The Gift of Obscurity and a Church Service about Suicide
The definition of “obscurity” is the condition of being unknown…
Wow… I haven’t posted in a week. It’s been an exciting week! So let’s get into it.
One… I could use your help, and I’ll tell you at the end what’s that with.
Two… let’s first discuss the gift of obscurity.
I was recently asked by Anthony, who stopped me at the Denver airport, how I got started in my work. I don’t know if there was an actual @scottthepainter genesis moment because in retrospect every event looks like it just natural flowed into the next obvious iteration of my career. But there were a few defining moments, one of which I shared with this budding entrepreneur.
I found myself around eight years ago in a makeshift studio in the basement of an old JCPenny’s. There was no windows. I had to take a rusty old elevator down to it. The church that owned the building kept their trash down there once a week. Basically a smelly cave.
And it was fitting for where I was at in my career. I wasn’t on staff anywhere. I wasn’t really involved in any kind of community or organizational life. I was free lance artist in limbo… in obscurity really…. Not really having a clue what was next. I bet you can relate to this at some point in your life. Maybe even presently.
According to the dictionary app on my phone, the definition of “obscurity” is the condition of being unknown…which is how I felt. But not unknown to others - I was married, I had friends - but I was unknown to myself in some way. A lot of my work thus far had been dependent on the vision and lead of others. What did I want to do? What did I want to contribute? What would I make with my one tiny and precious life if I was given the opportunity?
The question that comes to you in obscurity is “Do you have anything you want to say?”
As I sat with that question in that smelly cave… I mean… really sat with it…. for weeks…. 3 responses formed.
1. I want to talk about God.
Because it feels like every conversation eventually bangs up against the paradox of meaningfulness in the midst of utter meaninglessness, or to say it in another way, “What the fuck IS going on here?” Is there something behind this? Is there a Giver of this Miracle? Why all the suckiness, then? And does the Giver of this Miracle have anything to say about the suckiness?
I knew I wanted to talk about God and the spiritual life but the church culture I grew up in just stopped making sense. Not necessarily the theology of it, but the people peddling the theology. I wanted to talk like an honest human in the midst of a baffling existence. Poets, mystics, and recovering addicts helped me with this.
2. The art sucks, but what would you do instead?
At least christian art. Well, christian art in my lifetime. Caravaggio was genre bending in his time, but to us now they’re still old dead people in tights depicting old stories.
I wanted to make art that nodded to the grittiness of human existence but wasn’t afraid to say that I love Jesus.
One thing I picked up in art school is that you would never be celebrated in the art world if you discussed your faith in a positive way. Shit all over the whole religion and faith thing? Great! Endless awards await. Make something sincere about your tradition? Goodbye fame.
But I knew I couldn’t ignore what I loved anymore. I what kept coming out of me was a conversation with the Divine about all of this mysterious existence. I wanted to stay in that conversation, so I decided even if no one cared about my work, it was still the work I wanted to see in the world.
I remember thinking “I don’t know. Maybe some people might like it.”
3. I want to make Weird Liturgies.
My biggest critique of my religious culture, let’s say, from my own understanding based on experience, is that it could talk about somethings but not everything.
I’ll say it this way. In my 30’s, after I had lost a few friends to death, some suicide and some cancer at young ages, I realized that whatever is after this, if there is even anything, I’m not in charge of… and that mysterious unknown is very unsettling. But the religious culture I grew up in was very obsessed with afterlife and I started to wonder why this is. When no one really knows what’s after this, why spend so much time obsessing over it? My take is that the form of christian culture I grew up in obsessed over afterlife because it’s abstract, and you can utilize the fear of the unknown for your own purposes… like membership. Also, it focused on the afterlife because it felt a bit insecure about this life.
Like suicide. Why haven’t I been to a church service about suicide? What is the liturgy of the unsolvable endless paradoxes in life? What are the sacred songs about why the miracle of life sucks sometimes?
I knew I wanted to make events, gatherings, experiences that allowed the honesty and vulnerability found in a human existence. So I started…
Can you relate to this?
Have you found yourself in obscurity?
What was the conversation you uncovered there?
I’d love to hear some of your responses in the comment section.
Here’s where I could use your help.
In 2018 I started to put together my thoughts about giving up, suicide, mental health and spiritual practices into some kind of speech/ceremony/experience and I called it “a liturgy of not giving up on yourself.” I’m not a therapist, but I go to one. I’m not shrink, but I’m a person who developed my own mental/spiritual practices to counter the destructive arguments of giving up on myself, and they worked and still work for me. Also, as an artist, I thought I could offer something that didn’t seem so clinical, something that I would want to sit through.
An early muse was I wanted to make a church service about suicide… because I’ve never been to one. I didn't know everything the show would entail, but I knew it couldn't be bland and boring, like most church services are. You couldn’t have a service on suicide that was so dull you felt like killing yourself by the end of it. That seemed very counterintuitive to what I was trying to accomplish.
Eventually it developed into my one man performance art comedy storytelling show Say Yes: A Liturgy of Not Giving Up on Ourselves.
I’ve been touring this show for four years and have performed it over 100 times. I’m winding the whole thing down so I can work on the next show, but I wanted to capture the event and make this show a free resource for others who need solidarity in finding themselves struggling against the voice of giving up.
Last night I got to film it in Raleigh… and it was magical…. And I will write more this week about that experience.
But currently I’m fundraising to reach our final goal in covering some of the post production costs.
If you’ve been touched by this work, and want to help make it a free resource to anyone and everyone, your contribution would we so helpful.
Heres a video about it….
Here’s the Go Fund Me link
Thanks for your help!
Funnily enough, in obscurity, as a writer, I’ve found a conversation about my relationship with spirit, with the Giver Of Diversity. I grew up in a non-religious home with parents from two different faith traditions- my father is Muslim and my mom is Roman Catholic. It’s true that writers don’t choose what they write, what wants to be explored in the subconscious mind comes forward and, in the writing, you begin to have that conversation. It’s been pretty wild to encounter the discoveries of self, ancestral tradition and cultural bias along the way. Merton talks about moving away from tribal consciousness, and I find this is where I land constantly in my writing, in complete obscurity, in solitude, and faith (when I’m not in a self-doubt cloud!). 😬