Radically thought & felt atheism leads to suicide.
As a result, we are usually surrounded by a superficial atheism that, in its dullness, can only approach life in a conventional way: Functioning in society, doing what everyone else does, using things and people for our own usefulness.
My art is inconceivable without religiosity. Religion in the meaning of the word as being tied back. For the time being, this does not even imply the condition of God’s existence. Rather indirectly: through the fact that the people and the culture in whose tradition I see myself have seen God as indispensable for their own work.
Starting with Bach, whose music brought me back to the religiosity and tradition of Western music and culture at a decisive point. His music is virtually a sounding proof of God. If you can feel that way, then everything else follows.
Now everything in life can only really be experienced with its opposite and so the following sentence by Hegel speaks of the other side of this reiligious certainty:
“Man is this night, this empty nothingness that contains everything in its simplicity, a wealth of infinite ideas … This is the night, the inner nature that exists here … pure self … You see this night when you look man in the eye – into a night that becomes terrible; the night of the world hangs towards you.”
You can discover this empty nothingness in yourself or in other people. The second has the advantage of perhaps not having to deal with one’s own abysses quite so deeply. In my opinion, however, no human being is spared an insight into this side, neither the modern nor the pre-Enlightenment European, nor those of other cultures. The social culture that surrounds us often tries to keep us away from these abysses with the most sophisticated mechanisms.
If these methods fail, we see individuals thrown back on themselves. What follows can easily lead to madness. If not in the feelings of the person concerned, then in the judgment of the surrounding society. Freeing yourself from this loneliness requires a radical reorganization of your own person. Not an easy undertaking.
After all, the surrounding society is always anxious to bring the individual back into the protection of conventionality. This also includes conventional religion. Unfortunately, however, it can provide less and less emotional security to the individual today, as it too is increasingly seen as a foreign body in an obsessed world.
Deeply felt religiosity, on the other hand, means seeing oneself as part of a cultural lineage. These can be kinship ancestors, but they can also be spiritual relatives that you seek out for yourself. You can meet people through your books, your paintings, your music.