I’ve been trying, in fits and starts, to put together the sense of importance of our efforts, our will (individual or collective) with the mind-annihilating size and indifference of the universe, for more than a decade.
The best I’ve come up with is a challenge: If you were to create something that would, on completion, immediately be whisked away into the far depths of space never to be appreciated or even seen, what would you create?
For even more than a decade, I’ve been leaning on the answer by Ingmar Bergman:
“The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon’s head, an angel, a devil–or perhaps a saint–out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.”
(keep in mind that in Swedish there is still an appreciable gap between “shall” and “will,” so when Bergman says “I would play my part” he is saying “I want to play my part,” not that his part or his participation is inevitable.)
Not Rocket Surgery 