PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A FREESTYLE

Verse 1

Portrait of the artist as a young man¹

Gonna turn a hater to a young fan

Set sail, see you later, off to new lands

They call me crazy till it’s true, then it’s true, damn

I don’t write a line just to make a point

Sitting in the silence to make a noise²

Send shivers down your spine, get aligned. Like a river flow³

A stream of consciousness, James Joyce⁴

Last night with my wife, white zinfandel

No white lies, straight talk yeah that’s parallel

Cooking beats is a cakewalk,⁵ I might as well

All aboard the train of thought as I ring the bell

Sicker than liquor and wine, seeking the rhythm divine⁶

Seek if you’re willing to find.⁷ Skill and the vision combined

I pick religion over my sign

But I still see stars align⁸

Verse 2

Both grandfathers passed now the torch has passed

Still healing from the wounds of a tortured past

Staring at the ceiling in my room at a quarter past

Five but it’s time fight like a cornered cat

Game plan, Hail Mary⁹ that’s a forward pass

Watch me win the whole pot with these folded hands¹⁰

But watch for inner soul rot when you holding bands¹¹

Golden calf¹² gonna crush you like a soda can

Here we go again, yeah I’ve been here before¹³

Up down seesaw,¹⁴ this is real war¹⁵

Block of C4, life’s a brief tour¹⁶

Do less, be more.¹⁷ Through death, reborn.¹⁸ No more

Empty promises for a common cause¹⁹

Realize we have a common source²⁰

That’s the seed at an artist’s core²¹

A man for all seasons, Thomas More²²

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¹ Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

² Mt 4:1, Mk 1:35, Lk 5:16

³ Flow, Metaphor, and the Axial Revolution from John Vervaeke’s series, Awakening From The Meaning Crisis

⁴ Stream of Consciousness, William James in The Principles of Psychology: "consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits ... it is nothing joined; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let's call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life". James Joyce's (author of Portrait; see note 1) Ulysses is considered a prime example of a stream of consciousness writing style

⁵ Cakewalk, one of the first DAWs (digital audio workstations)

⁶ Music of the Spheres, “The Love that moves the sun and the other stars” Dante, Paradise, Canto XXXIII

⁷ Mt 7:7

⁸ A symbolic worldview. Anthony Esolen, in his introduction to Inferno, says of Dante's worldview, “It is not that medieval Christian cosmos, necessarily, which excites his interest, although it may and indeed should —it is surely far nobler than our lazy relativist world, wherein every man creates his own moral order (that is, until he suspects he has been overcharged by his auto mechanic). Rather, what arouses is the intriguing presence of any cosmos at all. For us, the setting sun, the number pi, Seattle, a father's role in the family have nothing to do with one another. Even those who profess the Christian faith live in a dead and silent world: religion has retreated into the foxholes of the heart and says nothing about the stars. It is, I think, refreshing, invigorating, to enter a world of significance —of love and of love's profound consequences.”

⁹ Jn 2:1-5, Hail Mary Pass

¹⁰ Mt 16:25

¹¹ 1 Tm 6:10

¹² Ex 32:19

¹³ “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― C.G. Jung

¹⁴ Yin and Yang, Waveforms, Sine and Cosine

¹⁵ Ep 6:11

¹⁶ Ps 90:10-12, Jas 4:13-14

¹⁷ See Ian McGilChrist on left-vs-right hemispheric thinking, and John Vervaeke on “modal confusion”.

¹⁸ Jn 12:24

¹⁹ Jn 12:4-6, “The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

²⁰ Gn 1:27

²¹ Art, in its most basic understanding, is to gather together material (matter/mater) from the earth (including our experiences), for a purpose (pattern/pater). Brushing your teeth, cooking a meal, educating your children, having conversations, driving to work, working at work, creating music, writing a novel, reading a novel, making a shovel, using a shovel, are all “artforms”. Our goal is to live an artistic life, full of intention and meaning in everything we do. The ultimate “purpose” or pattern in which we gather everything for, is worship of God. It is through Christ, with Christ, and In Christ, that our art, our worship, our “fruit of the earth, and work of human hands” becomes the "Bread of Life".

²² Remember our “ultimate purpose”, and telos. A Man For All Seasons, “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first” - Thomas More