'I Have No Faith'

Ain't Talkin' Religion

After I wrote 'Leap Into The Dark', I was challenged to write about religion, specifically, my religion. Of course I don't have one, which sort of left me at a loose end as to how to write the words. Which meant I was destined to just do an instrumental - and this is that instrumental. Just as arbitrary as my lack of faith, I picked a bunch of interesting groovy bits I had assembled and joined them together, because that's kind of the creative process when you're really stuck for making a statement.

In an ideal world, an artist makes statements, and not gestures. That is to say, an artist should work towards making good, first-order-meaning work. I know the advent of post-modernism has introduced notions of irony and distancing oneself from making grand statements because those might be misconstrued as self-aggrandisement or egomania. At the same time, the works that are brimming with playful irony and undecidability about the artists' intent about the world, or that which is full of ambivalence lean towards being artistic gestures, which in many ways do not have the power to move the audience on a visceral level. Instead it retreats into entertainment; which is fine, but we should all accept that is what is going on.
It's the difference between whether you deliver a gut punch of meaning or whether you tickle the brains instead.

That said, there are wonderful works of irony and ambivalence that make a deep study of gestures, like 'Seinfeld', so it's not a hard ad fast rule. But the world is pretty tedious when everybody's going to be reflexive, funny and garrulous. Somebody has to get up and make simple statements about the state of being. It's tough being put on the heath, howling at the wind.
It can lead you to an aporia - a speechlessness pregnant with unsaid meaning.

Which is why, in a round about way, this thing is an instrumental.


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