Color of Soul 灵魂的颜色

吴达立《colour of soul》，丙烯，2016年

Do we have a soul? If so, what is its colour? Does the soul ever can have a colour?

In this world, we are bathed with a rich network of causal relationships. Of cause and effect. Often unaware of this complexity, we encounter an existential nausea that leads to anxiety, despair and thereby into an inescapable loneliness. We can imagine this miserable loneliness —  “The miserable loneliness of the man who has no point of support in the Cosmic Order” as Jorge Borges puts it — as a cocoon. From the cold nights to warm mornings, from restrictions to refurbishments, from confinement to the freedom touching the sky, the journey from caterpillar to a colourful winged butterfly often involves a cathartic metamorphosis.

But most of us, unaware of the final outcome, tend to carry the cocoon around us, deluding ourselves that we are protected and that we are superior and thereby continue to prison ourselves in it, thinking that it’s a paradise. This painting presents a cocoon in such a timeless illusory state. We prevent ourselves from enjoying the fresh air of reality by nesting ourselves in a complex hierarchy of cocoons that stand for our ego. The wings of our soul that represent its eternal longing for freedom to come out of these nested layers, are but thin and feeble and can seldom let us break open the cocoon.

As a funambulist that walks on a tight rope that is tied at its ends, we walk on a rope of life that is tied between the endpoints of birth and death, destruction and resurrection. We often try to balance ourself with a balance pole that has on its ends, faith and the doubt. This rope that is taut is often bent by the weight of our imagination, our fear and the illusion that stems from the lack of an awareness. In reality, there’s no rope and no struggle!

In this post modern era of scientific revolution, it is impossible to understand the notion of the soul as a quintessential entity scientifically. For the latter deals with quantifiable tangible entities organised in our immediate sensory perceptions and former being anything else but quantifiable. These objects are hidden from a rational eye, for the scientific formalism lacks the linguistic formalisms to even formulate a meaningful discourse. Imagine the otherwise meaningless phrases that result from such scientific dissolution of these things: “Soul weighs 28 grams”, “Love shines with a brightness of 37 candela”. These scientific words and phrases — hugely beneficial they may be — still flood our day to day vocabulary and outlook. But does these things lead us to ourself? Where’s the destination? Who is the traveler?

It occurred to me that the life doesn’t have a predefined meaning and self reflection doesn’t lurk be(-hind)yond the text. The reflection isn’t obtained by merely marrying art with spirituality, but it lies in an endless timeless invocation of the intricacies of the art that stitches to us a fabric of dense interconnections leading us to a deeply religious feeling of “one with everything”. And that I am in everything and everything is in me. In this sense, we see that art and divinity are two sides of the same door that opens into the reality. In this sense, art provides our wings the needed strength so that we can break the cocoon around us and see that everything is one with us. There’s no struggle, for all those who long for the warmth of eternity!

我们有灵魂吗？如果有，灵魂会是怎样的颜色呢？

通常我们习惯于将“宇宙秩序中没有立锥之地的，人的难以忍受的孤寂悲惨”（博尔赫斯语）比做蝉茧。从黑暗到曙光，从所谓作茧自缚到破茧而出，听起来像是一个线性的递进过程，其实很可能是一种非时间性的重叠的状态。自我被看似干涸而无情的外界拒绝，于是我们瑟瑟地蜷缩在精心编织的、脆弱的茧中，不愿被剥离，亦不愿刺破幻想，而永恒渴求自由舒展的薄翼悄悄地从厚茧里探出头，泄露了孵化的秘密。自我的边界其实是谎言，每时每刻，我们无不沉溺在生生死死的轮回中，而真实，凝结于每一瞬间的、毁灭与重生的，轻盈的真实，并不像妄想中那样不堪重负。

科学时代，人们对于五感无法察觉的灵魂，及与灵魂相关联的理想，爱情，超越物质性的不可见的至善等，每每论及它们，总像对待一道久未痊愈的丑陋伤疤一样，遮遮掩掩言不由衷，又好似面对一个过时的荒唐闹剧般，急不可待地将之抛诸脑后。再来就是以一种可笑的纯理性方式对其进行勘测、度量：“灵魂的重量是28克！”“爱情的重量是10克拉”等等荒唐至极的谬论充斥在被程序化、概念化包围的周遭，因为似乎这样，我们的生活才能不偏不倚，于控制中毫无纰漏地驶向光辉的正轨。可是，正轨之后又是什么呢？到达目的地之后又能如何？操控之下，被竭力忘却的巨大深渊仍无时不刻地吞吐着感官狂欢后的余烬，材料的堆砌并不能取消生活意象本质的虚无。

以往，我总长久注视星辰，臆想着灵性与艺术联姻后的辉煌。于是我任由充盈于我大脑中的纷繁意象喷泻而出，同时在故纸堆中，在哲人玄奥的残篇中，像是为了弄清“生命”二字的定义一般，执着地寻找正确答案和绝对公式。可我最终意识到自己找错了地方，生命本无究竟的定义，自我的倒影也不藏在任何字与字的空隙之间，灵性与艺术相结合得到的不是一条放之四海而皆准的公式，却是在一瞬瞬的时间，一块块反射着光芒的感质碎片，一点点铭刻着必朽生活的、与他人连结的记忆中，艺术才会是灵性的同义词；也正是这样，对于感官的描绘，也就是艺术，才能超越自身接近永恒。