A PARABLE ON THE NATURE OF ART

Once a man and woman were walking through a vigorous jungle and they came across the Manager. The Manager sat on top of a mighty waterfall, in a boat that floated on the edge without going over. The man and woman called the Manager and were responded to thus: “Behold all that I manage! The roots, the trees, the birds and the wildcats! All of this jungle is because of me. I make the conditions according to which every part of this world is cultivated. Look at my work. Look at how it grows and shrinks in unison with itself. What do you say about it?” The man and woman looked at each other. Then they looked at the jungle. Dense patches of flora and fauna interwove in confusing patterns. Large, tall areas of difficult brush blocked paths to nearby watering holes. The ripest fruits were too high on their branches to be picked, and animals and insects were violent and ferocious. The man and woman looked at each other again, then at the Manager, and said, “We are Artists, and we think your work could use a bit of aesthetic cultivation. We admire the technical feat of this jungle, it has grown thick with raw luster, but we do not think it is beautiful. In order for it to be beautiful, it must be reworked. Only exploration of harmony’s possibilities can make a thing beautiful. This jungle, rather, seems as if it has had only one type of harmony imposed on it.” There was a short silence, and a few wild birds scattered from a distant tree. The Manager then scoffed with fervor and nearly fell out of the boat. “Reworked? Beauty? Ha!” the Manager shouted, “You two would uproot and antagonize my system in the name of something so empty, so prone to deception, as Beauty? You are heretics! Enemies of plan, plot, and administration! Tell me, what would your aesthetic cultivation contribute to the delicate balancing of carnivorous and herbivorous animals? What would your beautification do to help maintain equalized irrigation throughout the live and dead lands? What in this world would Beauty do to keep the insect populations at sustainable levels? Nothing! That’s what! Only by structures and strictures are such divine feats accomplished, and yes, you may call such acts of equation and balance Art if you like, but they are so much more! Beyond the ideal of Beauty, of Harmony, mere reflections of a well structured sky, there is the ideal of Perfection, pure and continuous consistency!” Again, the man and woman looked at each other. They looked deep into one another’s eyes, and they kissed, long and potently. Meanwhile, a wild panther was crouching in the thick, tall grass on the river’s bank, and two flying turkeys were drinking from the river. Gobbling, splashing and slurping, the turkeys acted in unison. Indeed, their movements were completely symmetrical. From a certain angle of sight, the turkeys were basically indistinguishable, as perfect twins are. They moved and acted in the same ways continually. Furthermore, they stood equidistant from one another and from the panther. Following its instincts, the panther crept in ambush, sometimes moving slightly toward one, then slightly toward the other, then keeping still, looking back and forth at each. The panther did this, but it never lunged, and eventually the turkeys flew away. The panther stood up, shook its head, and walked back into the jungle. “Your system,” the man and woman shouted to the Manager, “pays for its consistency with freedom. The freedom to imagine alternatives, to make choices based on nothing but whimsical, senseless urges is drained, neutered, by your design. Why must everything work toward equilibrium? Is stasis not the absence of action, of living? Tell us, when equilibrium is attained, what can be gained? More equilibrium? That is impossible. No, beyond equilibrium there are only varying degrees of asymmetry, of chaos. And what is your place among all this equality? Are you not above it, controlling it, managing it? There is always asymmetry! Tell us, when did survival cease to be a series of contingent revolutions and become the necessary result of domination? Please, let us overturn your land. We will bring new life to it, and it will approach Beauty.” Trees and vines swayed in a warm breeze. A large snake swam down the river. The Manager cursed the Artists and threatened to punish them if they used any part of his jungle. The Artists lowered their heads and walked off.

Over time, the waterfall on which the Manager’s boat floated became weaker. The water level of the river decreased. The water level lowered so much that the Manager’s boat ran aground on a rock hitherto hidden by the roaring river. Moreover, because of the scarcity of water, the Manager’s jungle had begun to eat itself. Flora and fauna were dying. Fruit was rotting. The animals had been driven to appalling acts of strange, cruel brutality. The Manager decided to venture out, up the river, to find and fix what had gone wrong. The venture was long and difficult. As time passed, and the jungle got deeper, the Manager began to see changes in the land. The rotting had stopped. There were many lively streams full of water. The flora and fauna were vibrant, there were new types, and they were not tangled with each other, rather, they formed patterns pleasing to the eye. The changes led the Manager away from the river and far into the new territory. Refreshing water holes appeared, and there were always clear paths leading to them. There were trees with ripe fruit growing on all branches, but mostly on those which made the fruit easy to reach. The insects and beasts were friendly and peaceful, to their own and to one another. The Manager felt afraid. This might be a new jungle; or worse, this might be an unknown part of the jungle, a part that was not accounted for when the system of balance had been designed. The Manager felt a sense of failure, of incompetence. Here, the resources were obviously overabundant, even ornamental, but back at the waterfall whole families, species, were starving and dehydrated. The Manager traveled through these lands in despair, questioning what they meant. One day, on a hike along a manicured path, the Manager came across a roaring river. The river was familiar. It was the river of the waterfall that had been the Manager’s perch! The Manager rejoiced at finding the river again, at being next to its grounding, humbling power, and finding it in full health. But this feeling did not last. In the distance, some way down stream, there was a big, elegant, working structure in the middle of the river. The structure looked like it held the river and manipulated it, coercing it to flow in ways that were not natural. The structure was a dam. The Manager was shocked. How could this be? How could this dam be hitherto unknown. How could it have been constructed? And what was its purpose? But there, in the distance, walking, balancing, along the edge of the dam, were the Artists. They embraced, kissed each other and looked out at the land. The Manager became furious. The Artists had caused the abatement of the river. They had built a dam far upstream from the Manager’s waterfall, and developed an irrigation system, and were using the river’s water to cultivate jungle land according to their tastes. The Manager confronted the Artists and said, “You, heretics, have ruined the jungle! You have caused part of it to rot! If you keep this up, the rot will spread, and the jungle will be decimated! I hate you! You are my enemies! And I will break your dam before it destroys my work completely!” To this the Artists replied, “Don’t you see how wonderful we have made this part of the land? Do you not appreciate the Beauty here? Please, let us come to the rotting part of the jungle. We will spread our beauty there too!” The Manager replied, “No! I see the price of your Beauty, your Deception. This type of life is not sustainable. All jungle lands are mine, and there is only one way this jungle, this whole jungle, can be cultivated. It is my way. I know secrets of this river you do not. I will end the problems you have created.” With this the Manager set off into the Artists’ jungle. The Manager traveled through its cultivated lands for a long time, noting its embellished delicacies, questioning their implications, and remembering the rotting jungle far away.

One day the Artists were admiring their work, their beautiful land, sitting beside their dam considering how it might be added to, or rebuilt, when an immense amount of water came rushing down the river. The power of this rushing water was wondrous, awesome. The Artists’ dam was broke to splinters with ease, along with their irrigation system, and the rushing water continued downstream. They heard the Manager bellow from a peak far away, “I have reached an ancient, natural dam, a node in my system, without which you could not have built yours. I have temporarily loosened this node, to restore equilibrium to my jungle!” The Artists looked at each other and whispered softly, as lovers do, “We love our work, and we live by it. This river loves our work too, and it will not let us perish.” They then kissed and lowered their heads, as if in thought, and walked off.