Drink

One of my favorite driving songs starts out, "Pretty girls come from the ugliest places, you come from the worst of them all." The same, I think, can be said of a lot of art. I'm in a British Literature class right now (lit is really the only art I'm ever exposed to these days - I'm not much of an actual art fan, and the music I listen to can hardly be called food for the soul), and so much of it is in reaction to tragedy, grief, loss, destruction.

We were assigned to read a poem written by a Jewish soldier who was killed at twenty-eight years old while on patrol outside the Western Front trenches in WWI. It follows a rat through the trenches full of scared doughboys, both Axis and Allies, and claims that the rat has it better than they do.

Another poem - "The Convergence of the Twain" by Thomas Hardy - paints a haunting but beautiful picture of the Titanic, the picture of British opulence and technological progress, lying on the bottom of the Atlantic, covered in blind fish that could care less about what it was above the surface. It's about a depressing event, but it's one of the most beautiful pieces I've read in a really long time.

Of course there's Charles Dickens who used the notorious workhouses of London - a stark example of "hell on earth" - as the backdrop of so many of his novels.

And Christians turn to the hymn "It is Well with my Soul," the story of Job, and the book of Lamentations as representations of suffering-turned-beauty.

It sounds a little upside-down, but it makes me wonder what art will come from hell's gates. I have never nor will ever claim to be an expert in theology, and in my simple mind "hell" still means the pictures from my children's Bible that show souls wandering through eternal fire. Maybe each inhabitant's version of hell will be different according to that person, and all the artists will either be void of creativity or satiated with ideas with no medium to let them out. But if Lewis' picture of hell is right and we all wander around freely, what will be the quality of the art that is produced from hell, the place of ultimate suffering? If people are able to produce literature, music, sculptures, paintings, dances with the unbridled genius that they possessed in life, can you imagine the depth, the raw emotion, the terrific honesty that will fill these mediums and scream out the eternal pain and depravity that lurks within?

Will there be anger? At whom? Will there be regret? Will some stubborn souls still shake their fists at God and scream "Do something" as He shakes His great head and replies "I did"? Will there be sorrow for those who were found and separated from those who lurk below? Will there be fear? Will there still be doubt?

Things that keep me up at night. No wonder I'm a caffeine addict by day.