I have been reflecting on art and meaning. Yes, all right, I know.
A recent radio programme featured an experimental artist who refused to elaborate on the “meaning” of his work since, as Bacon apparently said, the meaning does not become apparent until later on. But whose meaning? And doesn’t it matter what the artist meant? These are (so I understand, not being as highbrow as people usually are when they talk about this stuff) age old questions. I’m not necessarily that interested in finding the answers. But the question came to mind again today and I thought it was interesting to notice how we do in fact take our own meaning from things.
Take, for example, religion – perhaps we enjoy the music, the art, the stories for themselves, without subscribing to their “meaning”, or to the beliefs that inspired them in the first place.
We sang Morning Has Broken at school (Come and Praise!) and I still hum it now and then:
Morning has broken like the first morning;
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.
Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word!Sweet the rain’s new fall sunlit from heaven,
Like the first dewfall on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning,
Born of the one light Eden saw play!
Praise with elation; praise ev’ry morning,
God’s recreation of the new day!
Clearly when Eleanour Farjeon wrote this back in 1922 (no, it wasn’t Cat Stevens after all) she meant it as a hymn of praise to the Christian god. And as an adult, I can clearly grasp that and I can use my knowledge and my analytical skills to understand that Farjeon wanted to emphasise that these wonders of creation are eternal, that the sweet glories of the early morning can almost literally transport us to the paradise of Eden because, in all the time of the world, this has not changed. The blackbird of our morning today is, absolutely literally, just like the first blackbird of the first morning in Eden – eternally. Which is all kind of nice, in a loyal but totally unscientific and anti-evolutionary kind of way.
Fortunately, as a child, this meaning escaped me. I did not take the song literally. I saw in it a celebration of the newness of each morning, not the recreation of another morning long past, before I even lived. I didn’t love the cold green of the morning because it was exactly like some other, previous day, but for precisely the opposite reason. I loved it because it was new – full of promise and possibility – beautiful – exciting – fresh!
I still prefer my meaning.
Infinitely.
