The significance of building a temple

Asking what matters enough for you to build a temple to it was a simple question to me. But thinking about it, I can now see it as a question that should have come at the end of a longer thought. But perhaps I didn't understand exactly how to pick apart what I was asking at that stage. Now I find that the thought won't leave me alone. Why is building a temple so significant?

How do you know what you find most meaningful?

• What got you out of bed the day after your father died?

• Which ideas won't leave you alone?

• Which interests do you always return to?

• Which places?

• Which works of art?

• What is it that won't leave you alone even if it as yet has no real part in your life?

Those are all signs that you're finding meaning. Imagine that there are six things that you understand as meaningful. Now imagine that you can point to one of those things as the most meaningful amongst the six: the most meaningful of the meaningful.

Having learned what it is, how do you neatly articulate it? This is difficult because you'd have to describe what's most meaningful in your life and why this one thing should sit at the pinnacle of your mountain of meaning. Instead, what's needed is something that can act as a representation of it so that no words, or just one or two, are needed. The use of a symbol or of a word like Aphrodite is then able to contain the multiplicity of meaning that's embedded in what you've identified.

But this then remains a concept which is harder to communicate than something material that can be seen. So, you can create an anthropomorphic representation of your meaning. Perhaps this is why there are representations of the muses or of poetry. As the symbol or name gives us a conceptual representation, so art such as a statue gives us a physical representation.

Then, this being the pinnacle of your meaning, you might place it on a dias so as to elevate it above you. For if this is the most meaningful thing in your life, then aren't you framing it as something greater than you? The practice of kneeling before representations is an act of submission to something meaningful that we recognise as greater than us, if not divine.

Perhaps in order to communicate the meaning that you've found you want to stage the physical representation that you've created. So you might surround it with a building that's appropriate for the meaning that you're seeking to convey while still guiding visitors to the representation of meaning. It also protects the representation.

So, in a few steps, a temple has been built and if enough others are persuaded of the significance of the meaning, you might find that you've created a religion. The significance of this is that anything that has enough meaning to someone can have a temple built to it. What matters is the meaning you find and your capability to understand it.

We can see in this painting everything that I’ve tried to capture. A man is kneeling before a female anthropomorphisation of rhetoric. Not only is he kneeling, he is several steps below her and she is sitting on a throne. Also, the pieces were hung above eye level so, like the man, we are positioned below rhetoric. What is this if not the elevation of rhetoric above us?

A photo of the painting Rhetoric by Justus of Ghent and workshop dated to the 1470s by Craig Stevens, Fuji XF10 F2.8 ISO 400

Ever since I discovered DAM I've had trouble sorting out the levels of meaning in my life. I gave myself so completely to my studies of DAM that, when I completed my dissertation, I felt as if my life no longer had any meaning. I rediscovered meaning as a professional in the field, but I also rediscovered my love of writing, paintings and art across multiple disciplines. I discovered photography. So I understood that the two most meaningful things in my life are DAM and art, but I didn't know how to rank them.

Then I visited Paris.

Paris is always transformative for me. Every time I go I come back different and it was no different in June 2022. I'm still not sure how describe what happened at Versailles except in the most literal of terms. But in looking at Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun's portraits of Marie-Antoinette and understanding the near unending beauty of the chateau, something shifted. I left with one simple thought ringing through me, clear as a bell:

“Bring all your art into the world”.

I've always shied away from doing that, perhaps out of fear of judgement or pure self-consciousness. All of a sudden it was easy and natural. More than that, I built a temple to art: this site. This is why the temple is called Ma Reine (My Queen): to honour what had helped me understand how meaningful art is to me.

Though it took me a month to appreciate it, I realised that what I'd done was resolve the question of relative hierarchy of meaning in my life. It was art that had emerged as the greatest source of meaning. DAM still provides significant meaning to me, not least the capability to provide income. But for the first time I can see the potential for art to generate some income because it seems I’ve got past the worst of the fear of making what I create public. I can see the potential for a career after DAM.

The most important thing now is to keep creating, to tend the temple to what's most meaningful to me.

So now I can ask the question again: what matters enough for you to build a temple to it?