Modern Music and Modern Spirit

By Thierry Jolif-Maïkovskij, Lonsai Maïkov

The aim of the Christian life is deification ! Deification of the soul and of the body ! Christians are called to be “gods”, not God by nature but gods by grace. This process is a creative process, an affirmative creative process. Being like “gods” was the promise of satan to Adam and Eve and their common fault is not a disobedience but a lack of trust in the plan of God for them, a lack of faith in the original creative process, it has been, in fact, a thirst of nihil.

Man is a creature, but man is also a creator, for it has been made by the Creator and the creation of man is an act of Love and faith, the creation of man must be also an act of Love and faith, if it is not it is nothing else but nihil. And this nihilistic creation is digging more and more deeper the void of this world, the void “created” by the fault of the first man. This fault is the betrayal of the creative vocation of mankind. Since this first act of betrayal this first man is the whole terrestrial humanity.

Man can be god, but, not by nature, not by himself ! By Grace, by receiving the uncreated energies flowing out from Trinity. God's creation is from nihil. Man is living in a double world, the world which is fallen and the world which is redeemed ! However, man canno't create from nihil. He creates with given, matter or ideas, sounds, language ... and with the Spirit of God if he wants It, man create with what he receives freely, with a gift !

Before the Incarnation of Christ there was no possible spirituality. There was only religion. Religious cult, trying to maintain the link (Latin : religare) between earth and sky ! There was religions and sacred. The etymology of the word “sacred” explain a complex conception of purity and impurity. Religion and the sacred were not specific categories of spirituality but mainly systems of politics, of political and social correctness. In fact this is what is meant by Tradition in the traditionalist or perennialist currents. True spirituality has been made “visible” and possible only with the complete revelation of Holy Spirit ! “Then you could pray in Spirit and truth.”

The “first” creation of man is a kind of sculpture, man is an artistic object and the true creation is the giving of God's “breath”, of God's Spirit (pneuma) not to man or on man but into him ! Life of man is a pneumatic life, breath is a living, and a vital, symbol of the circulation of Spirit in man, as well as blood is. This is the process of spiritual creation.

Modern Music...

Ciąg dalszy...

Spirit is the “visible” sign of Truth. Inspiration is a sign of the Spirit. Even if it has to pass through the filter of man's soul.

Christians must fear not modernity. Modernity is a dissolution not of the God's creation but of the limitations, the rules, the negativities, the tendencies of another age. May be this past age easily agree and understand the exigence of Spiritual Truth for life but is has also its numerous defaults and limits and has known a real corruption. Modernity is just another step on the descent of the ladder of the Fall.

The work is an activity, a consequence of the Fall. Creativity has to be conceived has being part of the domain of working. As well technology which derives from work and creativity.

What is sacred ? If a sacred art exist what must we do ? If earth, matter, air, elements are sacred ... what should we do ? The aim of Christian life is deification, not sacrifice (which precisely means “making sacred”) as a negation, but fullness of life, fullness of the person : Truth.
Saint Constantin the Great, equal to the Apostles, was said “bishop of the outside”.

Christian artists and creators must consider themselves the same way. Of course there is an art for the Church, for the Ark of Spirit and Truth, but we must never forget that Christ did send every of His followers into the world. Most of actual musicians are working outside the Church, even if they consciously work for the Glory of God, doing this they are free, and they take their freedom from Spirit inside the Holy Church and spread it outside. Outside, this word is important, because this means that the rules of what we called “sacred art” (we could say best “liturgical art” or “spiritual”) are not the rules for outside art. Saint Paul, clearly expressed the diversity of the talents, of the gifts giving by One and Same Holy Spirit. In every case, for every art we must understand this reality. We are free creator because Christ makes us free for freedom. But we must always remember that only the blasphemy against Spirit will not be forgiven ! Everything, if it is not turned against Spirit, can be sanctified, can be a new stone, a new glorified stone of the New Temple of Spirit. This Temple we have to build with Christ in Spirit. We are creators in second, derived creators, we are co-workers in the spiritual work of deification of the World, and not only one element of the world must escape from this.

The creator act is a perpetual fight against this world, against the world of necessity, against natural determinism of the fallen world.

So-called industrial music, has been from the time of its “creation”, even from the Futurist ancestors, a reaction against the world. It has been a provocation but also a way to affirm that man can stand firm above mechanic, above machines, technical and technologies, that he was not a slave of his own “creation”. Sometimes it has been a melted reaction, including both repulsion and fascination but, always, has stay the affirmative action of art, of the spirit of creation above the creativity and work. The enslavement of man by the technologies he has created has been denied by the strength of art being able to use the same technologies to rise above his state. Industrial, experimental, extreme noise music and then martial or neo-folk scenes has always use the imagery of the darkest sides of man nature or of man industries, but always it has been to put out that the priority is man, even the most evil side of him. In fact this scene is probably the only one having assume the totality of man, both is humanity and inhumanity, both is rising free in the area of spirituality and the enslavement to the blackest passions and vices. This is surely why, today, the emerging of Christians bands into this scene is possible and so interesting. Of course, much of them are still to linked with political and aggressive imagery, but the most interesting side of the phenomenon is everywhere. Into the possibility of giving birth to a new form of art, the possibility to offer to Christ something most of peoples think incompatible with spirituality.
To clearly understand this, the philosophy of “creator act” of Nicolas Berdiaev is more than important.

Thierry Jolif-Maikovskij