There is the famous quote from Marshall McLuhan: “We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” Someone loaded on Google Video an hour long conversation between Marshall McLuhan and Normal Mailer recorded by CBC in 1968. I have always found the rear-view mirror metaphor fascinating. Here is how Marshall explained it to Norman Mailer (the quote via Bava Tuesdays):
“Every age creates as an Utopian image a nostalgic rear-view mirror image of itself, which puts it thoroughly out of touch with the present. The present is the enemy. The present is the—and this will delight you Norman—the present is only faced in any generation by the artist. The artist is prepared to study the present as his material because it is the area of challenge to the whole sensory life, and therefore it is anti-Utopian, it is a world of anti-values. And the artist who comes into contact with the present produces an avant-garde image that is terrifying to his contemporaries.”
A quote, a book, a reference, a law is a bullet proof protection from the sensory experience of the “now”. Seeing that the emperor has a nice suit is looking at the emperor through the reference point of the rear-view mirror, but the child has not developed that “skill” yet. That’s why people relate so strongly to children’s art, exuberant and unfiltered. An artist picks up that vibe and refines his palate, he touches the world directly, unburdened by the inter-mediating interpretations. He is the enemy of the state.
Illustration by Andrea Joseph
- Further Reading:
- Revolution meets Religion
- From Post-Judaism to Post-Orthodoxy
- The Present Time as a Historical Detour
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