ATTENTION Part 5: Attention and the Arts

PART 5: ATTENTION AND THE ARTS

There's a kind of listening that isn't really listening at all. Music plays while we drive, cook, work, fill the silence that might otherwise ask something of us. And there's a kind of looking that isn't looking either, scrolling past an image, the film half-watched while a second screen holds our actual attention. We've become familiar with a way of taking in content that asks nothing of us and gives us very little back.

Iain McGilchrist has spent decades tracing what our two brain hemispheres are each for, and one of his quieter observations is this: art was never meant to be information. The left hemisphere, which is brilliant at grasping, categorising, and using, wants art to mean something, to offer a quick takeaway, a useful titbit, a catchy caption. But the right hemisphere, the one built for beholding, encounters art the way it encounters a person, or the world itself, or God. Not as a puzzle to solve but as a presence to receive. A Rembrandt doesn't want to be understood so much as met. A symphony isn't information to extract but an invitation to stand and let the sounds wash over you.

That’s not a small distinction. It's the same one drawn earlier in this series between grasping and beholding, applied to the things human beings have made across every culture and every century, in order to say something that couldn't be said any other way. Art, at its best, is one of the last remaining places our overstimulated, hurried, productivity-obsessed culture still occasionally slows down enough to practise the second kind of attention. Whether we take that opportunity, or scroll past it too, is up to us.

I think of the difference between the radio left on as company and a piece of music actually sat with, alone, in a quiet room, given the whole of my attention for the length of a single movement. The notes are the same either way. What changes is whether I let them land, or just let them go past. One is consumption. The other, if I stay with it long enough, is more like prayer.

Looking and Looking Again.

The first look at anything doesn’t tell you much. Walk past a painting once and you've registered a subject, maybe a colour, perhaps whether you like it. That's recognition, not attention. It's the same first glance a stranger's face gets before you actually know them. Real encounter asks for a second look, and often a third, because most things worth attending to don't hand over what they are all at once. They unfold the way a person does, in their own time, and on their own terms.

This is where patience really is a virtue. Stand in front of a painting for the length of time it takes to grow slightly uncomfortable, past the point where you'd normally move on, and it might be that something shifts. You notice a detail you missed. A colour you thought was one thing turns out to be doing something quite different. The painting hasn't changed, you have, simply by attending.

It's the same with a piece of music left to finish rather than skipped when it doesn't immediately reward you, or a passage of writing read twice, slowly, instead of once, quickly. Re-reading isn't inefficiency. It's how a text gets the chance to say something more to you than on the first read. Good literature, like good art, like a person, keeps much more in reserve for those who are willing to come back again.

None of this is really about art appreciation, or becoming more sophisticated in our taste. It's about using and developing the same muscle Moses used turning aside to a bush that had likely been burning a while before he noticed. The looking again is what really counts. Most of us walk past our own burning bushes daily, not because they weren't there, but because we didn't look long enough to realise their significance.

It’s an interesting time to alive, with AI on the rise, yet another technology inviting our attention. I’ve felt to be cautious, lest the outsourcing of my own slower thinking, discerning, seeking, and sifting, could eventually atrophy the human ‘muscles’ I use in that difficult process. I’ve also been pondering God’s order of things. The fact that he not only puts up with having flawed people do his prophetic, preaching, praying, declaring and caring work in the world, but that he has ordered it to be so.

Although the expression of the particular person who speaks, makes a painting, writes a book, sings in a choir, or acts in a play, is very human, and therefore not ‘perfect’, this is part of our role and divine purpose in life. We need to celebrate, treasure, and be very cautious about outsourcing God’s call to be authentic image bearers, makers and communicators who connect heart to heart and mind to mind with others – foibles and all. A call that necessarily requires great humility and courage for sure, but a call from God, none the less.

Pause and Ponder:

Since engaging with the arts can help us understand and grow in our capacity for paying attention, engaging with God, with people and our world, and walking in the Spirit:

Why not keep an eye out for different opportunities to engage in the arts that might be available in your community?

Ponder the dynamic of really listening to some great music and allowing it to move your heart in light of spending time listening to, tuning into God’s presence and voice.

Consider adding some writing, journalling, drawing, crafting, or music making into your week. What might work for you? These activities can help us slow down, be attentive, connect with our hearts, and with the Lord, in different ways.

Are there ways that you’ve pulled back from engagement, contribution, and involvement because of the intimidation of feeling you need to do it ‘perfectly’? What if perfection isn’t what the world needs? But the personal, authentic, learning, growing, trying your human best, you?