Black and white circumstances

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Pianos, starlight and humanity

White and black always blends so well together. I just admire how different and extreme they are especially when put next to each other; but how in that paradox they are still beautiful together- Black and white.

I feel almost everything in life is like that; Black and white, beautiful, and paradoxically so. That beauty though is a work of a power so much above us and reflected in the same kind of oxymoron. Just imagine seeing beauty in brokenness and pain,  in the same brush of the wind that lays down buildings to the ground with every dreadful  storm, and the scorching heat that creates miles and miles of nothing. Somehow you know and acknowledge beauty in the very same things and in the very same circumstances that have such a potential to wreck havoc.

Just think of all the "Black and white" circumstances; like stars and starlight.

In all of creation and nature and life experience, one of the things I think is really beautiful is starsand starlight.

Firstly, the very out- of- this- world concept of stars.  They are burning gases of helium existing in the cosmos, light years from where we see them, burning so steadily, so strongly we can see them twinkle. Sometimes I feel that resolve they have. The resolve to burn like their existence depended on it; like from God, they had been told to do so and for that very fact, they do.

I admire their excellence, their passion to burn and explode doing it so much, they twinkle. It’s like that resolve and resilience to shine against the black canvas of night, is what makes them so beautiful; the simple perfection of one contrast and extreme against another; the black against the white starlight.

Also, the elves in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings esteem starlight as the coolest thing ever, and in life there is always some fiction that you have to pause for a second and admit is geekishly awesome.  But then again it could also just be the subconscious and unintentional influence of Orlando Bloom's accent and facial symmetry.

Why I think stars are some of the most amazing "black and white" circumstances, is because I get how they are misunderstood sometimes. I feel they are misunderstood, for moon wannabes, or volatile things in the cosmos that form black holes and die in supernovas; misunderstood for weak- not able to fight the black. I thinks as a person I can understand that.

That's why I also think that humans, you and I are a "black and white" circumstance.

It’s a theory I have always had and felt within me, but conveying, let alone understanding it has always been hard. That’s what I’ve always seen it as. It’s just that today, it weighs on my mind and I’m hoping that in some way, I may learn something new about this life we live in and live it better because I learned it.

Sin is the blackness that I know, and my life is a fight against it. Some days are blacker than others.

I guess the issue is I have never truly understood the source of contention between the two extremes of black and white. Isn’t there supposed to be that beauty in the difference and some sort of  unity in the diversity?

I feel the source of that contention in humans is the hypocrisy paradox. What I mean is life is already complicated because of the antithesis of claiming to be things we are not; the whole hypocrisy of being "fine and ok", yet seated with your inherent nature in the same room, and its subtle exhibitions. I mean if we claim to be "good" people can't we be "good"? We all know the ease that comes with the dark side we convince ourselves its something else and send our conscience to get a hobby or something.

We are who we is not the same as who we claim to be. We are what we do, and not what we wish we didn’t do. That's the severe fact that causes me to need resolution like I need the air I breathe.

How is this never ending contradiction resolved?

The desire and willingness to be above the fallible and humanistic, and the inevitability of such as the description true to our nature.

This brings me to my last "black and white" circumstance. The pianoforte. It is an instrument with enough contradictions of its own that are perceivable, if you indulged an imaginative mind. 

It is played using a keyboard of 52 white keys and 36 black keys. The keys are pressed so that strings are hammered and sound is produced and taken away when the keys are released. The Italian musical terms piano and forte indicate “soft” and “strong” respectively. So it is on the surface a percussive instrument for the characteristic that the keys are pressed, but essentially is a string instrument because the keys pressed, hammer strings that produce the actual sound. 

 

The keys are black and white, not red and blue, or green and yellow but black and white. I think that could be symbolical in mirroring and portraying our contradictions and paradoxes as thoroughly constituted opposites; nothing is more different from black and white. I mean a chic in some weird color arrangements walking ordinarily on some random Kampala street might be severer but let’s go with the black and white.

The point I’m trying to make is the fact that we feel the black and white within us all the time; we have called it evil and good, sin and righteousness, right and wrong, true and false, you name it.

It is dreadfully important how we rationalize this contradiction because one takes over the other completely-the white or the black. Mostly the black though. If you get it wrong, it is very unlikely that you may get it right again. Some rationalize that contradiction by turning to religion, to giving in to every whim and pleasure, others by finding that soul mate. I don’t know. I just know we all do, and given an opportunity to explain their justifications for their rationalization, you might be convinced yourself. That is the great capability of our minds and hearts

I personally rationalized this contradiction by turning to faith- faith in the son of God, Jesus Christ. I believe this is how we we’re meant to rationalize our human contradictions. Justified and made right with God by faith in Christ; saved and sustained by grace in which we all stand. These are my convictions.

I just think a piano is a very expressive thing. It's easy to write the melody of within your heart with it. At least that is what I learned as I played it. But there’s also the pedal. For me that pedal changes the sound from random collections of notes to some harmonious message. It is the pedal, which makes everything make sense in the music sounded. It reconciles the chromatic differences in the distinctive black and whites and phrased especially. Nothing sounds wrong when that pedal is there. That is, unless you don’t lift your foot off it before the next chord.

 

We could be pianos, looking percussive, thick as wood and decided with unchanging resolve on the top but being strings within,  fragile and needy  for redemption and harmony by that pedal.

Every aspect of us in submission to that pertinent theorem that each and every day we feel within ourselves, the ambivalence and the existence of each emotion and possibility of emotion and its extreme warrants a real remedy. Not the lies we tell ourselves every day and in everything to sleep at night and then with the passing of years, end up believing.

The thing is that what is true is that our emotional skin is a porous one, freeing things to the cosmos and letting other things in. The entropy that comes from external circumstances clashing with internal perceptions and the catalysts of emotion, is nothing else but a spiritual one that needs the only spiritual remedy. 

Life is that difficult process that need the spiritual remedy of salvation.

The life procedure of the process and the pain with each and every one of us sponging it all up and then frantically searching for a needed wring of the brain and cleansing of the palate.

 

It surely is a very volatile situation and ought to be expected as being such. After being black and white, and contradictory through and through, the neutralizer is the perfect one that is Christ, such that by him we may become as he is. He is meaning and  the phrase, the slur above the staves of the sheet music of our lives.

He creates the melody of harmony and a blended existence of a literal difference in each note that creates chords and progressions that carry the lyrics and words that are the message of each song eventually placing its hands on hearts and lives.

I've made my mistakes. I've seen my heart cave in. I've got my scars. I've been to hell and back again. But I've found a way out. I was born for the blue skies and so I'll survive the rain. I was born for the sunrise, so I'll survive the pain. I know we'll find a way. We are the dark horses.

We have tried to reconcile the differences that especially exist within us, but also among us. Yet, the feeling is emptiness- vanity, and its relation pride. You end up living for yourself and in the end see no point in it. You go around in circles playing the same music but not getting the true melody of life, because you lack Christ that is reconciliation. 

I guess the question left is why I believe Christ is the only hope of true and total redemption. That’s for another day because right now all I am is another someone that believes in this Jesus of Nazareth.

 But all I can say for now is its faith and Hope.

 Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.

 Hope makes the blood change courses.

 

"Art: life and living"

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts, and or demonstrating an art.  It implies a mastery of any sort of craft. It is interesting to realize that in the understanding of an artist comes the influence of culture; societies’ take on what is “cool”, and what is not,  otherwise known as aesthetics.

 
 For example, ancient Greece never recognized painters and sculptors as artists. They were considered somewhere between freemen and slaves. The Italians believed that an artist was someone able to do a work better than others were. In that culture, the importance was skilled excellence rather than the activity field. I guess if all Ugandans were Italians we would have very vocal insights on what Ugandan politicians are skilled at. I’m just putting that out there.

There are so many definitions of an artist; you do not even need a dictionary by the way. I am sure even before you read this; you had your own take on the matter. So before I try to get into your head and define who I think an artist is or could be or, let me let you think about it just once more.

This is what I think.

As a child born and raised in Uganda, whenever someone said “artist” my mind went straight to the painters and anyone who messed around with colors. My infant mind suggested a connection of art with colors. and colors with painters and their kin. I guess it is the whole kid gig of drawing paper and the Crayola pencils for every class in school. You just had to color something in Math, English and Art class. I hereby hold the Ugandan education system responsible for my myopic view of this English word in a way, but mostly, the fact that I was a child.  In my continued growth, every newspaper article featured a musician as an “artist”, the unfailing identity marker being the dreads, chains, shades and raspy voice memo; so that with everyone I passed in town that fit that description, I would be pointing with child-like wonder saying, “Look mum and dad, an artist.”

My understanding of the word was never drastically concretized until I reached that teenage phase of self-discovery and contemporaneous self loathing- the“who am I” stage. The time of teenage angst and confusion.  It is that stage of wanting to be something sophisticated and different but mostly failing miserably at it. It is that necessary and dreadful stage where you wear the braces and blue eye shadow and listen to all the rock music because your hormones are telling you “weird” is a sort of artistry. It is like there is a persona that kicks in with puberty that is like, “Hey Kid, welcome to this new stage in life. My job is to make you the best weirdo you can be.” There should be some sort of therapy or hormoone replacement strategy to sell some new inclination for teenagers. On the other hand, it could have just been me with the struggles of life and increased journaling tendencies. 

In the end, it really got old for me. What if I wanted to do what I was told and be good at it even though I failed most of the time? It gets senile being the same mediocre everyone doesn’t mind you being. What gets really different and sophisticated is excellence. I mean in this day and age, there’s so much you get away with as a person, let alone as a teenager. For me, that was my way to be different. It just sucks that at that time, the easiest way is to give into the muddle of emotions in rebellion against the sanctity of normality. Anyway, that’s the goody-two-shoes stuff that I am somewhat made of and my infantile understanding of the word art. Yeah, I could have been a smarter kid.

The point is I struggled with the Italian-like mindset that is present in our culture today, or  a bit too salient in my own mindset. For whatever reason, I always felt the only way to be good at something, was to be the best at it- to be excellent. I then realized how vain that endeavor was because it’s very rare for you to be truly excellent at everything holistically connected to life and living. I realize the point is in trying to be excellent and having a steady progress towards it. What I mean is, while Paganini could arguably be the best violinist that ever lived, in reality there can always be someone greater. In the end, while Paganini is considered the most excellent violinist, because of the probability. He suddenly isn’t.

If being an artist is similar to being good at a craft or skill, they why can’t living be a sort of craft or skill. Before you criticize, indulge the hypothesis that “living is an art that we can become good at.” I realize that human existence is a form of artistry.  Living can be defined as the craft of being the best human you can be. Life and living to me is the expression of humanity. It is a very intense form of artistry. It is piercingly candor in its ugliness and ambivalent beauty because; life is life. Whether you are some rich person in Uganda or some pauper in Europe; We are all living life. I believe that is a skill and a craft that can be mastered and excelled at wherever, however and whoever you are. The issue we come up with though, is what excellence and mastery of this craft of living truly is.

I believe true living is achieved when our whole beings tend towards a nature that is apart from ourselves; a nature so much greater. This is because in expression comes the undeniable nature of the artist reflected. Therein are strengths and weakness in equivocal sight- bare. Same thing with living and any form of art; you can strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses into inexistence.

Guess all I’m saying is I believe the only way you can be excellent at living is striving to reflect in nature and character the only perfect one- Christ. It involves falling and getting back up again, the struggles of faith and doubt, courage and fear but that is life, isn’t it? 

 

I’m saying that art is beautiful. Beauty is art. Life is beautiful art in this way. 

We are flesh and bone in both literal and metaphorical sense, a figure of speech that borrows a lot from the biblical conceptualization of flesh and bones- sinful, perishable, lacking self control and weak. The Holy Spirit, the helper, guiding you and teaching you steadfastly in the knowledge of Christ and the counsel of His word, and then the spirit of flesh, conflicting with the Spirit in every possible way. The spirit of flesh seeks everything depraved and humanistic, it seeks the satisfaction of its insatiable sinful appetites. 

It seems like the thing to dread is being Human. It is weakness. It is pain. It is folly. It is mortality. It is once. Take your pick at all the grave disadvantages and least preferred facts of life but in this conflict I have learnt that life is beautiful. Life is beautiful beauty as art. (Indulge the semantics please)

It isn’t a fateful and undeadening crush of ruthlessness, it is an overflow of the understanding and experience of love- the love of Christ himself. I am won over constantly by that amazing love. Life is no longer just pain and despair, confusion and regret, but redeemable by the presence and overflow of love. 

There is an ancient Japanese art that I have forgotten, mostly for the reason that its name is in Japanese, that thrives and centers on the beauty of brokenness for the very fact that in redemption of brokenness is another particular all surpassing beauty. In this art, broken pottery and the like were pieced together using molten silver and gold as significance of that beauty. 

I see life in the same way. 

You can choose to concentrate on the fact that it isn’t just one perfect spherical whim, but even in that, you realize it is definite and can thus be appreciated.

Life is beautiful. But only with love as that molten Gold and silver piecing us together after we heed the spirit of the Flesh and not the Spirit Christ gave us, his very own Spirit, his very mind and counsel within us. Life is beautiful because of the love of Christ and so life is art. We can be good at being loved and loving others as we have been loved.

Life isn’t necessarily roses and lilies, and cotton candy and chocolate. It’s also pain and heartache, and sadness and depression; that one thick and dark cloud in the blue sky. Until that silver lining appears, all you had before was a blue sky. Life is beautiful because we have silver linings. Silver linings are art. Amazing, silver sliverer linings. 

Okbye.

Romans 8; 29

“For those he knew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he may be the first born among many brothers.”