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I will expound developments I made while reading the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic accounts, and they will collectively be an indirect review in the process...

After reading Tarkovsky’s autobiography, I can’t help but feel utterly overwhelmed, disturbed, and changed in some profound way. My own considerations and world views have been upturned. Parts of Sculpting in Time were so engrossing and beautifully told (even penetrating the sometimes overly literal translation of Kitty Hunter-Blair) that I couldn’t contain my sense of inner delight, and I’d spontaneously release these monosyllabic mutters. That is how Tarkovsky is defined; his poetry is jaw-droppingly affective through any language. And that should be obvious if you’ve ever seen his films.


Science and technology are stifling our humanity and closing us off from one another, somehow paradoxically. Consider the interconnectivity of the Internet and its possibilities contrasted with its current predominant uses. Then, look at the burgeoning medical sciences, which are viewed as panaceas that are supposed to prolong life, but the field can’t regard the inner concept of life itself. They function to enhance life by the sheer extension of it. Tarkovsky, instead, urges a return to spiritual, artistic pursuits in opposition to this emerging, seething, immoral reality. Initially, it seemed regressive to me, but it is in fact a promotion of total emotional availability. His optimism transmits a world of the past, a reflection of tranquil personal belief in beauty. We’ve been conditioned to believe the immediate, the believable, the rational order of events and nature in exhaustive contemporary life, rejecting the extraordinary and the magical, because they don’t fall in alignment with natural orders and therefore allow proliferation of myth. In generalized terms, it’s unacceptable to dwell in the beauty of dreams; they are instead crushed and transformed into the ordinary so-called “realism.� In place of intuitive creativity, modern society gives rise to these approximate outlets - fantastical universes of sorcery and make-believe (sometimes, sadly, physically reenacted like LARP) - that do little more than superficially entertain and obscure our actual human identities. (As a gamer, I recognize the air of speciousness, but the games I play do engage me artistically and philosophically).

After the most difficult period of my life in the last twenty-six years, I recognize that I once considered our formal higher education system to be righteous. I encouraged the pursuit of it another person’s life in both direct and indirect ways, and I suffered the consequences. This is because, as a culture, we do not properly prepare people spiritually, morally, and emotionally in these institutions. The development of these concepts is ordered and confined to the home, church, synagogue, place of worship. It’s common belief that they must be separate, and not only are they detached, but they have also been corrupted. The family unit is in disarray. Organized religion merely tells stories, promotes sexism, and transforms personal responsibility into conformism. To return, there’s a strange coldness, lack of understanding, and finality in a person so utterly concentrated on higher education. Focus on strict memorization of information gives birth to false sense of superiority and undeniable mockery. Regurgitating information without personal interpretation is inhumane. I’ve seen it happen repeatedly even within myself. From post-modernism and post-irony, scholars have this gravitational pull to supreme condescension for any and all things through relentless sarcasm and Internet memes. It’s ironically vapid. These are people too lazy to comprehend or recognize their own emotional boundaries and the range of human emotion, so they attempt to distance or elevate themselves from their own reality creating viral, self-generating elitist drivel. (Philip K. Dick called these people ‘androids� for their inability to sincerely empathize � “the battle between the authentic human being and the automotive reflex machine�). All of these foci are purely earthly, telluric, and profane; they fail at satire and make no serious attempt to propose self-reflection or more enlightened analyses. It’s outright rudeness and disdain for the capacity of the human condition, because these people have no understanding of it. (The “We're better than you, because we can criticize without offering solutions� attitude isn't very moral, now is it?) And they don’t care either, because it doesn’t fit into their narrow view of superior conquests. Over the past six months, I personally drew these associations and tried to express them verbally or textually in journals, sometimes on the verge of self-destruction. While I may have failed in this review, at least I have made an effort to connect to my own humaneness. When you realize utter rationality severs emotional possibilities, you might stop to think about your behavior. Sadly, it doesn’t surprise me that I am ignored by people who are emotionally stunted and think that sheer mockery is a hipster lifestyle and a sustainable culture, whether they were instilled with these deflective measures by their parents or peers, it arose out of cowardice to understand human purpose, or it’s an innate attribute of people with the supposed inability to form loving relationships. I really don’t know, and it’s not like these people will ever offer sensible sincerity and give me the time of day to find out.

We must recognize that man (and woman) needs art just as he/she needs food, water, shelter, clothes, and a binding relationship. I literally believe, as Tarkovsky does, it’s as important as those typically regarded fundamental needs. By its nature, creation of art is a therapy, a way to pursue ideals that inevitably clash with rampant, suppressive conformism in society. Art is born of human identity (though Tarkovsky would say, “Art is born out of an ill-designed world,� and he’d also be correct). Art is a pure sense of the transcendent; for those that can’t understand that � those who think art can exclusively function as an inside joke or in a reverse meta-pulp way (the stigma of “so bad it’s good�) � miss the point. Art and entertainment are two different things, and that’s my fundamental criticism with “artists� who don’t take themselves seriously. If you’re just creating jokes, you’re an entertainer. You exist for yourself only, to snicker at your own perceived ingenuity. It’s one thing to reserve self-criticism and sense of humor about one’s faults as a coping mechanism and another entirely to exploit other people for suckers by producing work that appeals to inherent intrigue for something people don’t understand. (The fact is, there’s next to nothing to understand). Modern art is more aligned with earthly trivialities when it should be seeking transcendence. It lacks the ability to tap into humanity, and it’s unmemorable, because it’s gaudy, decorated kitsch. The intelligent, artistically attuned people (not phony misguided artists), regardless of formal education or what have you, have a fundamental need to assimilate themselves into the spectrum. Anyone can appreciate art if they are provided with resonant images � they will form the necessary relationships and want to talk about their emotional responses. Instead, there is a growing movement of simplistic perversion as a means of meaningful subversion (like the difference between David Cronenberg and Eli Roth, for example). These entertainers are shock artists and want us to pay attention to them. That’s it. They have nothing to say about human experience, only human reflex. A temporary jolt is not the same as a core disturbance. It requires no emotional consideration and can be dismissed until the next perverse thing comes along.

Tarkovsky writes about modern man’s uncaring attitude about his spiritual wellbeing. This essentially recalls the previous discussion of science and technology. Spiritual wellbeing is the wellbeing of all � a consciousness that considers others over material possessions and competitive pop cultural pasquinade. The latter is hopeless. It still surprises me how Tarkovsky’s words have allowed me to realize my own criticism of humanity. Yes, I am distanced and somewhat unsympathetic because of personal experiences, because I’ve been treated like more of an object than a person and a default acquaintance than a responsive friend. I need to share my enthusiasm for communal aspects of art regardless of whether people respond or not, and this is a manner of rediscovering humanity instead of harboring malice. I recognize that people are too easy on themselves, but I should focus on the issue that lay beyond that. I should be combating the widespread acquiescence pushed by corporate spokesmen, who wish to guide society’s every interest in total complacency. Who out there still loves to dig through a random bin of albums at their local record store? Instead of mining our past, we can’t even relish in the present moment, so it’s skipped like a less immediately absorbing track on a CD. Modern culture doesn’t want us to examine our distant reflections but automatically consume what’s in front of our faces like machines.


My increasing affinity for wordless music, narration-less films has been further developed by Tarkovsky’s book. I wish to appreciate the emphasis on the inherent quality/focus of the art form itself. Cinema is visual motion, so therefore it should command those themes instead of falling back upon preexisting painterly or literary qualities. Of course literature and paintings can be referenced in film (as Tarkovsky always did), but they must be contextualized in a poetic manner that can only be realized in cinema. Otherwise, we should be seeking the essence of that physically manifested art. I mentioned the hindrance of narration in a recent review of Béla Tarr’s Turin Horse film, and that may just be personal preference, but I really dislike the establishment of events with words in cinema. It’s unimaginative. Cinema needs to set its own standards and be judged by its ability to authentically create a universe. After reading Sculpting in Time, I just feel like I have endless pages of memoirs to fill myself. None of it would be half as interesting or complete as Tarkovsky’s expressions, but they would at least strive for artistic philosophical realization. To fail at that is better than to succeed or realize something impure, wholly rational, devoid of emotion, mechanical. Humanity is not a collection of people; it's a quality. It is asking yourself how and why you did or did not respond to something. For a moment during the closing pages, I possessed the eventual goal of donating most everything I own, grabbing a couple interested people, and moving to the middle of nowhere in Northern Washington to be surrounded by a limitless beauty. The modern world is stifling our creativity, our patience, our values, and Tarkovsky knew it. My friend Dan who’s said that civilization will eventually return to its purist, simplest forms, knows it, too. Of course, his pessimistic words do not carry the same weight as Tarkovsky’s � they are the cynical toll to the Russian director’s ringing hope for humanity. But the destination is the same.