A good friend of mine, who also happens to be an evangelist for Frank Sinatra, one who is so effective at his mission as to count me as one of his converts, recently mused quite eloquently on Facebook questioning the necessity of yet another book length biography of Ol' Blue Eyes. He was linking to a book review critiquing two new tomes on the late Chairman of the Board timed to coincide with his upcoming centenary of birth on December 12. We have the music, he reasons, which means we have the emotion, the torment and and triumph captured for eternity on sound recordings. Can two more bios capture all this better than the man and his music? Add to this that my friend had a memorable close encounter with Sinatra in a Las Vegas show room, where the singer actually engaged him is a brief, if slightly inebriated tete a tete from the stage. He lived, he loved, he lost, he rose and fell and raged. We know all this. Why ponder the details that aren't greater than the sum of their parts? When you have all this; the memories, the poetry, the pure experience, what can the written page supply that will surpass it?
Point very well taken, and I can't disagree with it. And yet I felt moved to reply (here only slightly edited):
We read to know that we are not alone, so said CS Lewis, and we read of great people to know that they really do exist. They don't exist on some mythical Olympus, or occupy astral bodies that shape shift. They (are) flesh and blood, touched by the divine spark yet still capable of burning up and burning out. We see (Michelangelo's) Sistine Chapel, watch (Olivier's or Branagh's) Hamlet and listen to (the Sinatra-Count Basie version of Cole Porter's) I've Got You Under My Skin and wonder, "what god wrought this? If not a god but a man, why can't I?" And there in lies the rub.
Many of us are fascinated by those who excel, either in the arts or sports, or in more weightier fields like politics, the military or the sciences, marveling at what these incredible, almost superhuman, men and women were able to accomplish in their lives. For those who achieve greatness in whatever given field, the road is almost invariably paved with hardships, struggles and set backs. For those who are artistically inclined, their ability to see the world in a different way and unlock meaning hidden to the rest of us is quite often also a product of, or at least accompanied by, emotional or mental imbalance.
There is a great deal of personal pain that gets poured into great art, as well. Paul McCartney, when asked what gave his late writing partner John Lennon's songs such a sharp edge, and didn't he wish he could write similarly, answered that it was all the pain that his friend had experienced in his early life that gave his tunes their sardonic wit. While a great song smith in his own right, and no stranger to hardship himself, he conceded that he would not want to exchange his lot for Lennon's; the art came at too high an emotional cost from his estimation.
Yet many like me are fascinated by not just the art, but also the personalities who produced it and the process they employed. It makes me wonder, "why can't I do these things?" When I read a great writer or look upon a powerful work of visual art, or become enraptured in a piece of music or a fine film, I feel sometimes like the caricature of Antonio Salieri from the film Amadeus, who laments bitterly, to the point of losing his faith, because he has the burning desire and the exquisite taste to be a great composer but nowhere near the ability of his divinely gifted rival Mozart. Then I remember that the real life Salieri was no mean composer himself, and so I can't even compare myself to him.
We can either despair with a sarcastic laugh, embracing our mediocrity like the mythical Salieri or use these great ones for inspiration; not in imitation so much as to unlock the God given uniqueness within ourselves. As Paul Stanley of Kiss once said, when he was a kid growing up in Queens, New York dreaming of a music career he said to himself, I may not be as good as the Beatles, but if I can hit a musical and cultural nerve like they did, it will be enough. We might say that he understood that success would come if he set out to be the best Paul Stanley he could be, not an imitation McCartney.
And so we look to these great ones for inspiration to help us discover the unique greatness within ourselves. If all it is is idol worship then their greatness will be wasted on us, and we will never discover our own.
This month of November kicked off with the Solemnity of All Saints, a day to remember that all of us, not just a few, are called to heroic holiness. We remember all the unnamed saints praising God around His heavenly throne right now, and that we can, and really should, be one of them.
For us the Saints are the great "artists" of the faith. They struggled, overcame hardship and intense personal suffering in their lives. Some even suffered from mental or emotional instability. Yet they offer an example to follow, one that will not lead to fame and fortune in this life (though some did experience a measure of popularity in the here and now), but to eternal glory.
It is true that I will never be another St. John Bosco or Ignatius of Loyola, but that's not the point. I must touch the nerve of holiness that they did and be the Saint God made me to be. They offer the inspiration, they show that it is possible. Now it is for us to trust in God that He can make of us artists of the faith.
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