Richard Lloyd Jones: The most famous expressions of it are found in the world's great cities, but it's also scratched in caves and carved on rock walls. And it's also pinned beneath fridge magnets in kitchens everywhere. Art, Marc Chagall said, must be an expression of love, or it's nothing. No doubt about it, art is an emanation of the human soul, and that makes it transcendental. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, art and reality.
You know, art and creativity flow out of us when we're kids. That's maybe something universal. The problem, as Picasso knew, was how to remain an artist once we grow up, because we don't usually. And maybe that reflects a tendency we have to reject beauty and aesthetics, a rejection that ripples out into our societies and cultures, because we don't see art being given the value it should in our world.
Art, so essential in emanation of the human soul, is irrelevant to a worldview that sees the primal force in life only in survival. From this viewpoint, the jumble of chemicals and compounds and biological processes that makes up man is moved only by the urge to multiply. Nature does not favor beauty or goodness or truth, these learned minds tell us. It only collapses the magnificence of creation to the mundane formula of genetics plus time.
We sensitive human beings know that to be complete hogwash, of course. There's absolutely no survival need for artistry, but it exists in all of us. Though you'd be hard-pressed to know that from looking at my personal attempts at drawing anything. But it's something that speaks deeply to all of us. Brazilian-Austrian psychoanalyst Norberto Keppe, whose work we're going to be exploring a little more in an upcoming teleclass series that we're preparing now.
By the way, you can write me at rich at richjonesvoice.com to get more information about that and make sure you get on the waiting list. Keppe has declared openly that art, aesthetics, is the basis of civilization and our link to the eternal transcendental world and God, a far cry from survival of the fittest. And that's what I'd like to explore today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
Helena Melander is a Swedish journalist and singer who's joined me to talk about art and reality. Helena, in Keppe's marvelous book, Sociopathology, which explores the break our science made with aesthetics and beauty, Keppe states in this book that the artistic world is the reality, which society doesn't understand properly because of its fantasy. What do you have to say about that at the beginning here?
Helena Melander: Wow, this is very interesting. Well, I was listening the other day with my students to the concerto for harp and flute by Mozart. And it was an ordinary day, an ordinary class. And while I was listening to it, I felt, wow, this is peace, this is paradise. This is what life should be. And my students too said, oh it's so good, please don't stop, I'll
Richard: never leave the school again.
Helena: And then I thought about this, that what this music transmits, this piece by Mozart or many other, especially classical music, transmit is that there is a higher level of reality of of life that we are very disconnected from. And we have to listen to that kind of music or have contact with that kind of art to remember. Because when you look at the world as it is, with all these wars and misery and ugliness, we say oh this is reality.
But according to what Keppe writes in this book, this is a distortion of reality. It's not the original reality that we are seeing on TV or in the society. It's a destroyed, false reality that has nothing to do with the real purpose of the human being, of creation. And I mean, this is quite clear, you can even see because if you just stop destroying things, for example we live in a city here with millions of cars with a lot of pollution.
If we just stop polluting here and even stop building so many buildings and highways, nature would come back, there will be flowers, birds, butterflies. So you can see that the real reality is based on beauty, on goodness, and it always come comes back if you just let it come back. So
Richard: when dr Keppe talks about the artist being more connected to reality, he's talking about that real reality.
It's strange to say real reality because you know we think of reality like you said of being the world we live in today. But actually nerberto Keppe is talking there's another reality of which we're a part, transcendental, and art, aesthetics connects us up with that. How do you see that helene, how do you see that process of connection with something transcendental through art and aesthetics?
I think
Helena: we can see this through the feelings we get by listening to a beautiful piece of music, seeing a beautiful movie, paintings, sculpture, because the feeling that we get is a feeling of of happiness, of peace, of harmony. And um and you could you can feel like like this is the way things should be, this is the way I would like to feel all the time.
And you can even feel like if you're listening to that kind of music or um watching a beautiful movie, you you feel like the time, you can't feel the time, it's like you move to another level, you are outside time and space. You can say you cannot. You cannot think about your small problems in your everyday life or that something is hurting in your body.
You know, you leave that. So you go to a higher, we can say, kind of immaterial level. Of course, we have to live in the material world. But the artists had or have the ability to help us connect with that higher spiritual transcendental reality.
Richard: And how do you explain that if we're reading Dostoevsky, we're reading, you know, crime and punishment or watching Shakespeare, Othello, and, you know, we're seeing all this human greed and guilt feelings and jealousy dominating.
How is this connecting us with reality? How do you see that?
Helena: I think Dostoevsky, for example, shows very much the attack that we do on truth, beauty and goodness. These three terms that Keppe uses always in his work of an Analytical Trilogy. Because Crime and Punishment, for example, is a story about how a person tries to go against the laws of nature, the laws of feelings.
He's trying rationally to explain or to justify to kill another human being. And by his logics, it even seems possible. But in the end, it shows that you cannot kill a person. You cannot because you will get sick. You will feel terrible. So I think it's this dynamics between attacking the real reality, what are the consequences of this, and how to come back to the real reality, which happens at the end of Crime and Punishment.
Richard: I like this very much, Helena, because you're talking about the true structure of the human being. When we watch, Woody Allen has done a couple of movies about this, of killing somebody and surviving it. I forget his movie now. It was Crimes and Misdemeanors, I think, where he showed a person who had somebody killed and that he survived it because there were no consequences.
He wasn't caught. So Woody Allen didn't explore this inner thing that Dostoevsky understood better, I think. He doesn't have that sort of conscience battle that Dostoevsky
Helena: showed so well. Because, actually, the last century, this concept of goodness being the basis of reality has somehow been manipulated. So, if you don't have that as a starting point, you cannot really create anything beautiful or anything truthful.
But we can see that, I mean, why do people continue reading Dostoevsky? Because it's based on the real ideas, you know, eternal ideas.
Richard: A young listener wrote a very insightful email, which I sent to you. A young 15-year-old guy from Canada, and he said some things that would be interesting for us to look at through your perspective here, what you're bringing of your understanding of Dr.
Keppe's work. He says that the birth of modernism at the turn of the 20th century brought the loss of all the rules in the aesthetic fields of poetry, art, and music, etc., abstract expressionism and the like. And he says, if you listen to an atonal piece composed by Schoenberg or Berg, you get the feeling of a completely distorted view of reality, reality being the good.
What is he talking about there? Let's try to help analyze that and understand that a bit deeper.
Helena: Yeah, it's very interesting. Actually, you can say like this, that. All music that is not atonal, or real music I would say, is based on a certain harmony. And this harmony is not an invention by the human being. It's a harmony that exists in the nature already.
It's even called the harmonic series. There are intervals in the nature. If I sing, I will have another tone that I don't hear, but there are natural intervals.
Richard: Overtones, they call them.
Helena: Yes, overtones. And the real music is based on this. The harmonies of real music is based on this. Actually, what Schoenberg did, for example, was that he, on purpose, tried to break up the harmony.
It's a kind of mathematical method, you can say, to try to break that. So if you listen to any kind of music like this, you feel confused, you feel like some kind of affliction or anguish because there is no base, there is no basis in the music. Because what he did also was that he had no key because in every normal music there is a key, a starting point that you come back to, which we could say maybe would be the basis of reality of goodness you know.
And I think I thought I was reading a little bit about him here, I I discovered that he started to to use this kind of technique when his his wife left him for a younger lover. And probably it was because he lost this basis of affection of goodness in his life at that time, and then he created a music related to that, that sensation.
Richard: It's very interesting isn't it, because if you uh if you listen to somebody singing in a concert and they're singing off key, well everybody knows that, you don't have to know anything about music to know that it's wrong. Yeah and it's not comfortable, you can even feel
Helena: embarrassed for the performer, and you certainly don't feel good. So you can even feel physically bad because it's something that goes so much against the the natural laws that it affects your body to to listen to this kind of music.
Richard: Whereas when you hear an opera singer, for example, a Pavarotti or something hitting that final note of Nessun Durma, and you hear that note being held crystal clear through there, it's like it sends a shiver through you. It's like it vibrates inside. It's something so real, pure. Dr. Keppe said in his book, Liberation of the People, he has a fantastic chapter in there called Persecution of the Artist, and he calls the artist the soul of society.
He says, it's impossible to have real knowledge of anything, philosophy, politics, theology, economy, if there's no contact with aesthetics. That's a strong statement, isn't it? Very. It makes we artists feel kind of vindicated in some way, doesn't
Helena: it? Yes, but I think it's absolutely true because arts, it's something higher. It's something more abstract, something bigger that includes everything. And so for you to be able to understand a person, understand even physical things, even physics, geography, history, if you understand arts, you will have a bigger understanding of that other areas.
Because the arts, they are connected to what Keppe calls the universals, which are universal truths, universal values based on goodness, truth, beauty. And that don't change. Actually, people say, oh, but people might have different tastes. I like this kind of music. You like that kind of music. OK, that's true. But a good song is always a good song. It doesn't matter if it's Indian, if it's Mozart, if it's Abba, you know, if it's 300 years old, if it's from yesterday.
A good song is a good song because it's based on these universal feelings, you can say.
Richard: Yeah, you're entering this question now of sort of relativity. We think of art as being subjective in some way that, well, I don't like this and you like that. And so can't we say that art is relative? So talk a bit more about this idea of universals as applied to art, because you may like Van Gogh and I may like Rodin, and we may never agree on what, of course, it's pretty hard not to like both of those.
It's
Helena: probably not a very good example, but do you know what I mean? I can say, well, I like that and you like this and we'll never come together. What about this thing? Yes, but I think this example is interesting because Rodin and Van Gogh, they are both connected to the universals, but they express it in different ways. You know, so I think everything that has some kind of connection to the beauty or to the true reality, it's going to be interesting.
It's going to be, it's going to, how can I say, impress people. And even if you show a feeling that is a feeling of anxiety or of fear, like there is this Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch. I mean, his paintings, you cannot say that they are beautiful, but they impress you because it shows a person that is far from this beautiful reality that exists.
Richard: Which is all of us now.
Helena: Yes, exactly. So, I think that art can have these two functions. It can show us the real, divine, beautiful reality in music and paintings. And it can also show how we deviate from that, how we distort this or how we attack the good values in our lives, you know.
Richard: Your example of Schoenberg was interesting because you talked about him breaking deliberately the rules.
And I remember Leonardo da Vinci said one time that art lives from restrictions and dies from freedom. He understood, Leonardo, who had no formal education, he understood the laws of nature, that you can't go against those, you have to try to work in harmony with those. It's the same in art, isn't it?
Helena: Absolutely, yeah. You have to follow certain laws of nature, you can say, because I would say that for art to be defined as art, it has to transmit a feeling.
It has to transmit, it has to make an impression of something real. So if you break up the limits, like many artists have tried to do, there is nothing left. You know, it's just confusion. We say in physics there is the concept of entropy, things falling apart you know. I was also seeing here some things about pop art that had a big I mean breakthrough during the 60s, that the purpose of pop art was to make effectless art, without feeling, to be cool and frosty.
I mean, okay, if you look at Andy Warhol's soup can, okay, it's cute, but
Richard: you don't feel anything. You know, it doesn't add anything to your life to see that can. It's advertising right now. Exactly. So they did that intentionally, actually. They tried to, we can say, make art relative. Everything can be art. It doesn't matter, but it matters. And what has the biggest impression on us?
You're talking about impression. The biggest impression on us is these universal values because that's what we are in reality. So when
Helena: we lower that to be something more relative or mundane, we're lowering somehow our experience of ourselves, aren't we? Absolutely. This is even if Keppe would analyze that, he would say it's a question of envy. You can even say a kind of envy that the human being has towards God.
Because everything in in the creation is beautiful you know, it's it's created in an artistic way. You can say uh there is even a a quote here from this same book that you mentioned, social pathology by by an orator Keppe. He says like this, "that I have the impression that god establishes direct contact with with humanity through aesthetics, music, which would be the sound of the creator. Sculpture and painting are the manifestations of his shapes and colors. Architecture imitates the divine creation.
All these things are links that remind the human being of his transcendental origin."
Beautiful isn't
Richard: it, it's got a beautiful feeling when you you read it. Then when we say the artist is outside reality, that he doesn't fit in our world, this is true, remember in don McLean wrote about Vincent, he said this, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you. So then there's this questions, the role of the artist to remind us, to try to raise us, to bring us back to this world of reality that we have lost touch with so much.
Exactly, how do you see that, you because you're a singer and a great singer, how do you how do you how do you feel that as you're performing, as you're
Helena: singing for people? I feel that people people really forget, I forget to. I have to practice arts or I have to listen to it to say, oh, yes, it's true. I forgot again that this is life.
This is a reality. And I went to a favela here in
Richard: Brazil. What we call a slum in English,
Helena: yes. And I got so depressed because there was nothing beautiful in this favela. It's a so terrible experience to be in a place where there's nothing good, nothing beautiful. And there have been several experiments here too with a conductor. He started an orchestra with young people from this slum and he has like saved the community because these children have been able to get away from a life based on drugs, trafficking and criminality.
So we can see that the arts have, it recovers people, you know, and it lifts us to this higher transcendental level. And that's why in this book, Social Pathology, Keppe says that this is the salvation of humanity. It's the salvation of society to go back to a kind of society where arts is the basis. Because automatically a society with more arts, with more beauty, has less criminality, has less disease, less fights, violence.
Richard: They've shown this in sociopathology. If you have a street where one house has a broken window, the tendency will be for more broken windows and more crime to happen on that street than a street that doesn't have a broken window, called the broken windows theory. They used this theory to clean up New York, actually, to begin to beautify. They wouldn't let the subway cars go out with graffiti on them.
They would paint them over. They couldn't leave the yard until they looked clean. And so this works in practice, too, this thing, because this is a universal value. The human
Helena: being doesn't want to accept this, though, Helena. I thought it was very interesting what you said also in this quote that you read, that the artists are seen as if they are in a kind of fantasy world, you know.
But I think it's so funny if you think of it, because who is most in a reality? A person who sits in front of the computer like 12 hours a day on the Internet or working in a bank, counting numbers, a lot of huge numbers of money that doesn't even exist. Or a Mozart who is trying to really create something beautiful, trying to transmit something fantastic to people.
I think it's so obvious that the artists are much more in contact with real reality than many of us.
Richard: And look at our inversion, and civilization is founded on the arts. Every culture has had a basis in arts. Even the American civilization was based on these great founding fathers who were fantastic writers. Civilization is founded on the arts, but the artist doesn't have the means to survive.
Helena: Exactly, not a real
Richard: artist. What an inversion that is.
Helena: Yes, exactly.
Richard: Shows an envy against this transcendental world that the artists bring to
Helena: us, right? But there is a lot of envy against the artists. For example, Van Gogh, if you speak about him, most people say, ah, it was that crazy guy, wasn't it, who cut his ear? And you say, well, he did that, but that's kind of a detail.
If you see what he did else, you know, he did more. He painted more than 2000 paintings
Richard: in nine years.
Helena: Yeah, exactly. And he was a person that really wanted to do something good for humanity. He started his life. He wanted to be a priest, but then he couldn't because he was too radical. He wanted to help the people too much. So then he was thinking, like, what can I do to reach people, to help people come to this higher level?
You know come closer to God. He even says in a quote of him, he says how can I be useful, of what service can I be, there is something inside me, what can it be, and he decided to become an artist. So I think it's very interesting, maybe an artist is something sometimes even a better priest than a priest, bringing people closer to God.
As he
Richard: was 29 when he began to paint, 29, it's very late in his life, so there was a deep desire. And at the at the height of his career he was painting one painting a day, he was just pouring out this.
Helena: Is and many people say well he was a genius, he was gifted, but they don't stop to realize that the internal quality of this man of an artist is something much deeper, it's the desire to give in some way.
Right exactly, another quote here he says when I have a terrible need of, can I say the word religion, then I go out and paint the stars. So it shows the the link that the artists make between our mundane life here and something higher. You know
Richard: the reason I came to brazil was based on reading Norberto Keppe's Liberation of the People, and I still refer to that book all the time in these podcasts, and it's been an enormous impact in my life.
He says in there "that society in general views the artist as a rebel out of touch with the real world, as though he were some strange creature. Few stop to consider that it's just the opposite, that people in general live totally alienated lives, and that the artists are practically the only ones who try to make culture and aesthetics an integral part of their lives."
And if civilization is perishing it's because it has altogether forgotten its soul, its heart. That is, those who strive for beauty in life. Fantastic, isn't it?
Helena: It's wonderful.
Richard: I was thinking of New Orleans as I was reading that. This beautiful artistic soul of the United States, the place where jazz and blues came from, this uniquely American music that's so profound. And that city has just been allowed to be destroyed.
It's like this is not just an accident, a hurricane coming. There was lots
Helena: of sabotage of that city and that as an, I think, an unconscious desire to destroy this aspect in the human being as well. Absolutely. I'm even thinking, I was thinking today of the way that Austria now is being commented all the time as being a place for monsters because of this very terrible tragedy of this family there.
But I think it's the kind of intention behind this to you know to say like look it doesn't it doesn't work, you have a lot of beauty and music and a beautiful country, but behind that it's only rotten people. I mean that's a big exception what happened with that family and anyway I mean everybody who goes to to Vienna for example are completely astonished with the beauty, the impressions there of music of culture of arts.
So I think there is. In the world in general, what you said, a kind of tendency to try to always take away the value of art, of beauty, and they don't even consider what are the consequences of this.
Richard: So if there are any artists listening or people who always wanted to be artists or people who know artists, what would you say is a way to finish our podcast of encouragement for art and how you see the purpose of art in society?
How could you sort of wrap up for us in that
Helena: way, Helena? Well, I would like to say maybe especially to the artists that I have many artist friends, you know, and I can feel that they are being fooled somehow by these modern, so-called modern ideas that you have to be crazy to be an artist. You have to do things without limits, expose strange things, strange theater pieces, always based on sick things like incest and, you know, dark things.
The art cannot be beautiful anymore because what is beautiful is like considered superficial. But I would like to say don't don't believe in that. You know, if you follow that kind of way, nobody will remember you. But artists that have the courage to stick to what is beautiful, what is good, what is connected to these eternal values, they will be eternal. Even if they maybe don't get so much attention now, they will be discovered because only what is good lasts.
Richard: And Dr. Keppe is fond of saying that the only value a person has in life is the good he does. We have a lot of scope then to bring that artistry into our lives. Then we resonate with these eternal values. This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
