Art

One of the reasons it is so difficult to discuss art meaningfully is that our cultural beliefs stand in the way of a clear understanding of the concept. I've heard people say that "in heaven" they expect to hear "angelic choirs" and music so enchanting that the most beautiful music they've heard in life will seem modest by comparison.

Unfortunately, a disembodied spirit will not be able to appreciate any of the arts and especially music. In my novel, a disembodied spirit, or "ghost," attends a concert of the Vienna Boys' Choir. Since a ghost can see and by using telepathy it can approximate hearing, one might imagine that attending a concert would provide almost the same satisfaction to a ghost that it would have for someone who is living. Here, the ghost is familiar with the entire program the choir sings. Even so, it can't respond properly to the music until it "merges" with one of the choirboys.

Essential to experiencing art is the body's ability to feel and respond emotionally, something a ghost cannot do. As soon as the ghost in the story merges with the live choirboy, the ghost "plugs into" the boy's senses and can feel again. The following passage is from "Chapter 2: Getting Adjusted." Here, Alexander, the spirit that welcomes Merlin Zauber into the afterlife, describes what happens when he attends a concert of the Vienna Boys' Choir as a ghost. In a desperate effort to restore his missing senses, he merges with one of the little singers:

I compress myself and sense that I have somehow merged into his sailor suit and become him. I have the odd feeling that he and I are so much the same that his blood flows through my veins, his heart beats in my chest, his eyes that stare with undivided attention at the Choirmaster are my eyes, and the hands clasped so urgently behind his back are my hands. Strangest of all, I feel that the gloriously pure sound emanating from this boy's vocal chords is coming as much from me as from him.

It is often said that art is an expression of the human spirit. That is misleading. A clearer and more accurate formulation would be that art is the spirit expressing itself by means of the human body. Disembodied spirits cannot create art. They can imagine art, dream about art, remember art they have seen in life, but unlike a living human artist, they cannot create art. A spirit's hands would be unable to grasp a material object, such as a paint brush or a violin, and if it heard the most exquisite music in the world, it would be unable to react to it, because it would lack the physical senses required for appreciation.

So embodied souls who do not take advantage of art are like disembodied souls in the afterlife who spend all their time sleeping or floating. Wordsworth, who was a neoPlatonist who believed in reincarnation, wrote in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, that poetry is "emotion recollected in tranquility," a statement that is often quoted. This definition has special significance. In the afterlife, all emotion is "recollected in tranquility," because one no longer has a mechanism to feel emotions directly. By the same token, there are no concerts of heavenly music in the afterlife, because only incarnated human beings can make music, which requires a human body capable of singing or playing a musical instrument.

I realize that what I am saying is contrary to conventional "wisdom." However, people will continue to have a difficult time understanding what art is unless they can grasp the fact that art is a result of the spirit's interaction with the body, a service that only the body can provide.