If you are a true artist, you have to entertain the fact that God may exist. A touchy subject, but political and religious controversy are the artist’s playground. Does the artist have the luxury of dismissing any possibility? In the creative act? No. In the context of a work of art? Yes. The artist must consider two basic perspectives, their own belief and value systems and those of the subject of the work.

Let’s conduct a philosophical thought experiment on the perspective of perfection. For example, if I were to give you a six dollar bill and ask you to buy me a coffee, you wouldn’t be able too. I would ask why, and you would reply that this bill is useless. But why is that?
Because a six dollar bill doesn’t exist. If I gave you a five dollar bill, you would think nothing of it. A counterfeit five dollar bill exists for the sole reason of pretending to be a real five dollar bill. This is the difference between a lie and a falsehood. A lie is made to look exactly like the truth; a falsehood is the opposite of the truth. It is often difficult to spot a lie, but a falsehood is plainly obvious. A falsehood is a powerful tool in exposing the purity and simplicity of truth. The lie on the other hand can mask it. Lies need someone to believe in them in order for them to have power and it has to mimic logic for someone to do so. The counterfeit, lie and falsehood all make it plain that the true version or perfect version has to exist. You can’t counterfeit something that doesn’t exist, which is why you can’t counterfeit a six dollar bill. Imperfection counterfeits perfection, and imperfection couldn’t exist unless somehow, somewhere, perfection exists.

There is imperfection in our lives. Everything moves from order do disorder. Flowers die, dry out and biodegrade. Though the compositional elements simply change, the entity seems to strive for a certain order to itself, (that which defines it as a living entity called “flower”) which inevitably proceeds to chaos. So if imperfection exists, then perfection has to exist. It can’t not exist. Now if you were to consider the greatest ocean and how vast it is and endow it with perfection, then take the tiniest particle known to man and endow it with imperfection, and drop it into this great ocean, despite the miniscule scale of the imperfect particle, the whole ocean will become imperfect. No matter how perfect the ocean is, because one of the smallest of its parts is now imperfect, it renders the whole ocean imperfect, due to that one tiniest of flaws.

We must therefore concede that perfection exists somewhere. I use perfection synonymously with truth because the truth is perfect, it is extraordinarily simple. The truth does not lend itself to interpretation. It’s perfect, what does it need added to itself in order for it to be communicated? Nothing. The truth is self- sustaining like perfection. It does not need anyone to believe in it in order for it to exist, nor does it need anything or anyone else in order for it to sustain itself. That is the ultimate beauty of perfection and truth. Religion personifies it, gives it a name and a place, and has formulas and rituals by which you can connect with it. When you attempt to interpret the truth however, you end up with doctrine, which can never replace truth, as all religions attempt to do. The true artist tries to strip away these interpretations to expose the truth, often with its falsehoods and counterfeits. There is the opposition, there is the life, the life of art.

I often entertain the notion that there may have been a time when humans were perfect, that the origin of man is from perfection. Since the imperfect human exists, I must assume somehow we were once an image of an entity that was perfect. I truly believe that perfection and truth in fact can be personified, since we are our own living evidence of something human and perfect that once was, and that the human condition is the source of this origin, and that perfection and truth are in fact sentient and self aware as we understand it. If we have an imperfect version of self awareness, then a perfect version has to exist, or at least at one time did. If we have a superconscious, or will, or soul, is there or was there once a perfect version of this that was its origin? If so, what happened?

This is the depth to which artists explore themselves, and great courage it does take, and to communicate this to others with such devout liberty. Philosophers can continue to talk and write about what it is and define what it means, but the artist lives it and experiences the meaning of existence in real time. We have access to perfection and its characteristics since our existence is based on it. So this perfection and truth, being self aware and sentient and omniscient, because it is perfect, imbues us with a depth of the human condition that we could never hope to fathom. Yet as artists we try. I am simply saying that ignoring the possibility is not what artists do, they should never ignore possibilities, but explore them all. In fact, unlike religion, art can go beyond the limits and boundaries established by society and ritualistic cultures. What a beautiful thing.

And there is another point to be made about our innate and instinctual existence in this light. If humans were in fact to have been immersed in perfection, as perfection, at some point in our past, then we can trace the origin of some of our most basic needs, namely food, shelter, water and procreation. The perfect human would not need to eat or drink since it was self- sustaining and would live forever. It would not need to procreate since again it would live forever. Shelter would not have been an issue if the earth was in a state of balance and perfection. So what would the purpose be for having these desires, and where would they have come from? All compulsions, cravings and addictions stem from these needs, though they were not needs initially. In fact, these original instincts were designed to bring us pleasure, a pleasure that would allow an innocent indulgence in perfection. But now these timeless needs are ever necessary and have often developed into gluttonous and addictive behaviors. We now have to struggle for balance at our own expense instead of originally, when this balance and harmony was the default, and nothing could cause the slightest disruption.
But how could we have known? As a person that is born blind does not know what darkness is, since they never saw light. How could perfection identify itself as perfect if it never knew imperfection. Today, we can only attempt to experience perfection through our imagination – enter, art.

Can perfection communicate with imperfection or vice versa? Everything that is imperfect came from perfection, therefore all those things they have in common may provide a commonality they both can use to appeal to each other since imperfection and its abilities are finite and therefore limited. How would or could perfection make imperfection understand what perfect is or means, and vice versa. It can’t, but doesn’t necessarily mean it wouldn’t try. Perfection couldn’t allow itself to be touched by imperfection, for it would make it imperfect, unless of course perfection is so perfect it is immune. Is there a way that we as imperfect beings can somehow connect intimately with perfection? In part two of this article I will show that we as humans in fact innately desire to connect to perfection, and that, by definition, is called the act of intimacy, and goes a long way towards explaining a lot of things about our human condition.