Art As Devotion
How to change your mind: watch an indigo bunting “positively drenched in enthusiasm” (Mary Oliver)
I had the doors and windows open so that birdsong could come in. I heard the high trill of a melody that comes only in spring, repeated over and over with the passion of a love song. I went outside with my binoculars to investigate. A bird less than half the size of my hand stood in the branches of the tulip poplar, singing his blue heart out.
Indigo is the wrong name, at least now, in the breeding season. He is an impossibly brilliant mix of turquoise, ultramarine and cobalt that covers his entire body. The only indigo is on his wing tips and around his beak. Regardless of what color he is known by, the indigo bunting is dedicated to singing until someone answers, until someone responds to his call. He waits to be answered, and sings and sings. When he sings, it is with every feather; everything vibrates, down to the tip of his tail. He holds nothing in reserve. This is devotion.
That morning my mind was full of the troubles of the world and many other less important things that gave the day weight. But who could possibly refuse this song, I wondered? I could not listen without my dark outlook being lifted, without admiring the indigo bunting’s unwavering dedication to being answered.
How do you imagine there is “something evermore about to be” * — something that is a guardian against despair — in the midst of what seems to be an endless spell of worldwide pain and confusion? Paul Klee spoke of his art as “andacht zum kleinen” — devotion to small things. His teaching at the Bauhaus was just after the devastation of World War I, and dedicated to a new way of thinking. The work he created out of his vision is still impacting our world.
And recently I heard Wendell Berry, our Kentucky poet and farmer, steward of the earth, speak on our planet’s dilemma. I heard the same testimony to small things — the same plea to return to the particular in your world, to something you can give full attention to. The idea is that it is these small seeds that make the difference. The artists and poets show the way, and ask us to stand despite all possibilities of falling.
The artist moves forward through impossibility, propelled by the necessity to not give up hope in spite of all the evidence. You restore vision by planting a seed, by choosing something small to give yourself to, by becoming a guardian against despair.
The world needs artists to hold steady, to keep the vision alive, to plant seeds. When art becomes like the song of the indigo bunting, when your work is an act of devotion, some part of you awakens. It is the part of you that remains whole through every trial, the part that is evermore intact, the part that is lit up by this change in attention.
A seed is planted. Even though we cannot control outcome, something is changed with each seed, in its own time. The indigo bunting’s song is received and something new is coming.
* “Our destiny, our nature, and our home
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.”— from The Prelude by William Wordsworth
Have you found something that penetrates a dark outlook? What small thing have you found in your world to be devoted to?
