Souls Of Their Own

I was wondering if you could have a spiritual postmodernism and whether you could do "spiritual" or mystical work in a postmodern context. In visual art, you could still be postmodern, but it can have a spiritual dimension. We want to think that it doesn't and that metamodernism is a way to be "spiritual" at the same time as being modern and postmodern. It's an interesting question. It's an art that would be compelling to me to make: primarily driven by ideas and concepts, and much less tradition, but at the same time emotional, even if postmodern. Interestingly, pop music can have transcendent qualities even if we see it as profane. I always thought certain Led  Zeppelin songs were spiritual--Stairway of course, but they weren't trying to be spiritual. But I suppose you can say that all of rock music is a postmodern phenomenon. In that case, you still have musicians who are writing material that isn't intentionally spiritual but is an inference or suggestion.  I recall at a local church about 10 years ago around Easter or Christmas, a band that would play U2 songs or other pop songs that seemed to be more "liturgical" or "plagal".  As a writer you might not to go in that direction but sometimes they have a soul of their own, even if you are being postmodern in your approach. An example would be using random phrases from books, which is a postmodern procedure,  then becomes literal, not random.

12/7/2023

[12/7/2024: Given that AI-generated art involves even less of ourselves, and is commingled with all other computer-related activities, it’s completely postmodern. Transforming what has been generated in some way may make it more spiritual, because obviously AI isn’t a spiritual force on its own, which begs the larger question whether spirituality in general is actually emanating from without or within. I would imagine that through the randomness of algorithms a spirituality can emerge. Instead of waking up in the morning with a line for a song, picking up a guitar, and writing a great song in 15 minutes, you can now do it in 3 minutes without a guitar. This means spirituality is a projection from without. From within would suggest that you’d have to be the human in the loop, not just a human working with a machine].