Art as a medium of processing pain

I shared some writing a while back taken from philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen’s wonderful book A Philosphy of Pain.  He makes a convincing argument that the way a culture is set up to either deny or validate pain has huge effects on us and he makes another enlightening argument about the psychodynamics where by pain is passed off or put onto others, often scapegoats, by individuals who really do not have the depth or willingness to process and work through their own pain or difficult feelings of envy, deficiency and lack.   It’s got me to thinking how often in Western culture we are encouraged to rise above pain, put it behind us or pass it off onto others, labelling them in some way with all kinds of terms or diagnoses.

An alternative way of dealing with our pain, and something I see a lot of on WordPress, is looking to and finding some form of artistic self expression dealing with symbols which act as containers or transformers for the pain we have had to face and deal with in life.   The pain of longing for love and being denied it is one very strong theme both in my own blog and in the poetry, prose and writings of others on here and I feel the value of platforms like WordPress mean we have a place to process our feelings while at the same time sharing them with others, which is a far better alternative to acting them inwards in self harm, addiction or self abuse or outwardly on unwitting subjects.

I could not help but think of Guillermo Del Toros’ award winning movie The Shape of Water as I read through the chapters of Vetlesen’s book at lunch time.  I was interested to take a look at Guillermo’s astrology chart after seeing the movie a few weeks ago to see that strong water influences in his chart, Neptune (which rules the collective unconscious as well as the sea) in Scorpio and Chiron in Pisces (ruled by Neptune) and that in the past few years Neptune has been passing over by transit that natal Chiron which relates to wounding and healing as well as the deeper split with between our instinctive and instinctual animal sides and the human or spiritual and intellectual side of us as humans which has the power both to process and defend against pain.  One of the most difficult scenes to watch in that movie was seeing the sea creature being chained and tortured with a cattle prod by the sadistic lead character, it’s a powerful image that I am sure a lot of us could relate to.

Like it or not as humans we are bound in life to suffer and to be subject to pain.  Vetlesen makes the point in his book that it is our very vulnerability and dependency which makes us suffer.

Our exposure to pain and our lack as beings admittedly tinges our lives with gravity.  But these basic characteristics of our existence certainly do not pull us unambiguously in the direction of dwelling on what causes pain.  For to be susceptible to pain means being sensitive and to be sensitive means to be able to experience what is good: to be given what is good by others, in the form of love and care.  That is why when sensitivity is worn down, when hardening and numbness replace it, the individual not only avoids the vulnerability of possibly being rejected and insulted but also the joy of being met, seen and accepted when one opens up and exposes oneself in one’s vulnerability.  The person who for some reason or other is no (longer) capable of being affected, cannot be affected in a good way either, in a life supportive and affirmative way.  To encapsulate oneself as a result of self imposed or dictated hardening risks, becomes a strategy for losing affectedness with all that is good in the world, all that makes life worth living.  A zest for life and joy, an urge to make contact and the appetite for gaining knowledge and wisdom, curiously regarding the unknown and untried…. that we are in a state of lack in a basic sense disposes us to want to enrich and expand ourselves through contact with the good in the world…. to protect everything that is good rather than destroy it.  While transportation (projection) of pain is tje common denominator of all the ways in which inner lack and pain are enacted, with the maltreatment or ruin of other human beings as a result, the transformation of pain is the alternative and corrective to the transportation of pain.  The incentive to affirm and protect that good in the world is just as basic and eradicable as its opposite.

And such transformation of our pain can be affected through our art, through poetry, through writing, through painting, through film, through acting and other mediums as well as through good therapy.  Through such mediums we can explore both our desire to destroy as well as create, we can explore our feelings as a result of abuse and projection of pain and through taking the time to work with and wrestle with our pain in this way, we make containers which can both give form and expression as well as effect within us a kind of trans substantiation of the legacy of pain we may have been bequeathed by circumstances or re-enacted unconsciously before.

I was really grateful to read about this idea in Vetelesen’s book today, as the time as I was considering a line from my last poem Breath of Air.   ‘past pain…… can never be a force of freedom.’  I often question what I write, one of the issues of having an enquiring mind that likes to look at all angles…..and on reflection although I agree partially with this line I wrote I also see that past pain can in fact be a source of great insight and learnign too, not something that needs to be thrown away, disowned or discarded but rather mined for a meaning which may in time bring freedom of some kind.