October 12, 2024

Between Dream and Reality

In the — at least by city standards — large garden of the apartment where I temporarily lived about four years ago, I enjoyed my afternoon cigar on a garden chair next to a tiny pond. Sometimes neighborhood cats would visit; this time, it was a beautiful black cat, with a small white tip on its tail. I saw it playing intently with something. When I looked closer, I noticed the object of its play was a small frog, which had apparently just curiously crawled out of the pond. The cat had bitten off one of the frog’s legs and was gently nudging the little creature with one of its front paws. The frog tried to crawl away, but of course, the cat was too quick for it and bit off another leg from the poor creature. At that point, the frog could no longer move forward. Immediately, the game was over. The cat lost interest, licked its paw clean, gave me a vacant look, and in one swift, graceful movement, jumped onto the fence and then walked elegantly toward the next garden.

Many people believe that nature is ‘beautiful’ not only because of its outward appearance — beautiful animals, flowers, trees, landscapes — but also because of the consistency with which it, and thus life, is structured. Everything is connected to everything else; it is one large, living, symbiotic organism. Magnificent! Only humans are a different story — humans, and of course primarily the male variant, are cruel, warlike beings who are destroying the oh-so-beautiful nature. Sure, predators also kill their fellow creatures, but that is precisely part of the natural balance; they never kill out of cruelty.
The concept of ‘dream’ can refer both to the activity of our brains during sleep and to an ideal we want to realize. In both cases, there is a difference from what we usually understand as ‘reality.’ The dream is the beautiful cat slinking gracefully through the wonderfully fragrant freshly mown grass; reality is the frog that has just been cruelly mangled by it, or the smell of the mown grass that, in reality, is an expression of fear — a warning to other plants.

Are ‘dream’ (both brain activity and ideal) and ‘reality’ entirely separate worlds, or is there a hybrid area where both domains merge? Can we separate the ideal image of the cat from its cruelty? Can we separate Wagner’s music, or Heidegger’s ideas about ‘Being,’ from their abhorrent anti-Semitic texts? It would be comforting if this were possible — a hybrid form always has something uncomfortable about it. We feel uncertain, plagued by doubt; it’s like walking on an icy sidewalk. Moreover, doesn’t the separation between dream and reality have something very appealing, or even more strongly, isn’t that separation a prerequisite for the dream to exist? Especially as an ideal, for that is a form of desire, and desire can only exist if it is never fulfilled.

Does art exist in this hybrid borderland? Art is an expression of both our imagination and our ideals — the latter perhaps not always (directly) on an ethical level, but certainly on an aesthetic one. On the other hand, its creations exist in our reality, in the form of paintings, texts, sculptures, performances, or concerts. At the same time, art in that reality is elusive. We can hold the score, the book, or the painting, but the music that plays, the sensation of viewing the painting, or reading the novel or poem — the essence of the artwork — remains elusive, and our judgment of it is hard to capture in words.

My father was a man who rejected every hybrid form. Doubt was a sin. At the same time he was a religious man. When I asked him in a conversation about Zeno, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” he replied, without a moment’s hesitation: “Show me the chicken, and show me the egg, and I’ll tell you which came first.” I found it a very witty answer, but he meant it with not a trace of irony.

Perhaps we can find a synthesis of the above problem regarding the establishment of a hybrid domain. If we could determine the domain objectively, then it would become an object of reality, and thus the fulfillment of a ‘desire.’ However, when we elevate the problem to a transcendental level, both aspects — ‘dream’ and ‘reality’ — can remain intact. The hybrid area then becomes the domain where these two aspects are brought into relation with each other, not in the form of an answer, but in the form of a question; of a problem. Solving this problem is not the goal — the goal is what the question can offer us. In my view, this is precisely what art does. Art is the hybrid space between dream and reality, and it’s not about the art objects themselves, but the aesthetic act, from both the artist and the audience. Creativity lies in the act, whether it’s making or perceiving, because perceiving a work of art is also a creative act. This creative act is the hybrid domain.

Or is this a ‘Romantic, all-too-Romantic’ notion? And is Neoliberalism, practiced by its vassals, the cat — and are we, musicians and music-lovers, the frog.

— Cornelis de Bondt, October 12, 2024