A Meditation On Frailty
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
I first heard these words at a young age. They made sense to me - especially that first part. Hoarding resources that could be eaten by vermin or forcibly taken by others didn't seem like a sure bet to me. Why would you pour your blood, sweat and tears into acquiring things that were so easy to lose?
It motivated me to divert my efforts towards academic and creative pursuits. The way I saw it, if everything was taken from me, if I were locked in solitary confinement, I would still have my mind. Every skill & interest stored there was untouchable. No thief was deft enough to rob my thoughts. No moth had the physical ability to crawl into my head.
I had this safety thing figured out. I didn’t even need to worry about the, “storing up my treasures in heaven,” part. My brain was an unassailable vault. Wherever I went, I took it with me. As long as I was alive, no one could touch it. Until something did.
Have you ever contracted Norovirus? & Yes, if you look it up, “Norovirus,” is one word. I am a guy who’s gone three rounds against Covid-19 (not for lack of vaccination) and I can personally tell you that Noro is my least favorite viral infection to fight off.
I came down with it the night before I sent out last month’s Gutter Zine. I was in the theater watching Dune Pt II with my 15-year-old when I felt the first symptoms creeping in. The next morning, I woke up in a fog. I sent off Issue #15 and then with the inexorable gravity of Shalai Hulud, Noro rose from the Arrakeen sands and engulfed me completely.
I lost 3 days to fever dreams.
Recovering my physical strength took another week, but even after I was up and moving, something was off.
My mind is not a quiet place. It rocks and writhes with new ideas for sketches/stories/articles/projects incessantly. This would be a brag if all these ideas were good, but trust me when I tell you they are not. Most days feel like surfing - riding some waves & letting others pass me by. Sometimes things get too loud. Sometimes I wipe out. My headspace may get chaotic, but it’s never boring & that’s the way I like it. Post-Noro? All thoughts fell silent. I had nothing to say. I had nothing to draw. I felt empty in a way that I have never felt before.
This silence was the opposite of peaceful. It was ominous, deafening & alien.
I’d stare at my article outline, and I’d even plink away at my keyboard, but nothing came together - not even a rough draft. Pencil in hand, I’d open my sketchbook and then close it again. I’d stare off into space thinking about…nothing. Literally nothing. My head had been robbed. The thief had broken in & the moth had consumed. I no longer felt like myself.
Now, we are somewhere in the middle of the article, but you already know how it ends. Consider the facts: Thus far, I have described what may be characterized as a general creative-block which set in at the beginning of March. You are reading about it in an article published in April, so you know I made it through. The only real question is how did I make it. I got by with a little help from my friends, specifically Martin Luther, the 16th century theologian & John Lennon, the 20th century philosopher. Luther gave me the conceptual tools to understand the nature of my descent & Lennon helped me see that the obstacle in my the path was the path itself.
“We are all beggars. This is the truth.”
These are the last written words of the 16th century German theologian Martin Luther. It was found scrawled on a piece of paper beside his death bed in 1546. Luther is best remembered by history as spearheading the Protestant separation from the Roman Catholic Church in Germany. To understand a thinker, be they a philosopher or theologian, it is important to contextualize the question or problem they were addressing in their day and age. Martin Luther’s primary concern was the centrality of Grace. Now to the modern ear, grace is an aesthetic term. Hearing the word makes us think of Swan Lake or immersive Monet exhibitions, but Luther was dealing with the word in a technical academic setting. Grace describes a gift of God to an undeserving recipient. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus Christ taught that God the Father, “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45) The warmth of the sun and the revivifying rain are gifts of Grace given to humanity regardless of their allegiance to good or evil.
Now the crux of Luther’s theological outlook was this: He saw human salvation and faith itself as gifts of Grace given by God the Father as freely as he gives the rain. The Roman Church affirmed that salvation began as a work of God’s Grace, but they held that good works were needed to complete the salvific process which proved to be the irresolvable difference that splintered western Christianity into Protestant and Catholic. “We are all beggars,” are fitting final words for a person who spent his academic career writing and arguing for the centrality of Grace to human life and salvation.
Martin Luther’s words cast a long shadow, and they hold up surprisingly well centuries later. Consider who you are today. Think about what you own, think about what you have accomplished, and before you take credit ask yourself, “Would you enjoy the same level of material comfort and personal success if you had been born 2000 years ago?” We are who we are and we have what we have because we were born in a place and time we did not select. The cosmic circumstances that form our lives, both good and bad, lie well beyond our ability to select or control. Whether you understand sunrise and rainfall as gifts of Grace or as the giant mechanisms baked into an eternal universe does not nullify the fact that each and every human on earth lives life as a beggar under heaven.
In my pre-noro hubris, I believed that my intellectual and creative abilities were my own. I believed they were as intrinsic to my person as my eye color. My mistake was confusing the effort I invest in developing these skills with their primary cause. I was living a lie. The truth is this: my mind, my thoughts, my practice and my creativity were gifts that a 72-hour viral infection had the power to revoke. The source of my distress was not the effect Norovirus had on my body. I was in distress because of my failure to recognize that there was nothing innate about my innate ability. Creativity shines down like the sun. Thought itself falls from heaven like the rain. I may lift a beggar's cup to gather droplets from the sky, but I can not cause the rain.
“I am an artist. If you give me a fucking tuber, I’ll get you something out of it.”
It is important to note that John Lennon never said this. Lennon’s actual quote was, “I’m an artist. If you give me a tuba, I’ll get you something out of it.”
The two points of difference (the lack of an expletive and the presence of an actual instrument ) make the original decidedly less egotistical than the misquote recorded above. I first heard this line in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed where Jack Nicholson’s Bostonian accent made “Tuba,” sound like “Tuber.” For those who don’t know, a tuber is a class of root-vegetables including potatoes, carrots and beets. Up until writing this article, I lived my life thinking that John Lennon was so confident in his creative prowess that he could make art out of anything - even tubers. I actually imagined him and Yoko Ono in a post-Beatles recording session rubbing plant roots together to make the world’s squeakiest experimental album. They’d probably name it, “Back to Our Roots,” or something.
I think Lennon’s point becomes significantly less pretentious once you know he was talking about an instrument (a tuba) he wasn’t known for playing as opposed to a conglomeration of veggies. With all that said, the miss-quote that lives in my head rent free and as it turns out, it helped me.
Norovirus had taken away my familiar instruments and left me with a pile of carrots. I had nothing to work with, so I’d have to work with nothing. I couldn’t write about anything. What if I wrote about…nothing? More specifically, what if I wrote about The Nothing I was experiencing? Beggars cannot be choosers, so I picked up what I lacked and wrote about what I missed.
At this point, I am in danger of fucking up my whole article. I could leave you with the impression that my imagination is robust beyond belief. After all, I created something out of nothing. I am an artist. We can get things out of tubers. Waddup John Lennon?
I am a devout subscriber to the Latin phrase, Ex Nihilo, Nihil Fit - Out of Nothing, Nothing is Made.
After being hollowed out by Norovirus, after living in the deafening silence of a burgled mind, I can not in good conscience conceive of my creative output as my innate, untouchable possession. Creativity is a treasure, but it is very much a treasure on earth. Age and disease approach with a silent, inevitable tread. In time, these thieves will rob me all of my ability to imagine and they will rob me blind. I assumed I’d spend the rest of my life drawing. I assumed I’d spend the rest of my life writing. Though it is my intention to continue in both these practices, I know one day we will part ways. These are not my treasures to lay up. They are gifts to receive and they are gifts to give.
I am thankful for the inspiration and ability to write this article. It seemed to come from nowhere, but I know that is not true. I am not the clouds and I am not the rain. My mind is the tin cup I lift to heaven as I pray for rain to fall. This Norovirus helped me become what I always was, a beggar beneath the sky.
It was a kind of death & that was the start of something. Something New.
I’ll catch ya next month on the 3rd,
-JT⚡
P.S. There is more to Gutter Zine than the article. I send a monthly email newsletter with mini-articles, mixtapes and comics that never grace the face of LowArtPunk.com. If you want more, subscribe to Gutter Zine through the contact page & enter the creative speakeasy!
