Chapter 59 Empty Terror—Creative Activities Under the Double Torment

Outer world - the mundane realm or physical body The Burrow - The Realm or Spirit of Pure Art The Enemy Outside - Worldly Experience Without Abstraction Enemies within - nothingness, dead prey - spiritual experiences sublimated from mundane ones Allies - Rational Judgment Worldly experience is the foundation of art, and those who lose this experience will also lose the source of creative passion, and their inspiration will gradually dry up.But for the field of pure art, secular experience is exactly what it wants to exclude. Artworks are characterized by their abstraction and crystal clearness, filtering out all secular impurities.When the artist is engaged in creation, his highly vigilant and rational thinking closely monitors the whole process, and he never dares to relax in the slightest, allowing the unpurified image to directly enter the finished structure.But this kind of pure product brings indelible doubts to the artist himself, making him feel that everything is meaningless, superfluous, and should not exist.This state of rejection and dependence on the world is the biggest contradiction in the artist's heart, and it is also the root cause of his endless pain, troubles and self-torture.What is pure and pure art?The pure peak can only be nothingness, but art is not nothingness, it is a real life experience, but this experience reveals a strong sense of nothingness.Because the essence of life is death.

From the first day of the construction of the burrow, "I" has been making unremitting efforts to return to its own essence.I kept emptying myself, mobilizing irrational fantasies, and creating the most incredible buildings in the cave, so as to confront the outside world, that is, my body.Of course, in this dark and endless labor, I still breathed the fresh air coming in through the tortuous tunnels, otherwise I would suffocate to death.I have an extremely critical eye towards all my works, and I require them to erase all traces of the mundane, and to reveal the "shameful" nihilistic tendency.For this reason, I am constantly modifying my construction plan, making the already fragile building even more fragile and difficult to understand.I imagine all kinds of enemies, put myself in their shoes and imagine their activities, and then try to make my creations rival them in the construction.I have always strived to achieve complete silence in the burrow, and any outside noise is my sworn enemy.In order to soberly measure the value of my labor, I even stepped out of the burrow, stood in the noise of the world, and analyzed it rationally.But rationality is not completely reliable, and analysis in the outside world does not reassure me; there are some things that reason cannot do anything about, and the consequences of blindly relying on reason are terrible, not to mention that rational analysis finally brought me nothing but despair.So I re-entered the burrow in desperation, temporarily putting the dangerous noise of the outside world behind me.But what a horrible act in itself to go into a burrow blindly, and to work on one's own instincts!Without the lucidity of being in the outside world, how can I tell if I'm doing useful work?Even with my desperate conviction that I am doing useful work and eliminating every threat to the tranquility, I still do not have the tranquility myself.why?Just because at such a time, a new disturbance begins again, it comes from the inside of the burrow, deep under the ground, perhaps it is the threat of nothingness itself, which will destroy the meaning of all my works.Yes, why bother, if final perdition cannot be prevented?There have been many times when I can't control the urge to destroy my creations - they are too flimsy and shady for defensive purposes!I have greatly modified them, trying to give them meaning under the guidance of reason, a complete reaction to the original effort that was futile.Now I will work towards this definite purpose, I will use my perfect defense against the attack of the monster in the ground, I will make my work invulnerable!I reconstructed the previous works, filled the dug holes, repaired them, and reinforced the project according to the wild imagination in my mind, and then gave up halfway in capricious ways.The result of doing so is not that the threat disappears, but that the threat is closer and more terrifying, almost as if a hand-to-hand combat is imminent.But how can it not work?Is it easy to catch?Is the burrow built by a lifetime of intense labor just a meaningless piece of work?I must not let such a tragedy happen!As long as I avoid the monster and never hear its noise again, the burrow will still mean a lot to me.Of course, in order to achieve this goal, I have to do my best to continue working...

The strong impression given by the process of construction is: yes-no-yes-nothing. "I" frantically rushes back and forth between the poles.This situation is caused by the nature of art: that is, the work is the desire for purity (death), but the foothold of the work is life; the work is irrational fantasy, but this imagination is carried out under the restraint of reason; Rejecting all worldly visions, but always open to the world; the process of creation is full of attempts to live forever, but it can only be abandoned halfway; every effort is towards perfection, but the result is incomplete.I have voluntarily and obsessively chosen such a way of existence, and I have exhausted myself against the invasion of the world and the threat of nothingness. What am I for?If it is really for inner peace, what the burrow brings me is not peace at all, but endless restlessness and troubles.Of course I didn't make the burrow for my own peace of mind.I think I built the cave at the beginning just to have a hiding place, to prove the reason for my existence, because the two worlds of life and death would not accept me, and I had no good reason to stay there.But once the burrow was built, it was no longer just a hiding place. It was self-sufficient and provided me with infinite possibilities for pursuit.My unquenchable whims swelled, allowing me to unleash my energies on my own initiative while being compelled.I want to create the most bizarre building on the boundary between existence and non-existence, life and death. It has the characteristics of two worlds at the same time, and can communicate the two realms. This kind of communication is my lifelong pursuit.I also know that this kind of communication is impossible to achieve in the end, but I can approach that artistic conception through my efforts. Besides, how tempting and challenging is this special work of being the creator!This advanced spiritual life has brought me a sense of happiness that is unimaginable to ordinary people.The incomplete buildings left behind me are all the condensation of ultimate beauty, and all of them tell the viewers the longing for eternal life of human beings, and they may arouse the same longing for the viewers.

January 7, 1998, Yingcai Garden