PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

December 5, 2021

PERSPECTIVE

Saturday, November 6, Diane, two of our granddaughters and I experienced “The Lume: Van Gogh: at the Newfields in Indianapolis, Indiana.  The Lume is a permanent 2,000 sq. m. immersion gallery weaving powerful imagery from 150 state-of-the-art projects onto a tapestry of surfaces.  The experience includes an evocative musical score and is layered with suggestive aromas that ignites one’s imagati0n and stirs one’s soul.  The space includes a place to purchase integrated, themed food and beverages.  A portion of the presentation focused on the work that Van Gogh did when he was institutionalized for mental illness.

A week later Diane and I attended a concert by the South Bend Symphony Orchestra at the Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend, Indiana.  The orchestra’s first number was “Jabberwocky,” a musical interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass.”  The middle selection featured Dylana Jenson and Samuel Baber’s violin concerto.  The concluding number was Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major.  Schumann composed the piece during one of his early episodes of mental illness.  The symphony takes us on a journey from darkness to light.

The week after attending the symphony I reread Rex Stout’s final Nero Wolfe mystery A Family Affair.  Near the end Archie Goodwin reports on the phone to Wolfe what he and Saul have found in an apartment they have been searching.  In part Archie tells Nero, “You may be a genius, but nuts.  I once looked genius up in that gook of quotations.  Somebody said that all geniuses have got a touch of madness.  …“ To which Wolfe interrupts, “Seneca.”(A Family Affair, p. 132)

These three illustrations would seem to suggest that there is some relationship between creativity and mental illness.  There is a general understanding that left-brain persons approach the world from the perspective of math and logic skills while right-brain persons are more creative in their approach.  On the negative side right-brain persons who live on the edge of creativity like Van Gogh and Schumann may well flirt with losing touch with the accepted parameters for reality.  On the positive side they are able to expand other people’s perspective of the world in which we live.

It would seem logical that the right-brain is the home for religious experiences such as those described by Old Testament prophets.  Persons with such orientations are open to experience that which, for the most part, escape those who tend to be left-brained.  In the New Testament John the Baptist was able to see a slice of reality that escaped most of the people of his day.  It is no accident that he was called a voice crying in the wilderness.  His lifestyle was hardly the fashion of the day.  Never-the-less for those who came to hear him, including Jesus, he was able to give a perspective that helped his hearers better understand what God was up to in their day.

All of us see life from different perspectives.  Some of us tend to be primarily left-brain and others tend to be right-brain.  I suspect that there are those who are a combination of the two.  None of us have a lock on the true perspective of reality.  As Paul says in I Corinthians now we only see in part. (I Cor. 13:12b)  Artists help us to expand our perspective of our world by putting into paintings and music what they see and feel.  They can also give some insight into the world of those who descend into mental illness and help us better understand from where they come.