Reflection

My goal as a Mormon artist is to be a Mormon and an artist. I don’t plan to produce content for the church--although I’m certainly not against it. I want to produce technically sound and aesthetically pleasing content which is wholesome but never sugarcoats the realities of the human experience, with all it’s struggles and beauties. The interview with Kelly addressed this subject. There is a definite and important place for religion and faith in personal identity, but we must also address and come to terms with our primal nature. The field of psychology is fascinating and can answer many of the questions we have about ourselves, and should never be discounted or made subsidiary to religious teachings. Kelly put these two supposedly opposing fields into a nice harmony. I’m a naturalist and a Mormon. I recognize the contradictions, but it is possible for two contradictory theories to be true at the same time.

The collaborative process has always been a difficult thing for me. John Jacob Astor said that if you want something done, hire someone; if you want something done right, do it yourself. I have a hard time letting people help me. Not because I don’t want help, or because I think I can do a better job than others could, it’s because I am very particular about what the work that I produce says about me. How my work represents and portrays me is an important issue to me. I would rather not turn something in than turn something in that is mediocre and not an adequate reflection of my ability and creative motivations. By that same token, I want my work to be a representation of me, and not diluted by the contribution of others. I must get rid of these ideas if I am to progress in the BYU film program, as collaborative as it is. This project was good practice. I had my idea that I pitched for the project. I had it all planned out, and felt like I could have done it alone. However, it didn’t work out, and I was back at square one. Luckily, I was in a good group and we were able to plan and produce the project together. I enjoyed the experience.

Person, Places Photo Essay

For a few years in my past I had the great joy and privilege to work in the anechoic chamber of BYU. Being an audiophile, this naturally appeals to the geekier side of me. In this chamber that was specially commissioned for the University, it is so quiet that you can literally hear your heartbeat as well as the rush of blood pulsing through your veins.

The truly soundproof room.

There are complex foundations at work here -- perhaps a metaphor?

You cannot hear someone speaking if they are facing away from you or behind you. Everything in this room is either to absorb or deflect sound using awesomeness.

Within this room many high-profile experiments are conducted utilizing many extraordinarily expensive microphones.

You are suspended roughly 20 feet in the air on a large suspension lattice that can support a large amount of weight, all in the attempt to isolate and then diffuse the sounds within the room.

The effort of this room is complete isolation and silence. It even has its own foundation. Much in the same way, I have come to feel that we, too must have a place of solitude, but still firm in a foundation to move among others. Life can be hard, but beautiful if we so let it.

Mormon Artist Podcast -- Aaron Barlow

Mormon Artist Podcast

Podcast: Aaron Barlow

What are your project's strengths and weaknesses as a podcast?

I feel that while the music in the podcast echoes the sentiment that the artist is describing, it may become distracting to others. I can see, however, also how the subject was entertaining to speak to and is clearly passionate about his life and his work, that perhaps I could have focused more in the final interview questions less about his family life and beginnings as an artist and focused more on his goals as to where he plans to go from here. All in all, I feel good about it, but I recognize that there are clear areas that could be improved upon.

What did you learn about yourself as an artist while creating this project?

While creating this project, I learned that each person has their own set of struggles and hopes in achieving their artistic dreams and expressions, and it has made me ponder more upon what I must focus on in order to achieve such lofty goals. I always respect stage musicians who are down to earth, because they remind me that we need to be people first, and then become an artist naturally and fluidly through coming to achieve our own sense of being.

What does it mean to you to be a Mormon artist?

I believe that our system of beliefs become manifest regardless of the artistic medium. The more that we find of ourselves, then the more of ourselves that we can then find in our work. As a Mormon artist, it seems unnecessary to always write or sing songs about church, but instead one can tell the story as it is, unfettered by obtuse and poorly drawn human artistic integrities. We are who we become, and this has taught me that we must have a clear vision of our future if we are to redeem our past.

The Collaborative Process

The collaborative process while in both this class and those that accompany it have taught me that no great work or endeavor can be undertaken alone if it is to achieve glory in reaching out to other people. It seems folly to believe that one person is the mastermind behind such great works of art that give us breath and feed us life. As we learn quickly in an artistic field of expression, we must take from others what gives us life so that we, too may internalize it and utilize such glory in our own works of art.

This final project has helped me in my goals as a Mormon artist so as to help those around me to understand that there is more than meets the eye to many people – I, for one, have often felt judged at first glance for many things that have happened in my life. Nevertheless, I am grateful for these more infrequent experiences, as they helped to primarily shape my youth and have had rippling effects throughout the rest of my life. In my final project, I was able to interview someone who was extraordinarily well-spoken and well-versed in a topic that I knew nothing about: Hebrew and how it pertains to the field of Law and Linguistics. Such an intricate mind is evident only upon getting to know someone deeper and find out truly what their passions and belief systems are. I hope in the future to find more people of all kinds all over the U.S. and learn about why they believe what they do. I feel that this kind of individual exposure to unique individuals and common but misunderstood conditions in our country can help others to release the stigmas that they might have about fat people, mental illness, or any number of things that make us different. Everyone has a story, and when will we be able to tell it’s most interesting parts? Some of these people just need someone to help them tell their story, and that is what I want to be able to do, at least in some small capacity – tell the stories that make up why the world is so phenomenal and people are so great at being what they are and believing with a fire in their hearts and a passion in their spirits.

Giving and Receiving Feedback

Feedback, especially in an artistic community, is the gateway to true artistic expression and growth. Many can paint, sculpt or write while exercising their craft, but without the opinion of others, how can we influence them for good, or they do so to us? We are left to eat the dust by such ignorance, trapping ourselves into a heart-shaped box of self-indulgence or self-destructive denial until we are broken of one of our shells through constructive criticism. It is only by the means of being in a sharing community that we may achieve these goals.

This class has primarily taught me about being aware of others more in an anthropological-artistic clash, as well as being more willing to accept the criticism of others. While I know that I need to improve in my own ability to take constructive criticism well, I have appreciated the opportunity to collaborate with so many open-minded artists of a large myriad of backgrounds. Each element has helped me to succeed and given me new outlets to seek for help and criticism.

Blogging was something foreign to me prior to this class. While I most likely will not create my own blog right now, I do appreciate the opportunity that it provides to easily share and then almost instantly receive feedback from the populace about my works, and on the same note, to post feedback and learn to give better criticism to my peers about the things that could work or not work in their own projects. These things have helped to make me feel at home among artists striving to improve by lifting one another in an environment of learning. At the same time, we must watch our own criticisms to make sure that they are not laced nor riddled with our own bigotries, all the while not standing down from our beliefs for the sake of being true to ourselves first, and yet still being a positive and helpful source of feedback for those around us.

Representing Belief

In Marilynne Robinson’s article entitled “Reclaiming a sense of the Sacred,” I found it interesting how she was able to quote virtually every prominent Protestant Pastor of the 1800’s and combine their ideologies with those of Virgil and Homer. Granted, the effect was a flowing thread of one conclusion to another, however I found it interesting that she attempted to make that many connections in so long of an article – I somehow feel that it was the basis for a thesis paper that she had written some time ago (or, perhaps she is simply just that passionate about the subject matter at hand).

There are many ways that we can approach something foreign: we may revile or repulse at it, love it almost by instinct as did the female rats with the infant rats in her article, or simply take a more scholarly approach and instead learn to apply our own lives to what is being taught.

Whether for naught, ill or good, we are ultimately forced to either embrace or reject a topic when it comes to our recognition. As we realize our own weaknesses, for example, we have the options to either improve, stay the same by ignoring it, or simply get worse off. While we may struggle to achieve a perfect open-minded philosophy in this life, I propose a few things to help us along the way, which by no means should be canonical; first, we should strive to accept both the good with the bad. Much of life already gives us the sweet with the sour, so if we ignore the sour now in favor of the sweet, there will still come a due time in which we must taste of the opposite. Why not do so when we are best prepared and expectant of what is before us? I say, don’t be afraid of opposition to our own thoughts or belief systems, but to simply be cautious and be willing to truly spend the time in genuine research of the mind and the heart for both sides. Only by then doing these two things can we achieve a better sense of how we, too, might achieve a better balance in finding the good in more things around us. As a wise parent has probably at least once told us all: how can you know unless you try it? To which I would add, or experienced it vicariously?

Stories of Light

As a Mormon artist, I believe that our work is influenced by as much as we are diligent in who we are as individual believers of our faith, as well as how we may practice it. There are many who may think that we are limited in our capacities as artists in a secular world to solely doing works of a religious or purely secular nature; however, there remain many who have been able to achieve both, due to their own balances and belief systems that naturally come forth in their works.

We often express who we are in our work without intending to do so; we might include a phrase from scripture or other works that have influenced us greatly, or even quote an atheist who shares a point of view that we do. The point is, no matter what we do, our beliefs will be revealed. And, in a more biblical sense, “by their fruits ye shall know them.” Our works often speak volumes more about us. We are then left to determine and distinguish our jobs from our art. I think that, too often we see writers who especially leave their views out in the open intentionally, then end up coming off preachy with their pedantically didactic morals. Life is complicated, hence why our own belief systems will come out naturally, and don’t need to be forced to make an influence. We can do good by just being who we are, striving to become who we should be, and then living our lives and constantly creating in an attempt to achieve those goals.

As a result of this natural excretion of our own morals, so, too do others in their own works. Hence, we can find good works where there are good things to be found or people with solid belief systems – everyone is different, but we all strive to achieve in order to succeed. It is for this very reason that the most sincere generally rise to the top: Dostoyevsky wrote about his experiences without memoirs, as did Dickens and others, through their most compelling works, because they were true to themselves and sincere to their readers. We may work for money, but we are still to not lose ourselves in doing so and to continue to strive for truth and conscience in what we may find ourselves doing.