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Someone asked me what I thought of Ken Wilber's short bit on his blog, liner notes for an album by Corrado Rustici, that attempts defined what "integral art" is. I'll post it in entirety below (one of its advantages is its brevity) and then respond here and there. Let me just say off the bat that I no longer take Wilber seriously, I find his work irrelevent to the task of reconstructing the importance of the Humanities (which I think will lead to genuine sustainability in the art world), and that he is a sophist, of the kind that Socrates deplored and whose seductive, persuasive rhetoric he fought against on the grounds that real learning had nothing to do with that. But anyway, here goes. Note, these are largely observations on an admittedly short piece (though one, if you look at other works, such as his introduction to a book by painter Philip Rubinov-Jacobson, that is representative of his overall thought). And note, this is the first and only time I'll do such a thing with Wilber's work.

Having spent over three decades developing an Integral Approach to "life, god, the universe, and everything," many people have come forward to ask, "What is integral art?"

Ah yes, the old "appeal to authority", right off the bat. Thus the presentation is "I am the one to talk about integral." Or, "heeeeeeeeeeere's Wilber!" — I swear, if I every ask someone to write liner notes for one of my albums, and that person starts off asserting how important they are, rather than talking first from the music, you have permission to shoot me.

If we take integral to mean comprehensive or inclusive, then what does that mean if I am an artist?

Which means if we don't adopt that definition, then Wilber can be ignored. Just for the record, I do not adopt this defintion of integral as "comprehensive or inclusive", though I have done so in the past. The change of my thinking over the last couple years is not yet reflected thoroughly in my essays posted on this site, but will as I publish more as well as (finally) finish my book. In a recent essay posted at POLYSEMY Online, called "The Humanities as the Integral Tradition", I wrote, "I regard integral as a living tradition, waiting patient for artists to tap back into, that goes back to ancient Greek and Roman thought, and has produced the greatest minds in the Western arc of history, and that is tragically masked under the counterproductive forces of 'theory'". That gets to my current understanding better than most anything else I've written. And I think it is better, more liberating and heuristic, than anything Wilber has ever provided on that count. But of course, I'm tooting my horn on that one (sorry).

Let me also say here: is the point of listening to this man's music to learn how to be an artist? Last time I checked, the answer is clearly, um, no. So why is this relevant to Mr. Rustici's liner notes, for this album. And compare, if you will, Wilber's modus operandi (demonstrated here as well as in other places where he introduces an artist's work) and that of, say, Roger Ebert, who refuses to insert himself between the audience and the work of art. To me, that is far more honorable and respectful an approach to writing about music, not to mention more engaged with the actual work of art (which Wilber never indicates beyond easy generalities).

If, for example, I am a painter, must I blend together all known styles of painting-abstract, to realist, to impressionist-and simultaneously make visual reference to every known aspect of human experience? Surely something must be off here. A "comprehensive approach" to cuisine doesn't mean stacking burritos on top of sushi on top of lasagna, does it? That would simply be nauseating, and the same is true for art.

I am aware of no serious artist who holds anything like this sort of view, but apparently Wilber is talking to other people than I.

So what, then, is integral art? Simply put, integral art is anything created by an artist with integral consciousness.

Let me echo Frank Visser in saying how tired it is for Wilber to keep using the "simply put..." formulation. I realize that this entire passage is liner notes for an Italian musician, and thus the audience here is like people who aren't familiar with Wilber. But why the near-neurotic use of the "simply put" formulation when even a cursory look at Wilber's oeuvre demonstrates that his work is not "simple"? Let me also point out that Wilber has compounded a pretty vague defintion with using that as the basis to define "integral art". His confident writing style, unless examined, gives the impression that solid, useful definitions are at play here, when in fact they are not.

Integral consciousness can hold in mind the entire spectrum of creative possibility, but one doesn't therefore combine every "color" in his or her palette, which creates, precisely, mud.

Therefore? What in god's name is that doing there? And again with this "burritos on top of sushi on top of lasagna" argument that I've never heard of, and which makes me wonder if this is a straw man argument. Wait, nevermind, I know it is. So we have appeals to authority, multiple vague definitions built upon one another, and now straw artists. Pretty good for just a couple paragraphs, wouldn't you say?

If integral awareness is anything, it is an increase in one's ability to discriminate and to judge what is pleasing, and therefore also what to reject. As an integral artist, one is free to choose the stark purity of a solo piano, or the complex rhythmical synthesis of a dozen musical elements, but both can be equally integral.

Let's play a pretty easy game. Try substituting "better artistry" for "integral awareness", "better artist" for "integral artist", and "good" for "integral" (in order of each's appearance). This passage not only starts to make sense, not only benefits greatly from being in ordinary language, but also becomes something that no artist would disagree with, no art teacher would object to, and therefore no special or important claim whatsoever — i.e., like "duh, dude, you call yourself America's preeminent philosopher and we get this?"

(For those interested, see chapters 4 and 5 of my book The Eye of Spirit for an in-depth discussion of integral art.)

To be clear, those chapters deal with art interpretation strictly (from the point of view of a scholar), and have nothing in particular to do with art creation. Of course those topics aren't entirely unrelated, but nor is there that much practical intersection, either. This is more than odd given that being an artist was, I thought, the point of this spiel.

My good friend Corrado has deeply integral consciousness, and Deconstruction of a Postmodern Musician is a direct and beautiful testament to this fact. Composed and expressed with an incredible display of technical skill, his music radiates with a fullness of being that wants nothing more than to share the abundance from which it flows. Employing a wide range of musical voices and emotional tones, what one is left with is the tangible feeling of depth, long after the last note is struck.

And that "wide range" is, what? I mean, this violates Music Criticism 101 — non-specificity. Hell, it wouldn't pass muster in high school writing class. Now, I have no idea whether Mr. Rustici''s music is any good (having not heard it), but I do observe that he supposedly has "integral consciousness" largely based on Wilber's say-so. In other words, another appeal to authority. Sensing a pattern here?

What is it about depth that touches us so? How is it that the human soul can distinguish between the superficial and the profound? Most of all, what is this absolutely stunning miracle of beauty? Science cannot measure, count, or point to beauty, and so according to the worldview of most hip, savvy, modern human beings, beauty technically does not exist. Yet there it is. And we all recognize it, just as we might recognize love, or justice, or wisdom.

Oh pulease ... "most hip, savvy, modern human beings"...? Wilber would know? Talk about straw man/woman/being. Beauty "technically does not exist" for these unnamed, unexplored people, and this is a claim we are to take seriously? I don't, and I don't see how any thinking, intellectually discriminating person could.

Perhaps it is here, amidst those delicate intuitions of something more meaningful than a world composed of frisky dirt, that we can find the true essence of integral art.

Again, who holds such a strange view, that of "frisky dirt"? Anyone in the art world? Oh, I remember, these hordes of hip, modern people. Right.

Be it the haunting chords of a song, a fiery sunset emblazoned in paint, or the face of a stranger captured on film, beauty takes us beyond ourselves, beyond the tension of separation, to a place we might not have otherwise suspected existed.

No real objection here. Except my wonder about the claim that beauty "takes you to a place". Some people say that good art "transports" them. But does beauty really do that? Hmm...wouldn't exploring what that means, and doesn't, be more interesting? Well, it would to me, at least.

For a moment, there is no song, no sunset, no face... and no self. For a moment, something else entirely shines forth, and even the sun is but one small ray of the Grace illuminating the Kosmos from within.

Ah yes, here we are, where Wilber wants to go each and every time, in all of his writings — the "no self" place. All I can say is that you read this sort of thing as much as I did (being involved with Wilber's start-up company for 16 months, and reading his work for four years before that) and this sort of thing gets pretty predictable. All of Wilber gets pretty predictable, but that is a longer story.

It is here that beauty, truth, and goodness find their home. It is here that the integral impulse towards wholeness finds its timeless source in Wholeness. And it is here that the Great Artist is revealed, and that Artist is none other than the one looking out through your eyes right now, painting through your brush, singing through your voice, dancing through your body, marveling at the wonder of it all... astonished at what you have created.

"Find their home", how? Lowercase "wholeness" differs from upper-case "Wholeness", how? Lots of base-stealing here. Mind you, I'm not asking Wilber to make a strictly logical case, here. But some kind of case would be, well, nice, especially given the vagueness, etc., that has polluted this entire thing. No, we are supposed to just shallow this, without really being given the opportunity to know whether we buy it or not. The rhetorical build-up, of course, makes for a momentum whereby you are subtley put into a trance through the unobjectionable, poetical metaphors. If you are the least bit skeptical, then this stuff doesn't work. I mean, the "Great Artist" (upper-case) looks "through your eyes" and is "astonished" (another predictable Wilber word) and "marvels". You think about this sort of formulation long enough, and it gets pretty creepy, to me at least. But of course, this stuff is built on an initial house of cards that I sounds nice when you first hear it, but falls apart when you actually think about it, soberly beyond the trance.

What is integral art? Why not find out yourself with Corrado's inspired and daring Deconstruction of a Postmodern Musician? It's quite a wonderful experience, and a journey well worth taking.

Again leaving the album aside, just notice that never has a particularly useful or unique definition of integral been provided; it was lopped onto "consciousness" without much definition; and then that vague thing was used to define "integral art", which is still undefined and we are left with, essentially, "you know it when you hear it". Which is precisely the kind of airy blech asserted confidently that has been around for thousands of years (see, for example, Plato's dialogue, Meno), and which thinking people deconstruct and fight against.

If an Integral Approach has caught your interest, we'd love to have you visit us at Integral Institute, the Center for Integral Art at Integral University, and Integral Naked, where you can find Corrado in dialogue with our own resident integral artist, Stuart Davis.

Ah yes, the appeal to join in a vast party of vague.

But for now, enjoy the music....

Which, I'm sure, it is easier to do when obstacles of sophistry aren't put in your way. But to each their own.

One last point — perhaps the single most flagrent violation I see here is this: putting a theory in front of the work of art. This is precisely the move of theory (no matter French, Frankfurtian, or Wilberian), each and every time. The notion that the acceptance of an "-ism" such as Wilberism (even as it is watered down here) is in any way important to the aesthetic experience. It. Is. Not. Ever. This is what warriors such as Camille Paglia have fought for the last twenty years, and warriors before her. It is the battle to evict the belief that "theory" has any place in the house of art. The poor, embattled work of art, if it is anything important, must stand on its own. If it needs theory, then it has not been created as best as it could have been. Now, I'm not indicting Mr. Rustici in any way. Again, I haven't heard his music.

No, my indictment is of this incoherant piece of trash masquarading as capital I "Important" thought. And my indictment is of the notion that soulful art making requires the hoops that a theorist puts before us. The artist's responsibility (besides to his/her family, friends, and audience) is to the traditions of art that came before. There is a "great conversation" going on, timelessly through the ages, and ignoring that essentially spits on our great artists of the past. The artist's obligation never ought be to a philosopher who doesn't actually get to writing about the music or musician until halfway through the liner notes, demonstrating he believes than his thought is more important than the music, after the branding and eventual selling of vague theorizing he's been working on for 30 years, or whatever. It is not to anything at all that gets in the way of a deeper, more palpable, more direct contact with works of art, and one's intuition.

The temptation is to buy into this sophistry (and if you want to, actually pay Wilber's company to hear more of it) because it feels and seems like a shortcut to depth. It is as if you can read this stuff, and settle in its warm bath of spiritual trance, rather than doing the hard, meditative work of studying and evaluating the great conversation (such as that through Homer, Plato, The Bible, and Shakespeare) in both public and personal ways. No, the intellectually confident, good with words, rhetoretician that Wilber is makes him not Socrates, but those Sophists he fought bitterly against, such as Meno and Gorgias, those of ancient Greece that charged people to hear them speak and teach how to persuade for its own sake. Thus Wilberian theory is not a brand new distraction, but in fact a very old one, come back to visit.

All of this little thang of Wilber's is disgusting, offensive to genuine intellectual seeking/learning of truth, and profoundly distracting from getting to the business of both making better art, or for that matter, perceiving art with more clarity. Details matter. The particular aesthetic choices on this album matter. How these are unique matter. What the album is dealing with, concretely, whether it be musically, lyrically, or strictly sonically, matter. Wilber could have written this little spiel for anyone he wanted, changing nothing significant here except the name of the artist and work. All of this has the unmistakable feel of Wilber not taking the time to actually do the hard work of criticism, but rather hopping on whatever momentum this artist has going for him, mutually beneficial, of course.

This is the newest example of a long line why I believe that Wilberian theory is irrelevent to artistry, itself the fruits of goal-less goal of labor as an artist trying to get things right in their work, amidst a larger embracing of the great works of the Humanities (theology, the arts, history, philosophy, languages). That sort of path, entirely non-theoretical, brings to life the great souls of our human past, as mediums to animate the message and content of our own works of art, made today intuitively.

Well anyway, thanks for reading. Sorry for excess here (if it feels that way) given that I imagine a great many of you already don't Wilber all that seriously. There are so many other things that are relevant to working artists. I'll get back to those presently.