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MARTIN ZELMENIS
Meditations for Some Dying Fire
(1998)
It is (it is, I know it!) a common feeling - nearly everyone has experienced it to a certain
degree - that the very basic reality of his/her life is playing hide-and-seek with him/her, and
there is no sure way at all to witness and feel - and experience it, fully to take part in it -
our real life is always somewhere else. It's always warm and sunny in some place we are not.
Well, while freedom in general has been resident here in the Baltics for a few years already
it's easy to observe there are two kinds of freedom simultaneously: freedom to create something
and freedom not to create anything at all. It seems obvious only the first one bears fruit. (Who
needs such fruit? It's another pressing question.) Most unfortunately creation has got some
pressing demands of its own. No matter how great the artist, he/she is no God, and always has
got to have materials to create from, spiritual, intellectual, accidental - you name the
adjective. I have not discovered this - it was Susan Sontag who stated that photography was a
language, and any language may be used for lots of different purposes. (In novels as well as in
poems, in prescriptions, captions, cookbooks and so on...) And when someone has taught himself/
herself some tricks of the trade, has mastered the language to some extent, it is possible for
such persons to start the same in a different capacity. It's sad to see former friends and
colleagues swapping their artistic integrity for the fast buck. Photography - at least
picture-making - is a widespread language, and probably the only one that is spoken, even if
one at times doesn't comprehend what he/she is saying. What may one think hearing a former
artist saying in his work: Sorry, folks, but nowadays I can make art no more, I can make only
money? But then - is art always Art, and does it need such a bulk of followers?
I am no specialist in the works and importance of William Blake as I've always had serious
reservations to indulge in studying his works, no matter how highly esteemed he is. No matter
how little do I know of him there is an idea of his worth touching upon - he's stated somewhere
something like the World of Imagination was the World of Eternity. If I have got this right the
saying means it is enough to succumb to fantasies in order to live in our real world - a world
that is really debased in comparison with the all-embracing imaginations and fantasies of other
worlds that exist only in our minds. It is kind of ridiculous: he, Blake lived in a world that
was less beknownst to its very inhabitants, and still he yearned to understand, to feel some
kind of highly probable Eternity, and not the real world. Well, in those dark and distant times
the world of humans could still be fooled into imagining this very same Eternity in order not
to live their lives in a world that poured only miseries over them (no videos, no discos, no
high-speed car-crashes to the poor bastards! In their wildest dreams they could not even imagine
anything of the kind). Well, nowadays one can see much, if not all of the real misery in the
world on TV - and in what way does our art offer anything better than this very same cheap
imagination, those same incomplete and even methodically incompetent fantasies, and an
opportunity not face the real world, but only some ersatz that even doesn't care to mask itself
properly in order to hint and pass on as some higher understanding of our being, of the human
condition. (But art has nothing to do with it! And philosophy too! And so there is no way for
the common man to get a fuller insight into his real condition, he is left knee-deep in his own
misery.) And - how funny! - seeing this real misery (it's ours! It's ours!) doesn't make it much
more real for us, the beholders. Currently every religious movement and interest-group has got
its artists (not to mention gays and lesbians). Everybody's got a bunch of his/her material
interests, and sometimes even spiritual interests, while in general view it seems the time for
anything more-or-less universal has happily passed in favour of very funny and very cute
marginalisations. Probably that tells why people in general expect less and less of art - and
the whole field is left just for art-freaks alone? Art is more a group thing nowadays than it
has ever been here. Lots of things swarm around us. Seeing suffering on TV happily doesn't
induce suffering in anybody. What a cute little planet we have got: it is Our Mother Earth where
we have learned to contemplate any far-away sufferings, disasters as well as happiness while
munching popcorn in front of the TV set, and at the same time to feel spiritually and mentally
involved in everything but ourselves. Sort of disjointment.
A marriage counsellor stated that in order to make things happen again in one's family one must
change oneself first, and only then he/she may expect his/her partner to make the change (in
attitude, habits, sex - you just name it!) he/she wishes so devoutly and the lack of which has
spoiled much of the once suspected marital bliss. So it will do nothing good to your marriage at
all if you feel it necessary or preferable to imagine and only mentally support (the word is
imagine) all the good things as if they were happening in your household already, and to do
nothing really substantial and basic in this field at all. Art might once have done (or tried
to do) something good to the world, but somehow it seems to have got lost in the middle of
itself somewhere - and all the people who might be influenced by this said art got lost along
with it. Where are they nowadays? Mending their marriages that are in shambles?
Remembrance is an act of imagination: and, if my word isn't enough, believe at least in this,
please: it's been proved scientifically. We that come from the former Eastern bloc feel rather
like antiquities, with values and ways of thought long lost in the more prosperous parts of the
world. A definite portion of feeling ashamed is involved in this position, too. Are we some
relicts from ancient past, embodiments of history or what? Relicts, busy to prove to everybody
else, to ourselves that we are just like the rest of the civilised world? Well, sure - we are.
Walking on two legs and wearing smart ties amply proves it. We are and at the same time we are
not. And this makes the whole situation rather awkward. Imagination plays a bad trick both on
the East and the West. Just like the perception of reality (some might call it misery of reality)
can't be communicated directly to anyone; you get reality only through other senses, as hearing
and even seeing is often not enough, just in the same way art allows you not to feel anything -
if your imagination has got the wrong wavelength. One may say somehow it always misses the point.
How can we be like the rest of the world with our dissimilar former everyday experiences, with
pretences to be someone else, make art like all the other world does and adopt it's ways.
Wishful thinking called imagination kills real freedom of the spirit, and rather unfortunately
this is a luxury we can't afford. It's foolish to pretend and think that freedom has come to our
world for ever and it is bound to put everything in order without our own direct personal
involvement.
If we, the East-Europeans, are still going strong it is mainly not for our imagination, but for
our experience that's still not sorted out properly. It would be wise for anyone not forget that
both Hitler and Stalin were two large-scale dreamers responsible for a big part of all those
indents and bullet-marks made in the world's consciousness - and they ought to be regarded as
such. Poor civilised world, we, the East-Europeans may exclaim, what great experience it has
missed - not being included in the grey and-not-so-grey zone of Russian influence! It would have
much less to imagine if it's experiences were up to the mark! If art can't at least try to show
some way back to reality of its beholder, better there be no art at all, for those historical
fantasists very much like both of the aforementioned, the great imaginators of our day are just
waiting for their turn to come into light, and empty fantasies of an ideal array of the world,
applicable by wish and executable by some kind of supposed order are their breeding-ground.
I have not discovered this - it was Susan Sontag who stated that photography was a language, and
any language may be used for lots of different purposes. If no-one interferes, photography
basically represents objects as found in real life, doesn't it? And photography - at least
picture-making - is a very common language, used very widely, and one has to point out it is
probably the only language spoken by persons at times not comprehending fully what they are or
might be saying. Definitely it is a bonus! One is offered a treat - a possibility to create
sub-consciously and without any personal involvement at all.
Recently I had a relaxed chat in a merry-going company, and one of the artists in it casually
remarked that realism has currently long been in fashion; I completely agreed with him, and on
my part I just added that realism has risen to favour thanks to the fact it has always been used
as a substitute for reality. The regular artistic imagination, the lauded freedom to imagine in
its most popular form - as I have understood this fellow Blake and mistrusted his meta-physical
approach on the spot just for the commonness and superficiality of it - just once more thus
stood out as one of the main stumbling-blocks in the way to grasp reality more fully.