Peak Art

Peak Art

I’m worried that art and literature have peaked along with oil, like separated twins expiring at the same moment in spite of time and distance. I’m worried that the definitive Canadian poem was written by Margaret Atwood in 1970, and that it pounds the final nail into the coffin of that grand old idea that art might be something more than a strictly commercial enterprise. Those interested in Canadian literature (or art, or what have you), its making and its consumption, often fret over what makes a piece discernibly Canadian. Love of the land, pastoral imagery, down-to-earthness, humility, sense of humor, the inclusion of a Mountie, a Horatio Alger-esque hero or heroine, a railroad track, ambivalence re: ethnic and cultural diversity or . . . what? Well, I’m loath to argue that the mystery-Canadian-ingredient we’ve all been hem-hawing about for so long may well be artistic disillusionment and complete surrender to practical and financial considerations, because I really hope that isn’t what it is. Or at least won’t be forever. But in Atwood’s poem “Later in Belleville: Career”, we’re given a glimpse of commercialized talent decaying quite comfortably no thanks to itself. The poem should be read in it’s entirety to be fully grasped, but here are the highlights. It begins with Atwood's depiction of Moodie's artistic beginnings, crafting trinkets for tourists by the light of an oil lamp so that her children might wear shoes, and concludes:

Now every day

I sit on a stuffed sofa

In my own fringed parlour, have

uncracked plates (from which I eat

at intervals)

and a china teaset.

There is no use for art.

The poem opens with oil burning conspicuously and ends with the obsolescence of art and the means of procuring warmth and sustenance rendered abstract, invisible, and waaaaay besides the point. In between, art is crafted with spendthrift tourists and hard-to-come-by shoes in mind. Just when she might have been free to write with true uninhibited candor, free from the threat of financial ruin and starvation, she falls silent, unable to speak a word regarding the society that has allowed for her survival and no longer feeling the need to deal in contrivances. Is art merely the province of the disenfranchised? Once licensed, is it still art, or is it prostitution, compromise, calculated reciprocity, a faked orgasm—beautifully timed to coincide with whatever public thrust, but just as fake nevertheless?

This poem may be read and interpreted on many levels, and it is not my wish to de-contextualize it from the exquisite collection it is part of, but the succession of images it employs are compelling, for me, on their own terms. First Susanna writes for survival, then for a slightly more comfortable survival, and finally not at all. Why bother? She has fringes now. Actual fringes. Isn’t that art enough? Knick-knacks, imported goods, an abundance of food. If one sits a little longer with this poem, it isn’t difficult to imagine the oil lanterns burning down to nothing, darkness closing the scene. Nearly two-hundred years later, we’ve grown into a nation teeming with optimistic and inspired artists turned business-savvy sales-pitchers. We are running low on fuel. Not a stubborn Keats among us. The neon lights are flickering. Even billboards, now, are flickering. The arts are industries like any other: stylized and slick, chock-full of posers and panderers to business-tripping buyers and investors, if not treasure-hunting tourists.

At this year’s Northrup Frye literary festival in Moncton, New Brunswick, I spoke with one of the authors, a university professor, briefly about the future of Canadian literature. He did not seem optimistic. In fact, he ever-so-slightly rolled his eyes at me and suggested I was optimistic when I professed my belief that inspiration is contagious, genius is contagious, the literary future still might be kind of a little bit maybe bright etc. . . He left me with the distinct impression that he felt a considerable percentage of up and coming young writers were on the megalomaniacal and empty-slick side. As an aspiring writer myself, I cringed, and silently agreed. I am all too familiar with the self-important blood that runs in creative veins, the temptation to colonize all that one sees and perceives, and weave it into a masterpiece of disillusionment and ennui. To re-invent the wasteland in our own image (which, of course, is sort of what I’m doing in this essay, but with good intentions, I promise). In the afterword to her Susanna Moodie poems, Atwood quipped that megalomania was supposed to be an American affliction (paranoid schizophrenia being a more apt Canadian illness). My friend Natalie writes to tell me about a creative writing student she knows who is “so arrogant, it’s impossible to have a conversation with him.” Alas. Or, not even alas. . .but just. . .uh-huh.

When did our country cease to simultaneously alienate and guilelessly enchant it’s artists and begin to flat-out piss them off so much that they pretty much forsake their art in favor of acquiring status and cash and corporate positions? I know I’m generalizing, but am I really? Why the well-known hegira from starving, sensitive artist to fat, mainstream, business-savvy sell-out? Could it be because any country so hyped for its natural resources simply cannot survive the transformation of those resources into products, raw talent into genius (in the old creatively brilliant but not necessarily a pop-star sense of the word)? Somewhere along the line, something gets adulterated, refined beyond recognition, over-processed. When every last bit of originality has been transformed into an oeuvre, an empire, a business, a franchise, a series of novels, a finished product, a highway: what then? Settle into the cozy living room you’ve purchased/inherited or else venture out into a brand new wilderness, a wilderness alive with parasitic art waiting to suck you into the souvenir shop, club, department store or charity it was created to promote? Go stand in line to sing a cover song? Not bloody likely. Not when you’ve acquired a stuffed sofa already.

I realize I’m not painting a pretty picture. My perspective as a small-town Maritime girl probably biases me from the get-go against pure commercialism. But I see far more interesting, intelligent and visionary work coming from Canadian journalists (who are usually a bit more assured of their paychecks, and who, for good or ill, belong to a community of their peers) than I do from its poets, artists, novelists and story-tellers (N .B. I exclude New Brunswick journalists from this praise—which is not to suggest that they lack vision or talent, it’s just that if they do have any, who would ever know it, what with the whole conservative media monopoly thing—which is neither here nor there, but of course, there it is all the same). If there is no use for art it is because society has determined there is no use for art, no training ground, no cradle, Creative Writing MAs and MFAs aside—although these programs are arguably far more like tiger’s dens than cradles—ah screw it, pay me no mind, Socialist or no, we’ve never been a nation of swaddlers—the wilderness, the wilderness, lest we ever forget. Why are so few voices really crying out in it though? I mean really crying out unapologetically and unafraid of doing anything other than echo? Teasets, I fear.

Mrs. Moodie was not sitting pretty because of her own literary or artistic work: her husband’s success in a political rebellion is what won her her comfort. What society rewards is what it will get more of. And it certainly has gotten us more politics, more billboards, more used car parts, more machines that need oil. Brave creativity and upsetting candor is still pretty much suspect, easy to perceive as megalomaniacal and anti-social: not things you get rewarded for. It’s up to us to start rewarding artists if we want to keep producing (yes, I said producing) them in all their rebellious and challenging glory. Like the natural resources they are. They have their uses. Like oil. Which, by the way, we’re almost out of. Although perhaps this is why we hate to encourage the independently creative. It would be such a shame to have to burn things people actually poured their hearts, souls and integrity into when the day for last-ditch fires finally comes.