Disaster, Art, Life
Although few like to admit it, Walker Percy’s observation about disaster is largely true: in our era of contented tranquility, superabundance, and fading value systems, we tend to crave catastrophe as a source of meaning. We may noisily declaim that this economic collapse is terrible, that this or that hurricane or fire or administration is so horrific that we’ve lost our faith in humanity, but in moments of emotional agitation we are more alive than ever, and this vitality of opposition and ire and fear is more valuable to many than peace.
Artists are in particular infatuated with tragedy, and for good reason: without it, their art has nothing to discuss and descends into the mire of self-referentiality that makes so much contemporary creative work duller than pop-culture (and less enduring!). Creative people are thus always inclined to overreact, to declare that some bit of news is the end of society as we know it, the beginning of a new epoch, “a fundamental shift,” etc.
Of course, artists may also choose to celebrate something, but in a time which makes mincemeat out of sincerity and has discarded or discredited most value systems, what might they celebrate except the most general and boring themes? What art praises heroism now? At most, art might laud the “heroism” of circumstance or victimhood.
Before I am accused of insensitivity, let me add as someone whose father lost his house in Katrina: this lust for disaster, for the dislocation of the normal, the outpouring of sorrow and rage, and the creation of meaning, persists just until we are actually afflicted, and not afflicted as in, “Ever since I watched all that coverage of the disaster I’ve not been comfortable on boats and I have nightmares,” but afflicted personally. At that point, we are reacquainted with reality and reminded of the worth of civilization, peace, stability, abundance.
And that’s the point: to be acquainted with reality is what many of us, and artists more than most, seek. In that acquaintanceship we define ourselves, our values, the purposes of our society and our lives. Hence the thrill of the huddled family watching tragedy unfold on the television or the euphoria of the boy sitting in the darkened house, hearing the wind whip the trees and the rain fall into the flooding streets: they are reminded of death, and thus of life, and don’t have to wonder:
What’s the point of living? What should I write about?
