Aesthetic-Life Integration

There is a strange habit amongst administrators, whether in the corporation or at the academy, to search with outstretched fingers for the latest jargon that will make a paradise out of the little fiefdoms they administer. But, of course, they reach for jargon and no further.

We’ve all heard of work-life balance. It is a cliche and rarely achievable. But at least it offers to the worker the illusion of control. Work-life integration, though, is the latest update to that concept, imported no doubt from some conference center. Apparently, it is about fusing, rather than separating, work and the home. That all sounds like a bit of a scam. The integration will likely be one-way: seeping from work into the home and not the other way around.

Yet from the mouths of babes … jargon there becomes gospel here. Because aesthetic-life integration does seem valuable. Indeed for most except a select few, it seems the only way to enjoy an artistic life at all.

Ars gratia artis, art for the sake of art. That is the ideal. But we all must eat. And support families and satisfy obligations to our communities and so much more. Rare are those whose commitment to art is so absolute that they can sacrifice every other interest. Rarer still are such an ascetic’s creations compelling. The dirtiness and grubbiness of navigating real life offers just as much as the purity of the sacred life of the mind. The Medicis bankrolled Da Vinci. The British Crown had Shakespeare on payroll. Mozart sold himself cheap, not only composing for the Holy Roman Emperor but also tutoring minor aristocrats even at the height of his prowess for extra cash. Who are these magicians out there in the world then, who claim total obeisance to Art above those sacred names? How can one even make art if one has not experienced the striving and gasping of life?

My plan has always been to approach life fully and realistically. I am a writer, or at least an aspiring one. So I write and write and write breathlessly. And perhaps through that I seek a sort of immortality. But then I put aside such matters, because I aim to practice law too. To save and pay my debts. Support my family. Give to charity. Drive my friends to the airport. Console my sister after she feels anxious. Call my mother to keep her company on her commute from work. Wave to my neighbors and pet their dogs. Fall sick. Get better. Get angry at someone when they cut me off on the highway and swear at them. Think about my rage when I cannot fall asleep. Perhaps that was someone learning to drive. Perhaps my mother on her way from work, fumbling with her phone to keep me company.

And then I write some more.

In the mundane and necessary, if one mesmerizes oneself, one sees sublime euphoria. Beauty, terrible beauty. A true aesthetic-life integration.

From the temporal world springs inspiration, because what is art if not showing to human beings something true they recognize inside something beautiful they do not?