395 - Beauty First: Envisioning a Civilization Worth Restoring (ARC Roundtable) - The Symbolic World

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's been now several months since the Art Conference in London,
and in retrospect, there are a lot of things to
think about, a lot of things that happened. One of
the great things that happened at this conference was that
I was able to invite a whole bunch of artists,
including a large group of Orthodox artists. And so Andrew Gould,

(00:21):
who is an amazing building designer has been on my
channel before, had the idea of doing a roundtable where
we would talk about the possibility of saving civilization, but
not from a political lens, but really from a art
and culture lens. And so it was a great conversation
late at night with some wonderful people, and I think
you will definitely enjoy this.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
This is Jonathan Pejel, Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone,
we're here at the Art Conference in London. There's four
thousand people at this conference, but there were quite a

(01:14):
few very interesting Orthodox artists present. So I thought, let's
gather us together and do a little roundtable discussion about
the renewal of civilization from an arts and culture standpoint.
We have here artist and illustrator Heather Pallington, Martin Shaw,
author mystic hermit, Jonathan very Good, Jonathan pegeat icon Carver

(01:43):
runs the Symbolic World publishing company. We have Ben Stamper, filmmaker,
Vesper Stamper, artist, illustrator, author, Andrew Gould, designer of Orthodox
churches and other traditional style buildings, and I won the
Orthodox Arts Journal. We have Aiden Art, British iconographer. We
have here Kate the Grade and Neil de Grade composers, musicians, filmmakers,

(02:09):
and John Hears restaurant Tumada of Georgian Feasts. So we've
all been a bit frustrated here at the art conference
because well, what I mean is here at here at

(02:34):
the art conference, you know, most of the speakers are
are kind of on the policy and economics end of things,
and so when they talk about the renewal of civilization, yeah,
they're mostly talking about legislation and you know, human rights issues.
But we artists want to talk about civilization from an
arts and culture standpoint. So Aiden here, i know, was

(02:58):
recently speaking about the topic of the effect of architecture
and the environment on humanity. Would you lect to thank you.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yes, I've been missingly reading a book put Patigsas when
he talks about beauty first and then truth follows. And
I think we think now to think of beauty is
that I'm seeing on the cake. But I think true
beauty has a profound effect on the soul. I have
a saying I've developed recently that we act as we see.
So if there's wrong action, if our civilization is decaying,

(03:29):
then the question we need to ask is how are
we seeing incorrectly? The Greek worth of repentance met a
nooya means change of noose, and noose has often described
as the eye of the heart, So a change of
action is always preceded by the change of seeing. So
I think the Christion of our civilization is in crisis.

(03:49):
What's wrong is because of seeing incorrectly. And I was
really interested in what Mike Johnson said today in one
of the talks is that the foundation of concepts like
human rights, human freedom, it is made in Gard's image.
If there's a scizey that forgets that the made in
Gard's image, which is beautiful, then all the other structures
that develop from that collapse. So to me, repentances really

(04:13):
to do with becoming beautiful again. Becoming beautiful again, and
an orthodoxy because means right glory. The doxa can mean
teacher and worship, but also glory. So really orthodoxy can
be I think and understood as right beauty becoming beautiful again,
And I think architecture, which is your fear. We were

(04:35):
talking about this earlier that in England after the war,
a lot of destruction have been brought by Vonning that
to build lots of drummage. So in Birmingham, New I live,
they've got lots of really ugly concrete blocks. The social
problems were enormous, brutalized the people living there, and it

(04:55):
became so expensive because of all the social problems. It
was too bad to blow these his things up. And
I got photographs of inga and then then it's more
money making something look more beautiful. So ugliness is a president.
I often thought we should be right the human rights,
and truly then that I don't like the term of rights,
but that's to say manners of right to beauty. It's

(05:17):
not as mka, it's a human need. So a good civilization,
what's beauty about genus town.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
Players, architecture absolutely, and of course civilization somewhat specifically means
civitas in city dwelling, A civilized people means people who
live in cities as opposed to hunters gatherers, and.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
We can see looking at the art of I would
say the Victorian period more than any that civilization was
built largely through civic architecture. When the British Empire would
go around the world, they would one of the first
things they would do, in a sense, to civilized countries
was build things like train stations and you know, government

(06:02):
buildings and so forth. And because these buildings were beautiful,
it was actually a vision of civilization that people people
could understand and believe in. And I do feel that
the habit of the modern world to build even public
civic architecture ugly is surely one of the things that

(06:22):
has made modern people lose faith in all of the
systems and institutions that supposedly constitute civilization.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
It's interesting that the Bible begins with the guard that
aids in the city. So the city should be the
culmination of all human and jenna as the city is
the union. Obviously the Bible, that's the union of the
bide and the bridegroom, but it's also communion, a marriage
one to another, which is beautiful. That's there's probably main
meaning of beauty. I mean, the word art means to
faically joined together. It's before meaning from ours artists, and

(06:55):
the city is described as a joining together as a'tes
of the architecture the people. Do you think architecture can
be described as a garment that's tailored to fit the
body and basically built city is a loving relationship with
God that's the body, So the architecture were should start
with men made in God's image and ugly architecture is

(07:18):
like a mis fitting.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
So you know it can talks to me to get
into it, but not for sure. For sure, Yeah, there's
a wonderful humanity and beautiful traditional architecture that it's human
scaled and it seems ennoble by the presence of people
in it. One often gets the feeling with modernistic architecture
that people are a sort of impurity imposed upon it.

(07:41):
You know, in magazines it's photographed empty with no people,
looking christine and clean. But then when these modern buildings
are actually used for a few years and there's there's
smudges where people have bobbed up against the walls and
everything's getting patentated and discolored. The building starts to look
kind of terrible in contry. Asked to traditional architecture built

(08:02):
out of timber and stone, these buildings get more beautiful
with age. You know, the floors get polished by people
walking on them, the timbers get burnished, the stones get
beautifully discolored where people push against them. And you look
at a five hundred year old stone and timber building
and most of its beauty is the beauty of the
people who have been using it for five hundred years.

(08:24):
It really does have a symbiotic relationship with humanity.

Speaker 5 (08:28):
There's also in Revelation, when it talked about the New Jerusalem,
it says that the Jerusalem is adorned like a bride
prepared to her groom.

Speaker 6 (08:37):
So there's a sense in which.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
The wall of the city now that's made out of
precious jewels and his gold is a vestment, right, it
is that that wedding dress that the civilization is putting
on to encounter the son of man.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
That's nice.

Speaker 7 (08:52):
Well, I've been getting into something kind of strange, which is,
every once in a while on Netflix, I'll pull up one
of these ancient civilizations documentaries and well, why am.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
I bringing that up?

Speaker 7 (09:03):
Well, because I want to talk about something I think
we don't see often like we can maybe bring to
the conversation, which is that as soon as it seems
that soon as civilizations began to appear and to develop
architecture and buildings, they were attuned to what was above
the heavens, and there seemed to be a natural human
impulse to connect the heavens and the earth and that capacity,
whether it's the pyramids and our lines of the radius

(09:24):
of the earth or the astronomical events. And I don't
when I go out and look at architecture the way
we're building cities now, it doesn't I don't ever hear
a discussion of that impulse or see that that's what
people are trying to do anymore. So I'm always trying
to get to the bottom of how to just happen,
because I think this is well as a Christian the
Lord's prayer, it will be done on earth.

Speaker 8 (09:44):
As it is in heaven. I think this is something
inniate to us.

Speaker 7 (09:46):
That got put in us that either our technological build
or the pace of our culture what we're doing is
kind of blurred.

Speaker 8 (09:53):
The idea that this is one of the flouints of architecture.

Speaker 9 (09:56):
I feel like we saw this at the Guildhall, Like
I mean just that bildings glorious and it's built on
what Roman on a Roman amp and the theater and
the beauty is like we're supposed to be reminded of
what we're fighting righter the English were. I was so
overwhelmed by the beauty of that. Help you, Yeah, it
reminds you what you want.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah. Even in civic architecture, of secular civic architecture of
the nineteenth century, there is a cosmic symbolism in it.
Like in the US Capitol Building, you know, it's got
a huge dome representing sort of universal dominion, and at
the top of the dome is painted the Apotheosis of
George Washington. It's sort of the civic Pantockta, you know,
the America's God up there right. Yeah, and then it

(10:39):
has the sense of sprawling out as a big four
square footprint up on a hill that's like dominion over
the four corners of the world. You know. Classical architecture
has a lot of the same symbolism that we see
in Orthodox churches. Yes, you know, with the Dome of
Heaven and the Square of the Earth and the union
of the two. But you're absolutely right that modern civic architecture,
modernistic architecture is anti symbolism. It's it's abstract forms that

(11:05):
you know, the architect may claim they symbolize something or other,
but it's it's it's something personal that is only meaningful
to him. It's not something universally recognizable.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Do you think as well as architecture fitting the human
person made in large image, you can also work.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
The other way, where.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
It's actually larger and more sublime than we are, so
we actually expand into it. We dont beautiful building. Actually
it seems not a grobbling worm. You actually stand up
or fill that space. Can it work that one as well?
Actually it's ahead of you. It's rather it's fitting you. Yeah,
that's just a thought I've had now.

Speaker 5 (11:43):
Maximus, you know, he talks about the cosmo, says macro Anthropote,
the idea that on the one end, we are a microcosmo,
the cosmism the cosmos. It's an expansion also of the
of the humans. And that's that's necessarily so because we
also are the ones to perceive it.

Speaker 8 (11:58):
We're the ones to give a meaning and to engage
with it.

Speaker 5 (12:01):
And so it appears, and so it's normal that people
would build these buildings that would be.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Almost like kind of like this expansion of the human
scale into the into the cosmic.

Speaker 8 (12:11):
That's probably why we feel the way we do partly
in these buildings.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Rather you know, the.

Speaker 10 (12:16):
Difference between for example here like this building here where
we are.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
It's so it's so arbitrary.

Speaker 10 (12:23):
I mean everything about it is arbitrary, and the spaces
are contrived and the sizes are weird. We don't untotally
understand what these large halls that are just very strange
and abstract, and so there's everybody feels awkward in the
space and disoriented.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
It doesn't actually know how and it's made to know
where what to do and where to go. But you
actually feel the opposite.

Speaker 11 (12:45):
If you have the art the architecture of the table
as a superron, if you try to do it at
a circle, immediately the com of that is confusing.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Who's the leader of the table?

Speaker 12 (12:59):
Who to And immediately the toasts become democratic in nature.

Speaker 11 (13:05):
You see it all if you lived the head of
the table and you you really can speak that you
can still be.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Ahead and present and as an image of the head.

Speaker 11 (13:13):
But the toast change, much like if you build a
certain kind of building within it, I might grow into it.
You change the table, and the toasts change, and the
way people interact change and better or worship.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Can argue, but you can't do a super somewhere. You
can't do a Georgia chief the same way.

Speaker 8 (13:30):
Changing unless the novelty of King Arthur and the round table.

Speaker 7 (13:34):
Right, there's an equality to the perceptions in that setting. Right,
there's moments for that's good, but also you don't know
where to look. Like we were used to focusing on
a thing and the other things blurred to griffering.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Did you feel that in the room today?

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Did you feel it? I think everyone wants to say, God,
you said it. Last year I said this, yere said
the shoe. Yeah.

Speaker 13 (13:58):
I think that's a lot of people said supply so much.

Speaker 5 (14:01):
So last year very few people said it, by the way,
I think a lot of people, in my opinion, today
did try.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
But there was a lot of cusbulary.

Speaker 11 (14:08):
But I wonder if the whole when they understand andros
as meeting guards image. I think we say it, I
don't really know that. That's crazy transit. That's the way
and not your people actually believe it, and I'm not
sure after that, I en I'm seeing that in there,
which is like they know what they're saying.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Tell them.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
I mean, I'm interested Martin that the phrase you use,
you're like an architect of words. You said you want
to rehydrate the expression of the Christian truth. So we're
talking about an architecture that as it follows archetypes, so
there's a continuity, but you're wanting to say the same
things but in a fresh way that wakes us up.

(14:49):
That you know, it's like each actual Orthodox church and
ten Orthodox church is equally beautiful. But this diversity, so
each one of those must have been a little bit
different than I've speaking seen.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Before and have to wake them up.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
I'd like to what you have to say about this
rehydrating the expression of timeless truths.

Speaker 13 (15:08):
Well, whenever a culture is in crisis, the genius required
never comes from the center of the round taking. It
comes from the edge. It's something that the Kalahari bushman though.
This obsession with screens that we have, it's hypnotic and
it's trance involving and good Christianity causes you to see

(15:29):
out of the edges. Of your vision, all these strange
trembling bells that are around us. So that's why you
have all these Arthurian nights, charging off all of the
time into the forest. Now, yesterday, only yesterday, I was
at liturgy in Doorway and it was a wonderful experience.
The deep interior was reached. And then someone asked me

(15:50):
what was the most meaningful part of the liturgy for
you yesterday? I said, it was when the door briefly
opened and I heard seagulls.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
That was the moment. That was the moment.

Speaker 13 (16:01):
And that's the Irish in me, that's the Irish in me.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Where it is we talk today.

Speaker 13 (16:08):
About the notion that the soul is probably much bigger
than the body. You know, we're always chestering to our chest,
But any Aboriginal understanding, any for me, the Christian understanding
of the soul is something that you go walk about in.
And so when you build culture, and I'm a fan
of Christian culture, I believe in Christian culture. But the

(16:31):
word culture comes from Colaire, which means to dig, means
to dig. So as artists, we dig, whether, as Seamus
Heiney says, we dig with our pen or we dig
with our quill or we dig with our spade. We're
involved in something that actually is taking us down. I'm
interested in the Christianity of the Lascalcades as well as

(16:53):
i am the Notre Dame Cathedral. I'm interested in a
way the underworld of Christianity as well as the overworld.
That once you can design things, you have a different
kind of sacred space to going into the caves.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
And just because of.

Speaker 13 (17:10):
The way, some of you will know the story of
how God revealed himself to be. It came in a
very unusual fashion, and I have to be loyal at
his lovely I will be loyal to the bells of
my village, will be loyal to the bells of my experience.
And that is telling me to keep an eye out
for the Gospel of the Cornorage, and the Gospel of

(17:32):
the seagulls, and the Gospel of the green teeth of
the river.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Anyway, sorry, I'm taking space.

Speaker 14 (17:42):
Reminds me of a time that I gave a drink
of water to a friend in this green glass. It
was like it was this green gobblet that we had
and it was just this really handcrafted, hand blown glass
cup and he and it was very heavy, and he
picked it up and he took a swig of water

(18:03):
and he said, that.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Is a Christian drink. And you know, and and uh,
what he was saying.

Speaker 14 (18:13):
I think it touches on what you're saying, Martin, is
this idea that there's a there's.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
There Christian culture, that.

Speaker 14 (18:20):
That's a that's like a testament, you know, to what
Christian culture can be. Something that is so has weight
and that has substance, that is rooted in reality. It's
rooted in something that that has it extends beyond its use,
you know. And I always remember that because it can

(18:42):
transform a cup of water, you can give it something,
it's like it's full essence of its water.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Consider Consider how material things are able to bring out
the image of God in people. And of course clothes
are ennobling. Someone wearing really beautiful clothes, you know, look
looks like like you know, it looks like looks like
a far more complete human being, a more noble creature.

(19:12):
An architecture of course does this as well. Just just yesterday,
I was touring Hampton Court Palace and I was so
struck that in the setting of that palace and gardens,
just seeing another person a tourist, anybody in that setting.
You know, they look like princes and princesses. I was
just amazed how beautiful people look like. They look like,

(19:33):
you know, storybook characters, like like more real than the
mundane people of the everyday world. And a whole city
can do this. Of course, when you're in a really
beautiful historic city where all of the all the buildings
and streets are beautiful, people seem more real than when
you're in an ugly city and people seem like mere
shadows of themselves. You know, my mindless ghosts suffering through life,

(19:58):
sort of the jock and they sculptures, you know, the
people wandering.

Speaker 14 (20:02):
They're very thin sculptures that they're wandering in space, but
they're not interacting. They're walking in different directions and they're
never intersected.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
So I see, I see beautiful civic art and architecture
in general as in a way an analogous project to
the work of churches of actually trying to make the
image of God shine through us more clearly.

Speaker 13 (20:28):
I do you remember the old Ethiopian idea that the
church is a little dodgy if there isn't a forest
around it. Wonderful yes, a lot of these Ethiopian churches
they build forests around the church because the forest, the
church is going to die of loneliness. It's going to
die of loneliness if it doesn't have a forest around it.
I'm thinking now of the great patron Saint of Orthodox

(20:49):
and William Play, who would say Jesus is the imagination,
and you can't be a Christian without becoming an artist.
But because once that wily quixotic teacher gets inside you,
he's going to bend your head and you're going to
start seeing the fall, and you're going to start seeing
the rapturing as that is happening through his eyes. And

(21:13):
I just wonder throwing the question out to us, if
you could make a city, what would it look like?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
You would yours look like?

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Do you think every prophets every city needs its profits
and the prophits need a city. So you do the
seagull outside and flying around free, the seaself without the
church of being complete, and the church without the forest
and the ocean. When as a hermit I had the
frisco of the chapel, which is like the city. You
had all the same surround of his organized at a

(21:42):
geometric pattern on the floor. But iping a lot of
time there train the liturgy was the work of the city.
But then also i'd go up to the hills. The
wild hills are cyclo stones to pay the Jesus play,
and one needs.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
Of the other. That's it. It's the thread.

Speaker 13 (21:56):
It's why we need the monastics so desperately.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
But there's something about chivalry.

Speaker 13 (22:02):
There's something about gallantry. There's something about that happened in
the twelfth and thirteenth century that it has enormous clues
for us as Christians that are going to have families,
We're going to have kids, and we're going to have
to reach out and.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Touch the world.

Speaker 13 (22:15):
And the wonderful thing.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Is we don't have to choose one over the other.

Speaker 13 (22:20):
We can live as This is psychologists saying in the
tension of the opposites, So as Christians, we are both
steadfast and restless.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
And I think that's artistically cool.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
This is it, folks, This might just be the combination
of my life's work. Join me for the Symbolism master
class this April twenty twenty five. During this course, I'll
take you by the hand into the essentials and depths
of symbolic thinking. Over six weeks and over eighteen hours
of lectures and Q and as in a concise and

(22:53):
comprehensive way, I'll teach you everything about how I think,
so that by the end you might see the world anew.
This class will not only be an introduction, but also
a deep dive into a way of seeing that cuts
right through our secular dead end. It reconnects the ancient
religious ideas with some of the most cutting edge notions

(23:15):
of complexity developed today. As the world is shaking and
changing at an increasingly rapid pace, being able to read
the patterns of reality will give you an anchor and
a solid sense of what is up and what is down.
In this class, we will talk about so many things
about heaven and earth, the sacred and the secular, the Bible, dragons, demons, fairies.

(23:39):
Will explore the surprising value of conspiracy theories, how symbolic
patterns are found in movies and science philosophy. Art will
look at the relationship of symbolism to natural selection. We'll
look at the basic patterns of the world of sacrifice,
of the center, the margin, the masculine, the feminine, the mountain,

(23:59):
time in space, left, and right. It will be a
synthesis of everything I've covered in the five hundred YouTube
videos that put out over the years, and much more
as well, now all in a structure that has one purpose,
which is to make you a master of symbolic thinking.
This is your opportunity to get to the core of

(24:20):
what symbolism is, to ask questions, to test out your ideas,
and to make sure you have a strong foundation of
the fundamentals. Plus getting some hidden gems that I'd never
shared before. So don't miss out on the live experience
and register today.

Speaker 15 (24:37):
There was a few years ago we were in the
Tate Modern and my family knows this was a really
rough experience for me. I don't do well with brutalism,
and the entire time that we were in there, I
felt like the building was going to fall down on me.
I felt extremely threatened and claustrophobic. And as we're talking,

(24:57):
I was thinking about that experience. As you know, the
Tate is built as a temple to art, you know,
and in all of this civic architecture that you're talking about,
there's a sense in which these buildings are temples to
human beings, you know, whether it's a civic building or
a church that they're ennobling to the human being, right,

(25:18):
But when you have a temple to art, it's kind
of like the underworld. It's the upside down of that,
you know, and you can feel like the artwork is
sort of this disembodied thing that we that we worship
and it doesn't have anything to do with you, you know,
it's externalized where and this is a really modern thing.
You know, when we started building these temples to art

(25:40):
or taking art out of the churches or out of
the palaces and putting them in their own buildings, it
was at the time where this, you know, the conception
of the human being was really like following apart.

Speaker 13 (25:55):
You know.

Speaker 15 (25:56):
And so now we have this this myth of the
genius artist as the person to be worshiped, as the
endity be worshiped and the things that they make. But
you can you can just as easily fake those things,
you know, if they're not connected to the human person
creating them, you know, from a body that's just one
of you, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Something you said here this is today really struck me.
Your design and filmed is the first thing is to
capture the spirit understand the spirit of that impoch. All
the details are doing true to that spirit, otherwise it
doesn't work a job. So that's only what you're saying.
You don't know what why are you're creating that city?
Why treatment building? You have a vision and.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
Designs on vision?

Speaker 15 (26:38):
If these are sort of temples to human beings in
a way, right, it's because we're made in the image
of God that we deserve it in a sense, you know,
And so if if it's removed from the human aspect
of it and it's just a temple to itself, that's
why it feels like to me help.

Speaker 14 (26:55):
But I think also I think that's talking about the
intent to market the architect.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
But also I think it's important to.

Speaker 14 (27:03):
Consider the patterns of humans and how they move through
space and what space does to them.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Because good architecture.

Speaker 14 (27:15):
Or good art in general, it includes that information in
its designs. And so that why do you walk into
a building and suddenly feel at ease, It's likely because
it follows the patterns of human nature and accommodates, you know,
there's human centric I'm.

Speaker 16 (27:36):
Talking to Andrew today about the layout when we have lunch,
and I think that's one the single most thing that's
most disturbing about our environment is so I didn't understand
at first.

Speaker 6 (27:47):
I was like, why are we directed like this?

Speaker 16 (27:48):
And Andrew said, oh, it's a completely flexible space, so
you can open all those doors and we.

Speaker 6 (27:53):
Configure the whole thing, and I realized there.

Speaker 16 (27:55):
Isn't even a single purpose to the thing that we're in,
which is why we all feel strange, like it's lot
of this filming would have a sense of an entrance
and an exit, but this is even worse.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
It feels like it feels like a laboratory at me
opening a door or moving to see what see if
they can figure out where to go next. Yeah, absolutely,
that's true.

Speaker 17 (28:18):
When when we were in the film world, it's like
architecture kind of on steroids because everything gets decided very quickly,
and you basically have a story or an idea and
we'd have to move quite quickly and test it and
actually building something as a way of testing out your ideas.
So I know you said at the beginning, aid and
it's like you have the principle has to be right
at first, which is true, but then the process of

(28:40):
building will test those ideas out and show things that
are false, that could fall away. And I've had the
sense that the last stark and this want of de
that some of the ideas I've been hearing don't they
don't quite hear, they're inconsistent. And what I want to
say is like, show me the building that represents that
philosophy and then we can see what it is, because

(29:01):
at the moment that to me doesn't make sense.

Speaker 6 (29:03):
You can't build that tenual.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, yes, but I.

Speaker 16 (29:09):
Should stand because there's you thought about how to represent that.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Sorry.

Speaker 15 (29:16):
There was the one talk about energy where it was
presented as a positive that people were pulled out of
the fields and put into factories, and I thought, breaking, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
You know, in America, there used to be a phrase
the palace of the people. When when When when the
Victorian era Americans built these huge domed capitol buildings, the
state houses, that's what they called them, is a palace
of the people, to distinguish them from a palace for
the king or the aristocrat in the old world. And
yet these buildings they actually are kind of laid out

(29:50):
like palaces. They'll have a huge sort of rotunda and
grand staircase that's mainly for the purpose of seeing well
dressed people coming and going theatrically on display. And then
they have exits out to the grounds and the gardens
just in every direction. You can just come into the building,
you can see and be seen, you can walk out.
It's a very old fashioned aristocratic concept of civic architecture.

(30:15):
You know. In fact, all of those state houses have
to have another ugly modern building next to them or
buried in the earth under them, where they have all
of the offices with secure corridors and locked doors. That's
where the real business takes place. Because really the actual
the actual palace of the people, it's totally public. It's
it's designed that way. But that's and but those buildings

(30:38):
they have the ennoble in quality that you know, all
these talks we're hearing at ARC are about of, you know,
the fullness of human civilization. People have to interact, they
have to see each other, they have to go up
and look down, and go down and look up, and
everybody can find their place in a building like that.
The extroverts can come out under the dome and the
introverts can walk back under the under the balconies, and

(31:01):
it's really beautiful. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's it's where you
contrast to that to a modern building that's you know,
designed as a machine for for some social purpose, like
like you know, can compare a classical art museum that's
that's sort of like what I just described to Frank
Lloyd White's Guggenheim Art Museum in New York, where the

(31:23):
the only way to go to that museum is you
take an elevator to the top and then you walk
down the descending heelicle ramp and then then you get
spat out at the bottom. It's like you can only
use that building one way. So the people in the
building just feel like ball bearing is, you know, going
down a kinetic sculpture. They don't, you know, there's no
place for people to have any individuality in that concept

(31:44):
of architecture.

Speaker 15 (31:46):
I'm interested to know from like the musical. We've been
talking a lot about architecture, but like from the musical perspective,
how do you how can you create a space?

Speaker 9 (31:55):
But I think it keeps coming to my mind, which
I'm certainly not an expert, but is that today I
kept having people come to me and tell me that
the songs were their favorite part of our song and
then someone else saying too, and.

Speaker 8 (32:07):
It's it's very nice.

Speaker 9 (32:08):
Yeah, but no, but many times it was like that
was the moment for me. Yeah, thanks nem so, And
that's what they represented ten minutes maybe, yeah, you know,
at least the songs. And so I do think that
something can get across through music, so it can pierce
the hearts.

Speaker 6 (32:28):
If it's beautiful.

Speaker 7 (32:29):
It's a presentation of art. It's not representational. We can't
explain it exactly why it work. How do we take
these frequencies and time and turn them into something we
can name and have a feeling of it that you
can't experience all at the same time. It's linear, like
reading versus looking at a picture, which is simultaneous. So
music it falls into a linear art. But when I
think about what you guys are talking about too, So

(32:51):
this is something I've been working on in music a lot,
because it's very hard in just music to point at
a thing like what thing are you pointing out to me?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
What does that remind you?

Speaker 7 (33:01):
It's like, you know, you can think of classical pieces
like Peter and the Wolf, where it's it's mimicking animal
behavior and stuff, and you can get a sense on
why these things translate back and forth. But I think
that part of the problem of what we're talking about
is hit the music industry and has hit it's hit
architecture and civilization in general, is that I have so
much abstract art I really love and because their game.

(33:25):
I love the game of abstract art to a point
where it is how far can we take it from
what you're familiar with? And you still see the golden
thread in the impact And there's some abstract art that
does this so wonderfully. But the exploration of that also
began to blur what things really are and what they're not. Because,
for example, if people on both sides and someone in
Hollywood gets up and they're like, they state their political.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Views, you're fine with it, so you disagree, and.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
Then you're like, artists shut up about their political views, right,
it's because okay, So the problem with the naming, the definitiveness,
and the idea that we're looking for something objective, a
solid place to stand man that doesn't afford people their
own dominion. So there was something about abstraction where that blur, Like,
you know, you go to the art museum with your
art teacher and I'm in Boston. This actually happens, and
we're looking at this abstract piece of art and he's like,

(34:11):
what do you guys think it is? Someone's like it's
a Mediterranean villa, and the other person's like it's a duck.
And you're like, this is not this is not necessarily helpful,
like this is a weird game. But that blur allows us,
what it affords us the opportunity to take sort of
that idea of God naming and deciding and ordaining and

(34:32):
bringing it into our own hands and using it.

Speaker 8 (34:34):
For our own purposes.

Speaker 7 (34:35):
So I think this is part of what we're fighting against,
is that when things point, it doesn't fit the modern
mindset that we've been brought up on, where the subjective
is what's important.

Speaker 13 (34:46):
We live in a culture that supports any spiritual seeker.
They're gonna hate you if you find something.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
They're going to hate now Tolkien.

Speaker 13 (34:58):
Tolkien had a very interesting thing to say about Irish myth.
He said, Irish myth as opposed to Anglo Saxon or
the Wonderful Norse pantheon. He said, it's like a beautiful
stained glass window that someone has shucked a stone through.
He said, it is unreasoned, and he said, the Irish
are unreasoned, and I'm writing a book at the moment

(35:19):
explaining why that's part of the genius of the Irish.
And actually, as an artist, as a brick alure, there's
a lot you can do with things when you're left
in the rubble. Don't despair, take courage. Take courage because actually,
and I think this is this leads us towards talking
about orthodoxy. Orthodoxy and I find tremendously interesting as an.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Artist because from a distance it.

Speaker 13 (35:41):
Looks like it's all about tradition, but you get in there,
you get in there, and there's tremendous creative vitality. And actually,
simply by the business of being troubled human beings, we
can't help but keep the thing moving along. But often
it's about accident that then a trump state, with innovation

(36:03):
and originality being the thing. When the thing comes, God
is in the house.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:10):
Then, when people often ask me if I'm making icons,
you know, how do I express myself or should I
express myself or should I even think about that?

Speaker 8 (36:18):
And I always tell them, just just do the thing
and then you'll be in there.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Don't worry about that.

Speaker 8 (36:24):
If you worry about it, that's when it becomes weird.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
But if you just if you just do the thing,
and you make the images in.

Speaker 5 (36:29):
Service of God and in service of the Church, then
people will.

Speaker 8 (36:33):
See your hand in there.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
But you don't just don't have to make it.

Speaker 14 (36:37):
The purpose, as it turns out, is not a primarily
a form of self expression.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:44):
I mean I can recognize Adien's icon from you know,
like very far away.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
I'm like, oh, that's Aiden's icon. Yeah, but that's the
point of what he's doing.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
It's fastesting how relations It talks about a name being
given to someone that doesn't take it better invented, and
often it's it's before her this, I can't lead my
floydad You've gotten to reveal.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
My name to me, so it's immediately I make up it.
Just really expressful.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
I'm say, serprom sid When I don't name the an,
it was an arbitrary He's perceived the log offs of
that animal, and that name is a manifestation of the
character of that particular thing.

Speaker 15 (37:30):
I think a lot about the current mindset of artists
as activists, and it seems like it's you know, you
start with the activism, you start with the message that
you want to convey and you sort of apply it
to a medium, whether that's painting or music or architecture
or whatever. And this is why it doesn't feel right,

(37:53):
because it's it's applied. It's not coming from from the
soul or from the heart. And I think a lot
about how as artists we begin the work in the body,
you know, we receive stimulus, we process it through our
five senses before we before it's pre verbal, you know,
and that's where the work comes from. And that's the

(38:13):
work that people respond to on on that same pre
verbal level because they're feeling it in their own bodies,
Whereas when you start with a kind of you know,
message based or vehicle based kind of thing, it's forgettable.
It's it's instantly forgettable. It doesn't touch people on that level.
And I think that it doesn't matter what your political

(38:34):
persuasion is. People on the left can do it.

Speaker 6 (38:37):
People on the you know, I see the.

Speaker 15 (38:38):
Conservatives trying to you know, get into the the art
making world, and a lot of it is really bad.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
I'm sorry, you know, I'm going to say it. No,
no one heres, no.

Speaker 15 (38:49):
But a lot of it is really bad because it's like, well,
you know, we have this the moral of the children's book.
You know, I have a book about this thing, and
that's not what stories.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
But that's not what and he died in front of that.

Speaker 15 (39:10):
But it's not what a story is. It's not what
a book is. It's not what a child is, you know.

Speaker 9 (39:17):
And what about the healing aspect of art as a creator,
not just the art we make for others, but what
it does to you to create us and how that
changes society, Like how many addictions have been healers you're
learning the garden or taking up a craft, like we
need art to heal also INDI.

Speaker 18 (39:37):
In human presence, right, I think aiden something said at
the beginning was terribly beauty.

Speaker 13 (39:49):
And beauty the etymology of the word, you know is
Anglo French, and there's butty in it. And it's also
to do with a wonderful thing about beauty in the
etymology of the what is to do with actually how
you behave It should do with courtesy. So with brigands
like us, the good news is that we can work
on ourselves. So you know, there's there's a there's the

(40:10):
best form of beauty has theosis in it. And theosis
from an Irish perspective would be this phrase, and I'm
going to give you gold now top onto yourself, on yourself.
It means it means be wise to your nonsense, wise

(40:32):
away bar and so so I love the notion that beauty, beauty,
real beauty actually has trouble in it because reverie always
leads to participation.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
It's not passive.

Speaker 13 (40:45):
Actually, beauty is going to open a door. And if
ever I meet someone who is significantly irritated by the
Christian part of my life, which is my whole life,
you go to beauty, lean into beauty to find out
what temple they serve in, because we're all serving in
one or another, and take it from there. But this

(41:07):
notion of beauty and how we recognize it very interesting
in me.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
The art of Tamada and Georgia is a oral traditional
handed down to there's a debate about how fart down.
Some people say it's really seventeenth century. I think it
goes back to the God babies.

Speaker 12 (41:26):
Tamada's job is to literally not think about what he
wants you to know, but it's to imbive what you need.
Has heard this moment, and so there's something about what
Shan you were saying is the Irish job is to
fall back right and to fall into everyone else.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
And so I like the idea you're really adhering to
others and making the art.

Speaker 11 (41:51):
And it really resonates as a tamata because there's so
many times you want to tell the table about what
they should not, which I think that's that art, that
that's the art you're describing. But somehow you have to
say something, And so I find myself imbibing you in
the moment, and then the toast to you, to all
of us is really about you and it's not about

(42:12):
me if I do it right.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
It's hard to do it right. I think it's revealed
through the doing.

Speaker 15 (42:18):
You know, it's not again, it's not applied through my will,
but it's it's by making the thing that's occurring to
me to make at the time, it reveals its own meaning.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, it's been.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Proven to novelist would often say, you've got to show
tell You've got to be the fact.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
It makes a bit completed the reader.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Now I get I guessing that now that I'm told
me that to manifested in the story, that's yeah, it goes.

Speaker 14 (42:45):
Back to what you were saying earlier about beauty and
how you know it's the It's what Jesus said, if
the if the eye is bad, the body is full
of darkness. And the opposite is true as well, you know,
and if that is good, the body is full of light.
You know, our work as artists, the real work is

(43:06):
done behind closed doors. The real work is done offline,
and so that we can bring an offering that isn't
centered on ourselves.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
That might you think on the central books in Orthodox
he's a piller career of a love at the beauty
of one, and what is about It's a warment about
me in the life. I was looking at the original
Greek that the prodigal Sun's story in the regional Greek
can be translated as and it came into himself before
we've been wandering around in the material world, I mean,
when all the material world have been wasted, he returned

(43:41):
into himself. Bridge's monastic cell went into the closet and played,
and that became beautiful. He remembered the beauty of us
hiring being returned. Tolkien calls that anotherage thing.

Speaker 13 (43:55):
He has this idea that it's great to always have
something but to lose something and find it again has
an entirely.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Different energy to it.

Speaker 13 (44:03):
The recovered thing you will treasure, you will hold on to,
you have you have a reasonable defense for it.

Speaker 7 (44:12):
So when something, as a kid, were received stuff implicitly,
we take it for granted, and then maybe we move
away from it, and then we don't know it was
good until we start to feel the loss of it.
And sometimes you don't even know what you lost and
where you're looking for and where did I lose it?
And then but when it's recovered, if it's recovered correctly,
you don't just get it back. You get the ability
to defend it to yourself and the others back.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Isn't that the energy of the convert? That's what you
see someone say, no, they got something new.

Speaker 11 (44:39):
But I think they were turning to what they already
were level because.

Speaker 19 (44:43):
There's a lot of energy in its converts.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
The only cradle, I think.

Speaker 8 (44:56):
Is there a cradle?

Speaker 20 (44:58):
No, you're not you I saw, So he went, yeah,
I was.

Speaker 7 (45:11):
I was gonna ask a question because there's a thing
that happens, and I want to know there's a part.
Sometimes when I talk about art, it's a reverse engineering
of something that's happening to me intuitively, and the sense
that my process does not reflect the way I talk
about it after you.

Speaker 8 (45:24):
Guys, well, I don't mean to.

Speaker 7 (45:27):
So what you do is using kind of like like
I'll have moment singill hit me. I'll be working on
a problem like in the world in my life, I'll cry,
I'll pound the floor when I'm creating, like I'm weird
and emotional, like I'm not. Well, you guys probably can
kiss so anyway, but I get really like my whole
self gets involved in it and I'm not truly thinking,

(45:47):
like I wouldn't say I'm thinking, And you do it,
and for some reason, something just lands with you, like
when someone gives you a riddle and you go away
and you solve it.

Speaker 8 (45:55):
You know you had the right answer, even though the
person isn't.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
There to tell you. Because it locked.

Speaker 7 (45:58):
It landed, and something locked because that lands, and I
love it and I fight for it and I make
it come into existence and then I figure out why,
and then I talk about that.

Speaker 8 (46:07):
But that's not how it came to me, you know
what I mean?

Speaker 7 (46:09):
So like, cause we're talking about this intentionality and I
don't know how to my worst stuff I've done is
someone hired me for a project with a goal, with
an outcome. Here's what I wanted to do to the audience,
and it's like, I don't know how to do that,
Like if you ask me to do it that way,
I don't know how I like. So, but do you
guys feel that way? Can you like what we're talking about?
Can you think about it and then go and do

(46:30):
something and make it achieve that in civilization or is
it just something you're in tune with and hopefully it
has that effect.

Speaker 5 (46:36):
Well, I mean civilizational art is the opposite of what
you're saying in the sense that it's ay Aiden or Andrew.
And if we make icons, we are making something that
is commissioned and ask for something, and then you attend
to their need and then you adapt obviously your skill
and your thought to that need. And so there's a

(46:57):
discussion between the patron and the person in doing it.

Speaker 8 (47:00):
But I also know what you mean.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Like I in other ways.

Speaker 5 (47:04):
With stories and other parts of my creative life, I
have more of that experience, which is more of something
just drops into you and you know, you love it.

Speaker 7 (47:13):
Just got to exist because that's how I started as
an artists. There are movies I couldn't see. My parents
went to see Jaws or something like that. I couldn't
see it, and so my mom tell me about jobs. Oh,
I can tell you about it. So I went home
and drew it. I drew the panels. I'm like, man,
my clothes is this would have looked like when they
kick and because I wanted to see it so bad,
but that's never stopped.

Speaker 8 (47:30):
That's always the thing.

Speaker 7 (47:31):
So yeah, I feel I do feel like a little
bit of a fraud when I talk about on the
other end, because I think that's what's happening. It's just
me reverse engineering the intuitive process. But what you're talking
about civilization art makes perfect sense to me. I just
don't live there.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
So I guess I should do the tables.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
The spots to master how you rite. You seeper tinge
or rights in two phases. The first is about two
in the morning, and it'scessarily talking about being McGill Chris,
the lifting rut side of the brain. You deliberately don't
stand over a judgment. You just right ninety percent, she said.
In the next day, when your rational faculty is then
you will critique your work. So you're allowing your intuition.

(48:10):
You're about to do the right shied brain to do
the main way, then the judgment. But if you do
the other way about.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
It doesn't work. I'm stuck in the mind.

Speaker 13 (48:19):
Wouldn't you say that you have daytime intelligence and nighttime intelligence?

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Absolutely, you should make no lasting decisions.

Speaker 8 (48:33):
In the morning, you don't look at the thing you
did and you're like, what, what?

Speaker 2 (48:37):
What I would say? I think?

Speaker 13 (48:38):
I think really great art should have a secret in
it that the artist knows nothing in It just has
to and it will reveal itself to you over time.
And often if you're on a book tour and you're
you're thirty gigs in and you've been saying the same
old thing, and then one day the penny will drop,
or you know, a device win comes through and you go,

(49:01):
actually it was this. I'll have to leave in a second,
but I'll leave you with this thought. I've been working
on a book for two years, which is quite a
long time for me, and I was sitting in bed
proofreading the book and suddenly I wrote one sentence, and
the sentence was this, in each experience of beauty, we
are being prepared for eternity. In each experience of beauty,

(49:25):
we are being prepared for eternity. And it was a
little overwhelming because I realized at that moment that was
what the secret of the book arrived, but not the
secret of the book, the secret of my whole life. Yes,
you know, it's hard for me to talk about. So
you know, our men for that arriving ahead of time

(49:45):
in preparing me. But you know, we talk about eternity.
And it's easy to terrify people once you get into
many evil images of bubbling call rooms and Cherub's on clouds.
They both seem as bad as each other a way.
But what folks will roll with. What they will roll
with is if you say, look, the thing that you

(50:08):
lean into when you're alive picks up a kind of
magnetic pace, and it's likely that when you die, you
find yourself living in the consequence of where you leant.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
To in this universe.

Speaker 13 (50:21):
Very few people that actually get upset about that. They
go kind of follows and you've started to map out
a bit of theology, but in a way that doesn't
immediately trigger them. So in other words, I think beauty
beauty for me matters because it changes the way I
behave beauty was the thing that took me from Paul's

(50:41):
notion of an unknown God into a known God. And
the known God turned up and he had a little
bit of a mission statement in living. In the consequence
of that episode, I have to go to dinner.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Well. In closing, I want to say it's thing about
the church architecture that I do. There are certain moments
when I'm standing in my own church during a service,
and I'll look back into the congregation and I'll be
shocked to see some individual back there looking as beautiful

(51:19):
as any saint in the icons. It might be because
there's a sunbeam coming through a window and it it
just falls on, you know, a woman in a colorful headscarf,
and she's juxtaposed against an arch with a shadow behind it,
and it's it's sort of it's it's suddenly a little moment,
it's as beautiful as any oil painting. It's like a

(51:43):
Rembrandt sort of this inner illumination shining through in a
beautiful architectural setting, and she'll she'll sort of visually join
in with the frescoes of the saints on the walls
and really look like an icon of a saint and
that that when I see something like that, I feel
like that is the actual end purpose of my art

(52:03):
is a moment like that. You know if if I
when I when I get to feeling like the physical
building that I'm trying to design or build is the
end purpose of my work, I get kind of depressed
because it's true, because it's because it's just a dead
object and it won't last forever. But when I see
that the light and shadow and beauty in the building

(52:25):
I've created has caused some person in that building to
suddenly to suddenly experience theosis like I can see that
the divine image in that person because of the setting,
I feel like, ah, that's why I do this. My
work is complete. Now I'd like to ask the rest
of you if you have similar stories. I'm guessing all

(52:47):
of you, the different the different media or genres of
art you work in, I'll bit all of you have
a similar moment where you actually see some some person
using your art or hearing your song, on reading your book,
venerating your icon, and you see a moment of that
of that divine beauty in humanity because of because of

(53:09):
how they're interacting with your art. Do you feel do
you feel similar that? That's the end point is when
you see a moment like that.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
I suppose my privileged experience of that was in this
hermitage right for seven years to hermit I fresh goed
this small chapel and I continued doing the rest of
the buildings up. So sometimes I've had sixteen tons of
stone delivered. And one blad urvived and answer, what are
you doing? And I told him, and come and have
a look at the hermitage at the chapel. And he

(53:38):
came in and I just stood there and I noticed
he didn't say anything. So I looked at him like
he was crying. I think, must be man, your tattoos
and everything, and I should not say anything like this
in my life as well.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
And it wasn't some of the physical views.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
It's because it's got really dark, deep rich colors that
created a netmosphere.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
It's like being the heart RelA. I want to share
one from our part of Commanda. There's a young man
that came to learn this this oral tradition, and he
came to very last thing. He was very afraid. His
name was Ethan. And just last week I got a

(54:18):
call from his parents that he's taken his life. Remember him.
He was very happy to see you.

Speaker 21 (54:25):
And that week four of the people that came to
learn this tradition toasted him on the fifth toast, which
is the toast to the souls of the.

Speaker 19 (54:36):
Dead, and they toasted him at their homes much like
you did the doers, and then sent the video to
our group of them toasting to this gentleman that they
had met, and I cried like a baby that I'm like,
you must see.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
People worship in the Church of Birth.

Speaker 22 (54:53):
It's so similar. I had to share that because then
his name is again member at the tables, at the
author of others, and it just goes out into eternity.

Speaker 21 (55:05):
It's the most beautiful thing, of course, not his death,
but the idea that we haven't forgot, and the table
teaches us as an art, as start form.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
I'd like to share a memory.

Speaker 23 (55:16):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (55:18):
Answering that question, I had written a film that was
to be acted by.

Speaker 14 (55:28):
Deaf people, and I wrote a scene for this one
actor two two, you know, recite this monologue about losing
her hearing and what it was like when the hearing
ah when she she was born hearing but then she lost.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
In what that experience was like.

Speaker 14 (55:52):
Now this actress was she she she was born death,
but she she was interested, didn't doing this this scene,
and so I had to write this just sort of
using my just just trusting that this would translate and
that she.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Would be able to do it because everything was in
sign language.

Speaker 14 (56:15):
And so so I wrote the scene, you know, having
no experience in this in this world, just purely using
my imagination, but trying to do it in a way
that felt true. And after we did that scene, she
she just said, that was the most That was the

(56:36):
greatest gift that you could have given me, because I
could imagine what it.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Was like to hear Bound your Way Noon, because it
was all imagery.

Speaker 14 (56:46):
It was all using sound as imagery, and she said
that it brought her closer to what it must be
like to hear. And I had never expected that, but
I was, like you say, I was just I was
in the flow and I was trusting. And then to
have that experience, it was like, this is why I'm

(57:09):
doing this.

Speaker 7 (57:10):
Yeah, And now I get these emails from people who
are like they're at their end of their rope, and
I'm grateful that they reach out to me, but it
actually breaks my heart too.

Speaker 8 (57:19):
Like sometimes people are like, oh my gosh, this renkor.

Speaker 7 (57:21):
Help me so much, and it's like, how how is
the world so such a desert of encouragement that some
artists who've just made an album you liked, like brought
you back from the brink in any capacity. It's just
it's terrifying to think that some people live in that world.
And so that helps when I don't want to get
up at work, you know, sometimes like well, maybe this

(57:42):
is one of those things for someone else. Yeah, it
makes you feel better. I died when I mean I
cried when Prince died.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 8 (57:51):
He's also I don't think I've.

Speaker 9 (57:54):
Had a live performance in my life that I've been satisfied.
But I come away disappointed with myself every time. And
yet people will come to me and say that's so
moved me or whatever, and that's that's the redeeming moment,
you know. And so it's like I know that I
have my own issues that make me a perfectionist and whatever,

(58:14):
and I can't enjoy it, like maybe I will one
day when I grow up, but that them being moved
is the fulfilment of it, that's why you did it.
I'm wondering, and I'm sorry if I'm changing the subject,
you can shut me up. But my question that keeps
coming to mind when I'm listening is like if we
go back to like a political thing, like people do

(58:36):
things because there's laws, But what about the idea that
it's better to do things because of beauty, you know,
to be inspired to be right and to operate rightly
rather than be made through laws or legislation. You know,
like a man who's fallen in love with a beautiful
woman and how would he change to win her?

Speaker 2 (58:56):
You know, was like Summers will awaits that works.

Speaker 14 (59:05):
No one has to tell you if you're in love
to go to the ends of the earth for your
beloved because you'll do anything.

Speaker 9 (59:11):
And what about Christians will be known for their love?
You know, Like it goes back to that that it's
there's a better reason to do things than politics.

Speaker 8 (59:21):
Yeah, I know, trying to make something beautiful as an
active love, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Absolutely? Definitely? I think.

Speaker 16 (59:27):
What I want to share is when I was watching
Andrew describe that moment in church, what it reminded me
of is how film director thinks because when filmmaking is
human centered in that way we actually think about a
shot a face and then we put the architecture of
the design around them, around the human and I'm so

(59:50):
used to that language and that way of working, you know,
I did that for twenty years, and then when I
went back to church, it was absent. And I think
that's what I noticed was this isn't human centered in
the same.

Speaker 6 (01:00:01):
In the way that my brain works.

Speaker 16 (01:00:02):
Because I was looking at the at the environment and thinking,
you know, how does this frame the parishioners or how
does this make the parishioner feel? You know, as a filmmaker,
you think where the camera is in terms of slow subs,
the kind of you might be interacting with details of
the church candles or and icons, and that had kind
of gone out of the window.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
Certainly is a church that I was in.

Speaker 16 (01:00:25):
So it's almost like rediscovering that vision of a filmmaker,
but within, you know, within these spaces and whatever they
leave be.

Speaker 6 (01:00:36):
And to think in that way. Yeah, it was just
it was just it was just beautiful. And what it
was like a it was like a movie that what
you described that scene, I could see it. I could
see that's like coming in and I could see her
head stuff and you know what she's wearing and all
of that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
So when you were illustrating there snow white book, I'll
bit you were picturing vignette of a little child sitting
in bed reading that book. No, she's not that nice.

Speaker 7 (01:01:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (01:01:11):
That's definitely one of the things that I didn't know
what it was going to be like it was done,
and then when it was.

Speaker 16 (01:01:18):
When I was like, oh, that's what it looks like,
because I've never done it before, so it was a
real It was quite a risk.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Have you been able to have the experience of seeing
children reading the book?

Speaker 6 (01:01:28):
We've had a lot of feedback. Yeah, my daughter.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
What about you, Vesper? Have you been able to watch
children read your books and see how they react to them?

Speaker 15 (01:01:41):
Not as much with the picture books because I don't
really do school visits in that way. But what I
kept thinking of was the importance of my sketch book
and that I don't really have any control over how
the audience reacts to my work, and a lot of

(01:02:01):
times it's completely unseen because I make a book and
it goes out there and I maybe I get you know,
a letter from a reader or something like that. But
for me, it's the books really come out of a
lot of preparatory. I carry sketchbooks, multiple sketch books with
me wherever I go, and I'm just always processing the world,
and the books come out of that sort of indirectly,

(01:02:28):
but I feel like that is sort of my interaction
with the world, is to try to follow that curiosity
and that understanding more and trust that the work that's
coming out of that is going to be what the
reader or the viewer needs at that time. So it's
a lot of the work that never gets seen by
anybody that's actually maybe more important.

Speaker 14 (01:02:51):
There's a lot of interaction with your sketch book with people,
like it does draw people, and there is a lot
of really.

Speaker 7 (01:02:59):
Interesting I enjoyed your sketch oh thank you guys, liked
to comment and subscribed.

Speaker 15 (01:03:06):
But if anything, you know what I what I kind
of hope if anybody sees that process is that they
feel that maybe they could do it too, because it's
just playing, you know, yeah, it does.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
It doesn't have to be right or perfect.

Speaker 15 (01:03:21):
It's just about it's it's encountering the world through through
that kind of play.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
M M.

Speaker 24 (01:03:43):
Yeah, mhazies, cause disguises, manter, philosophers.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Hard and hard, so no efence when you have a soft.

Speaker 24 (01:04:36):
Lady Wiston cannot dress.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
In a man without cheese.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Any more.

Speaker 7 (01:04:59):
Ta she longs to halt this.

Speaker 6 (01:05:02):
Little ham.

Speaker 23 (01:05:04):
And gaze in his sea ble. And a song stirs
in the side, like the wind in the ball, a
ball she listens and stars and tramos tis the first little.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Song of all.

Speaker 23 (01:05:36):
Ros is a shining piccody.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
In the hush of the sea.

Speaker 23 (01:05:46):
Ature rolls is a flowing piercody.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
But there's name a roll like you on the rollsis
will die in the summer time.

Speaker 23 (01:06:08):
The war rolls maybe fall report what doesn't a rolls not.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
In pea hody? Jeez the rolls that time chee eve more.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you
can support what we're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
There are apparel in books to purchase, So go to
the Symbolic World dot com and thank you for your support.

All Episodes

395 - Beauty First: Envisioning a Civilization Worth Restoring (ARC Roundtable)

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}395 - Beauty First: Envisioning a Civilization Worth Restoring (ARC Roundtable)