Foment

J.A.C. Redford

Composing music is a solitary occupation, at least for me. I invest huge chunks of time either in apparent catatonia or, conversely, in frenetic puttering. I may take root at the piano, repeatedly banging out short series of notes with infinitesimal variation, punctuated by fragments of self-dialogue or whoops of triumph. This sort of thing has marked my creative life for as long as I can remember.

Sometimes I wonder if "composer" is just the disguise I wear to cover the fact that I spend a lot of my life lost in dreaming. The farther and deeper I travel into that land of shadows, the longer it takes for me to return. Social interaction, even with those closest to me, can be awkward if sufficient reentry procedures haven't been observed. Small-talk skills are the last to be restored. Often, if I answer the phone while writing, I'm asked if I was awakened by the call. I suppose in some sense I have. All of this to say that it requires a significant shifting of gears to "work well with others," after I've been composing. Nevertheless, I need relationships and community as much as I need food or sleep or love. Community isn't optional if Pinocchio is to become a real boy.

Throughout my life, I've been part of a variety of communities, some associated with my work, others with my faith. These communities have been both nourishing and frustrating. Relationships among my colleagues, for example, have advantages common to all specialized fields: a shared mythology, a pantheon of heroes, an esoteric argot, a battlefield bonhomie, and a body of tales from the trenches that can actually be somewhat healing, in the manner of all shared misery. Despite this, however, our gatherings are often plagued by shop talk, a soul-deadening shallowness, or competitive tension masked with a bogus sincerity. Each of these assets or annoyances has its corollary in religious communities, along with the added dimension of spirituality, which can serve either as an anchor to the soul, or as a pretext for some form of control or abuse. I've seen it cut both ways.

All human relationships seem shaken by these ambiguities. I've concluded that the deepest fault-lines occur between personality types, rather than affiliations or along the artificial borders between the sacred and the secular. One of the most difficult divisions has to do with the use of metaphor as a means of understanding. It's hard for those who live by metaphor to converse with those who do not, and vice versa. Metaphors are often viewed with suspicion by personality types who like their readings literal, their questions closed, and their truths unlayered. Such postulates are anathema to most artists. With them, I share the propensity to interpret life through an elaborate grid of metaphors, some of these frighteningly complex. Part of the artist's job is to cultivate the skill of seeing things differently than others do, and to articulate this difference in such a way as to startle or provoke. It's a practice that can't simply be left at the threshold of one's workspace at the end of the day. Consequently, artists can be notoriously prickly. They can wreak havoc in certain communities, especially religious ones. The iconoclasm wasn't simply an afterthought.

Still, an artist who would follow Christ needs the community of faith, both to hold him in orbit as he explores the outer reaches of his imagination, and to hold a mirror up to his own flawed humanity, reminding him that the conceptual must never be divorced from the personal. The community of faith in turn needs believing artists to gift it with fresh and pungent ways to see and speak the truth, to stretch the perimeters of its compassion and give imaginative shape to its moral vision, to hold it accountable to a higher standard of beauty, and to poke holes in its pride and prejudices (as it pokes holes in those of the artists). Just as Paul describes the marvelous interdependence of the parts of the human body, neither the artist nor the community can truly be whole without the other. This is how the delicate tension of the work of incarnation is best maintained.

Such is my idealistic view. In the real world, I often struggle with loneliness, a sense of not fully belonging to any of the communities of which I'm ostensibly a part. Perhaps the loneliness is amplified by the attempt to straddle so many, yet none of them alone seem able fill the community-shaped void in my heart. Perhaps it grows from a lack of sufficient grace on both sides to bridge the metaphor gap. I long to know others truly and to be truly known, but this seems to require an enormous amount of risk and more time and effort than the diabolical schedules we keep will allow.

Communities of artists are extremely difficult to build and maintain, though artists genuinely need each other. I yearn particularly for a group of peers with whom I can share my work, people I can trust to employ unflinching charity in encouragement and criticism. Do I ask too much? I'm intrigued by two historic communities: Florence of the Renaissance and Paris of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. The fomentation in these environments resulted in the production of works of art that we now revere as great achievements of western civilization. What would happen if such a fomentation developed among Christian artists in the twenty-first century? I hope I live long enough to find out.

J.A.C. Redford is a composer of concert music, film and television scores, and music for the theater. For more information on his recordings, visit www.jacredford.com.

Visit J.A.C. Redford as Image Artist of the Month for November '03

Issue #38• Spring 2003