How many pages can a man read? If he sits for a year and only learns, does he swim or sink in the ocean of knowledge? Yeshiva days.
By Samuel Abelow, Kendra Terry, Johannes Böckmann
Although on that spring-like evening I had come to Derek Eller gallery to engage with the opening, I found connecting there challenging. In the previous installment of this blog series, we left off when it was time to go and Kendra and I thought of getting a drink. The original plan having not succeeded, a new meaning emerged.
Performing at Home Sweet Home on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, 2011.
Outside, the eerily warm ambience set the stage for me to get Kendra's reaction to my latest music recording, a sort of irony packed pop tune like The1975 or Lana Del Rey, but with a Jewish slant.
[I refer to an unreleased song: “Tehillim 19”]
The nearest wine bar had an hour wait. It would’ve been difficult for me anyways, because I suspected from the scene they wouldn’t have kosher wine.
“Let’s try one more place,” said Kendra. “Look, a couple blocks away, Home Sweet Home it’s called.”
“I think I know that place.”
Upon entering I saw: this was the club that I performed at with my band 10 years ago. It was an underground music show organized by Alberto Arensberg. I couldn’t believe it. After all that time, to circle back. Has anything changed? Maybe everything has changed and yet it's the same.
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Johannes: “Now look: We cannot say which of these events is causal. Did you find your way to a significant place of your biography, because you left the gallery? Or did you leave the gallery in order to find meaning where it was waiting for you? Was it freedom or necessity?” remarks Johannes in his voice memo. Synchronicity was C.G. Jung’s term to get around casualty.
Conversation was limited at the gallery, but there was a deeper conversation waiting for you at a meaningful place; you went at your own accord, you had to go; all of this is… art.”
A Mystical Bud Light: What Did you Learn?
Kendra got a martini. I got a Bud Light. For sure kosher.
“Give me one big idea you’ve taken from these Jewish mysticism classes you’ve been attending for a year,” said Kendra.
Original work: “In Elokim is Chavaya (Seeing The Divine in The Material World)”, ink and graphite on paper. 13 x 9 inches. 2024.
“Let me see,” I said, sipping my beer. “Well, there is a basic prayer called the Shema. And in the mystical interpretation there is the following concept: there is an Infinite Source to Create, and this brings about Nature, and behind Nature is the infinite organizing principle that is One. Nature refers to anything and everything in this material world. Right? It appears that this bar, that gallery, the millions of things happening in this world are separate and unconnected, and yet we are saying, it is all one and comes from a Source which generates meaning.”
Kendra explained, referring to her patients in the Ketamine trials, that “whether or not you can scientifically measure their brain changes, at least phenomenologically they would manifest a teleological urge towards wholeness, a sort of gravity that pulls towards a greater self.”
I replied, “The ultimate level of analysis on this spontaneous & profound urge towards wholeness within the individual is that there is a macro-level of reality that is full of potential, has meaning, is meaning generating and proceeds towards wholeness.” I was now enthusiastic and continued, “There are these limitless number of proximal desires that people are driven by – for example the addicts you’ve treated – but the ultimate desire is this transcendent desire for meaning and life.”
“This reminds me of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the objet petit a, an original and never-yielding object cause of desire.” says Kendra. “Something always wanted and never attained. The search for petit a emerges as the original chase, the seeking for perfection, the effort to fulfill our sense of a fundamental lack. Leaving the womb, the ideal environment where we are fed before hunger has the chance to register, we are warm, and we are held, sets us on a path to recover this place, the ideal and unachievable petit a. For Lacan, this is the root of all desire. For me, this is the perpetual search for a type of wholeness.”
On The Three Train, Across Many Worlds
Now, headed towards Brooklyn on the Three Train:
I reiterate, “Kendra, your observation that patients in altered state spontaneously experience a greater reality that is meaningful and leads towards purpose, must make us conclude that this is a universal reality!”
(Now, this lofty conversation has animated my intellect.) I can’t help but add, “I am constantly amazed by the dreams of individuals, so rich, dramatic and uncontrolled by the conscious ego, which take such subtle interest in the development of the individual. It is as if the potential of our own unique lives is of the greatest importance to the cosmic larger Being.” Then I add, “The Jewish mystics agree with the Jungians observation: the greatest meaning is the individual’s impact in this world.”
Kendra: “We are brought back to the debate around world as a manifestation of God versus world as God’s desire. Desired but eternally distant. Or to put it in other words: God as being in the world versus God as being the unattainable infinite. Objet petit a, remember?”
Kendra ponders and then says, “Many religions describe God and spiritual development as separate from the world, as distinctly not of this world. So it’s interesting to hear that your studies teach God as being of this world, in all its chaos..”
“According to Jewish mysticism, God has a specific desire to make the material world, and reveal holiness within it. So the Creation is set up with a purpose: that we work to reveal the Divine within the material world – with this world!” I gestured to the NYC skyline.
We crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. I could see both Manhattan and Brooklyn twinkling in the background.
Concluding Conversation
I found this conversation to be invigorating. All of the reclusive study I do with my Jewish study group, is opened up into a broader question, boiled down and made very clear with my words to Kendra.
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Johannes remarked upon this: “How perfect. Your evening is like a croissant. It's layered and folded in on itself – crispy and delicious. You’re having a conversation about reality & art. The answer to the question of reality is art, and the answer to the question of art is reality! And as everything is unfolding, the questions are answering each other. And their unfolding is the answer.
I’ll explain by getting in on your conversation about God and world, a debate over what we call natural theology: Is there a true theology that you can get at by just perceiving nature – physical reality? Or do you need revelation, because God is separate, wholly other and unknowable in our terms? This is a split that goes through every religion. There’s not a single religion that says “yes” entirely or “no” entirely.
But there are tendencies for either one or the other. That might be why Protestantism and Judaism are so akin in spirit. There’s a marked difference between the mystics of my tradition, the Protestants, to the Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox mystics, who tend to be Neo-Platonists. The latter of which are very much about the separation of God from physical reality. It's called negative or apophatic theology.
For some reason, Protestantism has keenly picked up Jewish mysticism and found itself aligned with it – which I think points to synchronicity and the collective unconscious.
It's one of the greatest historical tragedies that Christians don't tend to remember what they owe to the Jewish religious community and teachers! They treat your wisdom as occult, dangerous esotericism, marginalize inter-religious dialogue and in the worst cases suspect conspiracy. These Christians deny their own inner Judaism and push Jews into the Shadow (to appropriate a Jungian concept) along with it.
These books and teachings should be venerated and your people be treated with respect and gratefulness.”
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And some Jews started the whole thing anyways, I mean, right?
But just to bring it back to me (as artists are so good at doing): I wrote further about my synchronicity in the city and my artistic life. It will have to get included in an Epilogue since these theological discussions have carried on.