The Perfect Wave Project: Introduction

To some degree, we're all attracted to the ideal – as we see in the movies, for example – and we live with a cultural ideal. But there's a problem when a cultural ideal lends itself to the suppression of the spirit, or demoralization, and the occlusion of sympathetic love in our society, towards others and our own selves. To help address this problem I propose a project we can call The Perfect Wave Project that strives to make greater use and integration of the arts.

For over twenty years I've been contending with the consumer culture and this problem of the ideal. To contend with this, I believe, is to draw on and emphasize certain aspects of the moral culture, which includes a societies religions, traditions, the mythos (the stories a society tells about itself), ideals, history, and the arts. Concerning the latter, The Perfect Wave Project reflects Walt Whitman's approach but expands to include all of the arts, including poetry as art.

Recognizing and addressing this problem I believe can be a boon to the local arts scene. There's much competition among artists and arts groups for limited funding and attention. Yet I believe we could weave a collective approach that can be a boon to all involved and potentially expand the funding base. The project itself shouldn't necessarily be part of any art institution but enable such an institution to make use of it. I've outlined some guiding principles that I believe could lead to its success as follows:

1. Weave mutually beneficial relationships among artists and arts groups.
2. Enable both individual artists and arts groups to creatively make it their own.

Besides the obvious surfing reference, use of the term perfect is informed and reconciled by influences such as follows:

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
-- from Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric"

"Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil. No absolute is going to make the lion lie down with the lamb unless the lamb is inside. It is no good casting out devils. They belong to us, we must accept them and be at peace with them."
-- D.H. Lawrence

In the Biblical passage where the Apostle Paul addresses the Cornithians, he makes reference to a "thorn in his side." Recognizing his own weakness, he'd appealed to God to remove this thorn. The answer, Paul relates as follows:

But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'