Remembering that the Universe is a work of art...

This morning I was completely out of it, depressed by the state of the world, and just dragging. Then I remembered I had a collection of art just for the purpose of bringing me back up...

Among other things, I’m an amateur futurist. Since childhood I’ve been interested in Big Picture trends, and trying to figure out where society is heading. When I drew this, I had a sense that the world was on the verge of getting much, much crazier than it already was. This is a Sharpie Scribble Style drawing I did of Harley Quinn, to put on a skateboard deck, in December of 2019. See the little penciled phrase on the bottom? It says, “Shit’s about to happen…” 2020 rolled in soon after, and shit definitely started to happen, in a big way. #sharpiescribblestyle, #steveemigart

The weight of the darkness in today’s world really had a hold on me this morning. We are in one of the darkest periods in the history of the United States, with our Constitution and democracy itself being actively dismantled at the highest levels. We have Gestapo-like immigration raids happening right here in Southern California daily. In the larger world, wars and genocide rage on across the Atlantic, with no apparent end in sight. Meanwhile, I’m still living homeless, and that also seems like it will never end, much of the time. The economy I’ve been writing about for years is slipping into the abyss of what appears to be a major recession.

I was mad at myself for being depressed and totally out of it this morning. I just spent a couple nights in a motel room, a reprieve of good sleep, good food, hot showers, lots of TV watching, and a couple days away from the continual stress of street life. I’m usually calm and in a good mood after a getting a room. But I was just completely out of sorts this morning.

I came here to the library, got online, and listened to a few of my favorite songs. That usually gets me going. But it wasn’t enough this morning. I was still drifting, listless, trying to figure out what to write for my next post. Then I remembered I had created a Pinterest board just for days like today.

My “Art Inspiriation” Pinterest board is a collection of over 500 photos and images of all kinds of art and creative works, some funny photos, and some quotes about art. I compiled this board over several years. The whole point of this collection is to remind me just how many different kinds of art and creative work there are, to inspire myself, and to make me laugh a little bit.

I like adding things to my 100+ Pinterest boards, it’s the one kind of collecting I can do as a homeless guy. I don’t really scroll through my various boards all that often. But today I did. I just listened to some music, and slowly looked through all 500+ photos and works of art. The crazy thing was, it worked. Listening to Social Distortion’s White Light, White Heat, White Trash album, while scrolling my weird collection of “art” on my “Art Inspiration” board, totally brought me out of my funk this morning.

It also reminded me of my real view of the Universe, something I never really talk about to anyone else. I spent a couple of decades trying to make sense of this thing we call life on planet Earth, because much of my young life, things seemed to suck most of the time. I wanted to understand it. I wanted to life, with all its pain and negativity, to somehow make sense. So I started reading books. I studied business, economics, religion, philosophy, human potential, and dug into several mystical traditions to some degree. I fasted a bit, meditated some, pondered a lot, and started to get a little insight here and there. I worked through Julia Cameron’s book/workshop for blocked creative people, The Artist’s Way, in 1996, and dutifully did my morning pages for five years. I journaled, wrote poetry, and rode my BMX freestyle bike nearly every day for 20 years. Every now and then, I’d get a little insight into myself, or life itself.

In time, those occasional insights built up on each other, and blended with things I learned from hundreds of books and audio books, observation, and life itself. A couple of larger insights came along one in 2007, and one in 2015, that led to an entirely new way of looking at the world.

There are dynamics at play in this Universe. We get drawn towards different things by intuition, or some other force. We get ideas for one creative project or another. When we begin, when we take a step towards creating something, the Universe, or some part of it, also takes a step towards us. People have spoken of these forces and incidents of intuition and synchronicity throughout the ages, often in quiet whispers. There are forces at play in the Universe that most people ignore, or don’t pay much attention to. But the people who really push the limits, the people who create art and music, people who excel at sports, people who innovate and build new things, sometimes speak of these forces. Some of the greatest philosophers have mentioned these inherent forces at play in the Universe.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the entire Universe can be thought of as a work of art. There is a structure, there are rules and forces at play, engineered into the fabric of the Universe itself by the Creator itself. I’m not saying understanding the Universe as a gigantic work of art is the only way to describe or understand it, just that’s it’s one way to think about the Universe that works for me. It’s the way I prefer to think of it all. Some higher force created this Universe, built in rules, forces, and dynamics, and our souls take on human bodies, and walk around in this enormous work of art, exploring, living, and trying to figure parts of it out. This basic scenario plays out over and over, through the eons of time, as we experience it.

This sense of the Universe as a work of art is what I totally forgot this morning, when I woke up overwhelmed by the current darkness playing out in so many ways in our everyday world. In my sense of the Universe as an constantly evolving, ever-changing work of art, the darkness, the evil has its place and reason for being, just like the villains in books and movies. It’s easy to get wrapped up in everyday life, and get suffocated by all the negativity creeping around these days. It’s easy to forget the Big Picture I spent more than 20 years coming to my own, unique, personal understanding of, and become overwhelmed by the negativity that seems far more prevalent today than it has in times past.

My first post in The Poet Series dives a little more into how I understand the Universe, in a series of questions. You can check out that post here, if you like. Meanwhile, I’m off to create some more stuff.

There are no paid links in this post.