It has been interesting recently to re-ignite my interest in the writings of Martin Heidegger. What makes his work so fascinating to me is two primary things. First is his interest in fundamental ontology and phenomenology. That is, his work is concerned with human activity at the most basic level. Where many philosophers take issue with the absolute, god, reason, and so forth, Heidegger is concerned with walking through doors or using a hammer to build a chair. The second point of interest is the way in which his writings feel like a journey. He is the tour guide to the reader through the phenomenal aspects of human existence, again contrasted with most western philosophers who act as the supreme lecturer disseminating information to the lowly masses.
His thoughts on art and the poetic worldview are of specific interest to me. In What is called Thinking? he speaks of the essential nature of craft and art by exploring the work of a cabinetmaker in saying “what maintains and sustains even this handicraft is not the mere manipulation of tools, but the relatedness to wood.”
In art, this relatedness is essential to the work. It is a relatedness that is itself an entire world of being, and the artist must negotiate that being-in-the-world. Take for instance the play. The playwright must have a relatedness to language, a relatedness to story, character, theme, plot and so forth. Each one of those “related tos” are one strand in a web of relations that comprise the matrix of relations necessary for the play to be wrought.
Stepping away from the act of writing a script, or engaging in a play being wrought is the production as a whole. Every member of the collaborative team must needs have a relatedness to the other collaborators. No one person can act and create in a vacuum, certainly not if the intent is to create a true work of art. Instead a web of relations builds or is made manifest that allows the creation of the play to happen.
But returning to the more basic level, the artist must have a relatedness to the work. I, as the lighting designer, must have a relation to light. And that relatedness to light is what guides and shapes the way the light relates to the play. To the work as a whole.
David Lynch in Catching the Big Fish talks about this relatedness from a different direction. He speaks of the artist’s relatedness to creativity or, as he puts it, ideas. Through meditation he finds it possible to transcend the day to day confusions and get right to the heart of one’s relatedness to creativity. “Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way we make heads or tails of it is through intuition. Intuition is seeing the solution – seeing it, knowing it. It’s emotion and intellect going together.”
Intuition can only exist when the artist has cleared the path for the relatedness towards the medium. If you are hungry you are related to food, tired to sleep, angry to frustration. Clearing the path towards that primary artistic relation allows the work to happen. To flow. It makes, as Heidegger would say, “the world fall away” and creation to commence.
