21st Century Symphony Manifesto

Artistic Assumptions

1.) The universe is a process

2.) This process is the ‘becoming’ of soul

3.) Human beings have one foot in the world of soul, but remain mostly in matter

4.) History moves in cycles, and time is accelerating these cycles

5.) Awareness of cycles, and consciously rejecting them, is how soul creates itself out of matter

6.) The purpose of writing is to reveal cycles, which are tragic, and to overcome tragedy through transcendent stories

7.) These stories must be grand in scope and theme, yet accessible

8.) Beauty is not an end. Beauty is a means.

9.) A story that is mostly ambiguous and weird without guiding intention is useless

10.) Archaic notions of God and soul must be revived for the 21st Century

11.) Notions of God cease to be archaic when they speak to history as a process of overcoming

12.) The material world of the 21st Century, by the end of our lifetimes, will be transformed into something entirely new, as it has for our grandparents

13.) This transformation is the slow climb of matter toward the world of soul

14.) This transformation is in human hands – all human beings are free to affirm cycles, or affirm faith in the great becoming

15.) Making art that is in dialogue with the becoming is a truly Human act, above the state of Animality. Animality exists mired in cycle without change

16.) Relativism, or a refusal to believe that history is a process of becoming, is of course entirely fine. But it will never be relevant and will only affirm depression and cycle.

17.) Postmodernism is a great fleeing. The next stage of history will be the great return.

18.) Life is suffering, and the choice to live in spite of this is inherently heroic

19.) That heroism is the core of all art

20.) That heroism, in itself, is enough reason to be

21.) The artist who affirms life, and the future of clarity rather than the present state of confusion, is a hero and a knight of faith

Alexander Blum is the author of 21st Century Slave .

His website on politics, philosophy, religion and art can be found here: www.alexanderblum.net