PAUL ANDREW POWELL
ARTIST WRITER MUSICIAN
THE ARTIST'S STATEMENT
According to the often-quoted lines in Archibald MacLeish’s poem “Ars Poetica”:
A poem should not mean
But be.
I interpret this to mean that a poem's first function, prior to any content (of all art for that matter) is to mystify us, because Be-ing is itself a mystery.
The function of art is not to solve the mystery, the function of art is to pose the problematic question implied by it.
In my view, art's capacity to mystify is what defines as art.
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant/
Success in Circuit lies
---Emily Dickinson
Art can be categorized, studied, measured—situated; but the aesthetic apprehension of beauty is, first and foremost, an intuitive event within human consciousness. And, as a Buddhist, I will add that the apprehension of one’s true nature is, prior to all discourse, an intuitive event within human consciousness. The fixed meaning may be necessary to discuss the phenomenon, but the very discussion separates us from the event.
"I mean---Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
--- John Keats
“A poem should not mean/But be.” Art does not address the thinking mind, nor does it primarily address personal or societal concerns (though these clearly can be important vehicles for delivery). Art boldly, or through “success in Circuit”, exposes and engages us with the mystery at the bottom that repels all reason: catches us off-guard, suspends the stories we tell ourselves to order and create a sense of permanence in our impermanence, and in so doing, reveals, if only fleetingly, the great doubt and wonder which is the source of our creative imagination and the light of Be-ing.
The world of imagination is the world of eternity.
--- William Blake
Bio: Paul Andrew Powell is the author of the books Zen and Artificial Intelligence, and other Philosophical Musings by a Student of Zen Buddhism (2019), TUNA in POODERVILLE: a screenplay (2020), and The Reality Mechanic (2020): available on Amazon Books and other outlets. His essays “Hobbits as Buddhists and an Eye for an “I” (2011) and “On the Conceivability of Artificially Created Enlightenment” (2005) appeared in the journal Buddhist-Christian Studies, and his essay “Infinite Games in the Age of Novelty” appeared as Chapter 26 in Consciousness in Theatre, Literature, and the Arts (2007). He presented his essay “Infinite Games in the Age of Novelty” at the Consciousness in the Arts Conference in Aberystwyth, Wales in 2007, and his paper “Zen and Artificial Intelligence” at the Toward of Science of Consciousness Conference in Tucson, Arizona, in 2002. He has been a gallery artist (Telluride, Colorado), an actor (SAG 1987, long expired), and a coffeehouse musician. He is the father of four remarkable daughters and currently divides his year between Greenfield, MA; Boulder, CO; and Kearney, NE, where he taught Composition and Literature at the local university and community college. He has been a student of Zen Buddhism, in particular, for over four decades.
