I have maintained that we are better off trying to determine what art does rather than defining it. I even went so far to make a list in an essay called “The Uses of Art”, in which I promised to flesh out each enumerated “use” with an essay of its own. (Of course I miserably defaulted on that pledge.) Further, I have always assumed— like a lot of folks, I suspect— that the best art always sticks with you: it goes into your library for reference and reuse, which is why I can still recite verbatim Puck’s “If-we-shadows-have-offended” Midsummer Night’s Dream show-closer three decades after playing the role. And when I fail to hold on to a piece of art, I tend to feel a little guilty. After all, is it not a little shameful to have forgotten easily a hundred times more poetry and painting, music and movies, than I have ever remembered? Was all that art wasted on me?
The 13th Century Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi and his modern American interpreter Coleman Barks have convinced me otherwise. Just as art has a variety of uses, it also has many mechanisms.
“There is a South Indian story about soap. Soap is the dirt we buy. We introduce it to the dirt we have, and the two dirts are so glad to see each other they come out and mix! They swim together in the warm pleasurable water and, at just the right moment, the washer lifts the cloth of our true being free of both soap and dirt. Mystical poetry and other practices may function this way, as soap that dances with what disturbs our clarity. Then at some moment they drop away and leave us clean, ready to be worn again.”
–From Coleman Barks introduction to a chapter in his collection
The Essential Rumi
Sometimes art doesn’t stay with you. And sometimes that’s best. How disgusting and useless would it be if the film from every bar of soap you’ve ever used still remained on your body? Some art is meant to mix with parts of you and then rinse off, parts and art together.
So the next quiet night you read a poem, and then find you’ve forgotten the entire thing the next morning, don’t berate yourself. Instead, give yourself a pat on the back for being spiritually hygienic.
Rumi himself this time:
“. . . Enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.”
