musician, protestantism was not so bad.
And then, to be entirely fair, it was at the point that artists were able to something other than illustrate the bible that you start to see some amazing stuff. Of course, the ghosts of those illustrations form the baseline of secular painting. I'm thinking of the Dutch in particular. Of Vermeer and his virtual halos of light and collars and his virtual annunciations -- not of the birth of Jesus, but of the birth of the round, round earth.
>
>Our gods were never created by philosophers or priests and there was
>absolutely nothing divine about them. They were created by the working
>class trades, all those nameless people, just doing their jobs in
>religion. From Tutakhamen to Venus, from the winged Victory and Diana
>to Shiva, Molach, Jesus and Allah---just a bunch of men hammering in
>stone, wood, brass, casting in bronze, working gold, or painting on
>lime, cutting glass tile or fitting tiny pieces of marble and
>alabaster onto a wall, or drawing letter forms in octopus or squid ink
>on sheep skin or recycled cotton cloth, screened and cured into paper.
>
That be true. Yet they infused something into these works, a radiance, a
truth that _is_ real, that does persuade, that opens the heart cage. So,
while God may be an illusion, the hammered radiant beauty is not.
>
> The shield of the god reddens at early morning,
>Reddens at evening, but is white at noonday
>In purest air, farther from the earth's contagion.
>And the Moon-goddess changes in the nightime,
>Lesser today than yesterday, if waning,
>Greater tomorrow than today, when crescent.
>(Metamorphosis, Humphreys, 371p)
>
>Even poets had regular jobs in the old days.
>
Ovid's Latin is unspeakably beautiful. He's kind of like an Apolonian Byron.
But I would hardly call being court poet to Augustus "a regular job."
More like winning the Kentucky Derby. And when he failed to put out the
expected propaganda, they kicked his ass all the way to
Dacia (Romania) and he ended his life on the shores of the Black Sea,
lamenting his loss and trying to reingratiate himself with his
ungrateful employer.
Art is a cruel mistress except in those times when art is within general reach. When everybody can play an instrument, or whittle a toy, or turn a pot, or sing, or dance, or smooth a plaster wall.
Joanna