How Friendship is the Lifeblood of Art
Culture as the byproduct of communion
This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic features Samuel Christian
OUR HISTORIES of cultural development are often presented as a series of ideas flowering into great movements: Antiquity, Renaissance, Romanticism. Other times, they are depicted as the appearance of great works of art that represent a generation: The Sistine Chapel, Hamlet, Paradise Lost, The Wasteland. Sometimes, we look at the past through figures who have done something we deem worthy to remember and make note of: Byron, Van Gogh, Steven Spielberg, Taylor Swift.
Perhaps, we can go even further and trace the massive shifts in culture to the creative collisions of personal relationships, too. John Keats meeting Fanny Brawne; Wordsworth, wandering not as a lonely cloud, but with his sister Dorothy and friend Coleridge; of gatherings around a fire to hear some tale of old—for the story, yes, but just as much for the one whose hand is squeezed as Beowulf approaches the dragon.
I GREW UP as one of six siblings in the suburbia of south-east Essex in England, and we had a whole lot of fun. My elder sister and I were very much the ringleaders, quickly roping our younger siblings into our exciting new adventures. We were quite ambitious when it came to our weekends: for a number of summers, this meant making our own films. Sometimes it was an original screenplay, but most of the time, it was adaptations of our favorite stories: Little House on the Prairie, Swallows and Amazons, and even an episode of the Canadian drama Heartland animated with Playmobil.
Together with our family friends, we would turn the garden into a film studio, creating full costumes and sets. After the whole process, though, the thing we were most excited for was not the premiere of the film itself, but instead watching back our even longer “behind the scenes” documentary. Over the years, these have been what we go back to watch: a window into our process filled with laughter, larking about, and little eccentricities while exploring the stories fundamental to our growing lives.
It wasn’t the films we made that mattered so much—we were proud of them then, more embarrassed now—these bouts of creativity and storytelling were all about the time spent with each other. Those behind-the-scenes videos remind me that our art is, and has always been, a practice of relationship, a shared currency of love. Creativity is often the loom that weaves the threads of our lives into a beautiful tapestry. Shared ideas. Shared experiences. Shared feelings. A shared culture.
IN A CHARITY SHOP a few years ago, wandering the Isle of Mull, I found a book, Essays Presented to Charles Williams. Williams was one of the core members of the literary group known as the Inklings, which famously included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and a shifting cast of creators and characters. When Williams moved from Oxford to London, this collection of essays was originally collated by the other Inklings as a “greeting” to give Williams when he next visited. Tragically, Williams passed away before they had the chance, and so the essays were published instead as a “memorial”.
The cover reads, “Charles Williams, poet, novelist, critic, and incomparable talker, died in 1945. During the years of his intellectual maturity, there gathered ‘round him a group of admirers who found in contact with his darting, fantastic and challenging intellect a rare source of stimulus. Some of these have thought that the best memorial of friendship would be a collection of essays on subjects he most liked to discuss.”
Whenever I hold this book and flick through its pages, I’m immediately struck not by the groundbreaking ideas—some still read in universities today—but by the pure expression and seriousness of friendship. These essays were written, edited and published out of respect, love, and mourning for a friend. For here was a group of people where art was simply a product of creativity forged for and through the deepening of relationship.
OVER IN FRANCE, there’s the Academie Suisse, the informal art school where Claude Monet studied upon arriving in Paris. A city that was a borderland, a grey zone at the time. “The great tradition has been lost…” wrote Baudelaire, “the new one is not yet established.” That “new one” would become Impressionism, a movement that we still feel the effects of today. A movement born out of the relationships that began at that informal art school. Here, Monet met Renoir and Sisley, and most importantly, Bazille—who would be a lifelong friend. They painted together and shared a studio. It was Bazille who took Monet to parties and introduced him to his first Paris buyer. Art historian Jackie Wulleschläger writes that “Monet woke Bazille up every morning, got him to an easel and advised on his compositions, while Bazille served as an echo chamber for Monet’s developing sense of himself and his painting.”
The interweaving of lives in Monet’s story tends to be analyzed by their influence on his artistic practice. These names have indeed greatly impacted his work and vice versa. However, we can also see this as flowing the other way. The lifelong friendship with Bazille, the connections forged with Renoir, the competitive mentorship of Manet are relationships actually born out of Monet’s practicing of creativity, just as much as his art grew from them.
I’VE EXPERIENCED the profundity of a friendship formed through the arts myself as well. I first came into contact with Jacob years ago through his poetry that he shared online. He was in the US then, and I in Cumbria, UK. We only spoke a couple of years after this, again through poetry and publishing it in our community magazine. When both of us finally ended up in London, we met in person and became immediate friends. Our friendship has continued to thrive and deepen through poems and words shared, hours writing together, and reading each other’s work in raw form. This has led to a sense of security that allows us to remain honest, open, and vulnerable with each other.
When we create, we are always opening up a part of ourselves. To create with words or images or music, or in any other form, is to translate part of the inner life into the communal. This is why creativity takes such courage. And to share what we create, even more. It is to be vulnerable that, at its best, leads to the formation of friendship. Sometimes, through one of those “What, you too?” moments that C.S. Lewis talks about. Other times, understanding and empathy. Our creativity is the fertile ground for deep and lifelong relationships.
Art helps us reach out to another because, in the words of Christian Wiman, when we create, “we cease to be ourselves and become, paradoxically, more ourselves. Our souls.” To create is a spiritual act—one where we tap into something of the essence of what it means to be human. And where we reveal something of who we are. This is less of an exploration of our interiority, but a tearing of the curtain that hid us from joining the dance.
THE ULTIMATE CREATIVE ACT was only possible through relationship. In the beginning, God created out of a place of trinitarian relationship. Father, Son and Spirit crafting as one a masterful work; life itself. My aunt says that it is a bit like a film. A director, actor, and writer, all simultaneously present in a scene. And God created people in his image, that he might have a relationship with them.
To live out of this identity, the imago dei, this essence of who we are, is to represent the attributes of God, no matter how pale the imitation, within this world. Creativity is something we can practice because of this. And to create as God did, is to create out of relationship, for relationship.
Throughout the Bible, this is how creativity manifests. From the Tabernacle bringing people together into God’s presence, to the rawness of the Psalms, honest poems shared in community and offered to God. As we read in John’s Gospel: “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Christ is present in all that we make. He is present in the process if we might but look closely to see.
“TRUE CREATIVITY,” writes Trevor Hart, “is always a pursuit of the good which renders the self adjacent; it is an act of love.” To be caught by beauty or tragedy, truth or goodness, is to be brought closer to someone. A feeling—bitter or ecstatic—that I am not just myself. Creation is more a poetic utterance of love than an industrial efficiency, to paraphrase Makoto Fujimura. Something made faithfully speaks of love and opens us up to be loved. It is an opportunity to be like Christ, to see a soul, know one and love one.
In the transitory and lonely city of London, it is as true as ever that to shape culture is to commit to relationship. A courageous act of love, a radical step. As I look back at my creative journey to date, I can see the paintings and unfinished drafts; the milestones of awards won and words published. All good things. All important. But there, between each of these, I look back and see the friendships found along the way. The loves blossoming and loves lost. A life held together by others in the sharing of poems and hand-painted cards, the mutual tears in front of cinema screens, and shared silences before paintings. The conversations about daily struggles; the grappling of ideas; the light bulbs of collaboration, and the overflow into words on the page, paint on the canvas, potted seeds on a window sill.
AS A TEENAGER, on a cold winter’s night when the sun had already set, I walked up the long road as I did every Thursday. I would normally have a bag of books with me. Often a notepad of scribblings. My head whirling with ideas and topics to discuss. I would turn into the driveway and ring the bell of the bungalow with the fairy castle turret. My Grandpa would open the door and invite me in. With tea and a cherry bakewell, we would sit by the open fire. We would almost always start with some lines by William Cowper, Grandpa’s favourite poet. The rest of the evening would be filled with other writings, newspaper cuttings, ideas and editing the drafts of my poems.
“Inklings” we called these evenings, and I never wanted them to end. In those often lonely school years, struggling to fit in and praying for close friendship, these nights were the highlight of my week and a balm to my soul. It was where I wrestled with words and seriously thought about the stories I wanted to tell for the first time. Now though, I can say that the greatest thing to be created in this reading, writing and editing of poems has been an enduring relationship over many years between a grandfather and his grandson.
Samuel Christian
Writer & Community Builder
Samuel is the founder of The Pursuit of Good Stuff, a spiritual habitat for creators that features collectives, exhibitions and resources. What did you think of this essay? Share your thoughts with a comment!
Today’s essay was recently read live at our London Inkwell Evening. Our next Inkwell Evening is in Nashville, TN on March 21. Let’s gather for an evening of art, storytelling & friendship to find transcendence together.
 | A guest post by
|
This was lovely. I agree in every way. As Andrew Peterson says, "Art nourishes community, and community nourishes art." I especially loved this line from your piece:
"In the transitory and lonely city of London, it is as true as ever that to shape culture is to commit to relationship." What a revolutionary thought. Commitment as culture-shaping. Thanks for this offering!
Another beautiful and resonating essay. I was moved. Thank you!