Dreaming of the Sky's Soul

I took a walk Monday evening and chanced to look up from my book to the sky. My attention was immediately arrested by two things: the silhouetted birds flying south and the endless expanse of sky behind them.

And what really struck me is that the birds were in the foreground. As I said, the sky was endless. You could throw something as far as you want, and no matter what kind of force that object has behind it, it will never reach the sky’s end. Eventually, the sky will just turn into space after the object reaches the atmosphere’s end; maybe the object could hit something like a satellite or, if it gets far enough, a planet or star, but the sky will just stretch on and on and on.

Most of the time, I see the sky only as a backdrop. I rarely think of it as something deeper than I can comprehend. It’s easy to look at it as if we are in a giant snow globe with an opaque lid that only lets the light of the sun or stars through.

But that’s easiest to think in the day. Step outside at night, and it’s almost impossible to think of the sky as a flat barrier. Just one glimpse of the stars will put paid to that idea. How do you describe stars adequately? How would you explain them to someone who can’t see? Even the description of tiny diamonds embedded in black velvet doesn’t do it justice because that’s still a flat, close-up image.

For most, I think, the sky is just one more limitation. We often like boxes and walls; they are predictable and easier to deal with than an ocean of hardship and opportunity alike. When you look at the horizon, you might see the next city, windmills, refinery smoke or the mountains. You might even envision what is beyond those peaks — maybe the next state, the coast, the ocean, or a country you can only reach by boat or plane.

But in all those scenarios, how often do we look at the sky?

And do we look at it, or beyond it?

I’m a bit of an artist, so this hits me particularly hard. Every time I look at the sky or mountains or a particularly striking landscape, I wonder what it would be like to paint it — color is hard enough, but trying to capture the depth of something ethereal and immeasurable with nothing more than a flat canvas and solid paint is daunting. It is worth trying but, again, very daunting. However, I can’t really paint very well anyway, so I stick to black-and-white drawings.

What I realized, though, is that such is the nature of art. Art imitates reality, but what it lacks is soul. Artists are incapable of capturing the soul of something. 

I’m not saying something can’t look realistic or even perfect, but the concept of “soul” is more than three-dimensional. Could we see a soul if we could perceive in four dimensions? Five? More?

What would it look like if we could perfectly capture what makes us, well, us?

The best art, of course, captures emotion. Art involving people especially tugs at us because of who we are. As someone who especially likes drawing faces and eyes, I think landscapes are beautiful, but it is only when looking into eyes — which we hear are the windows to the soul — that I really forge a connection with artwork.

Eyes offer us a glimpse into the “sky,” so to speak, of someone’s inner complexity. Everyone has this complexity. Everyone has history, dreams, special gifts, passion, hurt and more. One moment cannot capture it all, but most art can only get that brief moment frozen in time.

But all the same, artists are but tourists. Tourists try to explore the customs and culture of a country in the span of a few days, they cannot truly delve into it without actually living the life.

In the same way, artists can capture some of what is truly meaningful for them, but unless they are living the life they are trying to capture, it is almost impossible, if not truly impossible, to do it perfectly.

It’s hard enough to capture our own lives perfectly in a work of art, much less someone else’s, when we haven’t seen through their eyes. Going back to the tourists, how many tourists truly see the beauty of where they themselves live? Some people who live in Evanston have never explored some of its greatest treasures, even though people from out-of-state may come to visit the Bear River State Park or its many events.

The trick with art is to try to find a moment with as much “essence” as possible, or at least hints of as many things as possible, so we can more effectively understand the subject or subjects. That’s where the best paintings, drawings, music, photography, sculpture, film and more come from. The best art always has something more to discover and to think about. It is inspiring.

Art is not and never can be the real thing, because how can you capture a lifetime of memories, experiences, thoughts, emotions and dreams in a single piece of art? You can’t, but in its very creation, you can learn more about the beauty and sorrow of life here on earth. You can start to explore that horizon just a little bit.

You may never reach deep space, but if you can go through some of the atmosphere, you’ll be more than you were before.