The Promised Land Project: Rising Above the Twentieth-Century Artistic Vision of Demoralization and Isolation

Turning Vision into Action....at least hypothetically

Strike up the music of the band
We're blazing a trail for the promised land
Heaven on earth is within you.

Through the writing of stories, poetry, essays, and a novel, I’ve creatively contended with the consumer culture and the problem of the ideal in the modern era. This preoccupation in time would lead to a vision of cultural transformation and where I believe our democratic society needs to go to truly progress beyond the modern era. Conceding my limited credibility, this blog provides a synthesis of recognized visionaries, poets, and writers with the objective of making a credible argument. Ultimately, it is a certain feeling the project strives to inspire and sustain on a certain level, making more vital use of poetry and the arts; consequently whether one agrees or not is less important than whether one senses it and feels it over time.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Rising Above the Twentieth-Century Artistic Vision of Demoralization and Isolation

The poetic genius that took hold of the 19th-century Whitman, extolling and exalting the westward expansionist average working man and woman, winds up at the other coast by the end of the twentieth century in the grim realties of Charles Bukowski. While Whitman addresses the subject proactively in the celebration of the spirit, Bukowski addresses the subject reactively in a demoralized and estranged society. Bukowski’s writings indulge our cynicism, pride, and misanthropy and does it well with humor. Because we’re in the land of opportunity, conversely, we’re also in the land of a sense of failure. Turning pain into art, Bukowski’s poetry, provides some alleviation to our own pain and validation to our feelings, much like the subjects of Edward Hopper’s paintings and the music of Miles Davis.

Imbued in the course of my own writing – my novella and stories, my poetry, my novel – there is a degree of continuity in my art, whatever its artistic merit may be, a “searching” quality that might be described as the striving to rise above despair and the misanthropic impulse to attain hope and faith in our human nature.

Back in 2002, after prolonged rumination on the poetry of Walt Whitman, compounded by other influences and my own personal odyssey, specific events would instigate a foundational shift in my view of human nature and how we can progress as a society. This would lead to a vision, a dreamer’s disposition to create order out of disorder.

Turning this vision into action is what I'm calling "The Promised Land Project", which to date consists mostly of numerous essays and this blog. Hypothetically, this vision can lend itself towards a revitalization of the moral culture, a renaissance in the arts, and the restoration of a collective sense of progress through the promotion of the human spirit.