Belson and the Search for Self in the Cosmos

"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." - William Shakespeare

There is a point in this reading that borders on the sublime.  It comes when Belson describes his experience in creating Samadhi.  He talks about a convergence, of the images he sees in his mind that he translates to film that then merge with the images in the real world sky.  While these effects are very likely tied to Belson's use of psychedelics, it is a state that I would venture to say all artists seek to obtain: a universal truth that reverberates through our artistic output and into the world and all of its inhabitants and up through the heavens and ultimately back to and through us again.

Going into this second project, this seems a pretty lofty, if not impossible goal.  The universal truth that Belson was after seems invariably linked to the time period in which he created his works.  With the psychedelic culture flourishing and with the arts in America still riding the crest of the abstract-expressionist movement, Belson was tapping into a more shallow and easily accessible definition of "universality."

With this, I am in no way discounting the magic that Belson was able to create.  His films transfix and inspire me.  But I wonder if they are capable of drawing in a contemporary audience outside of those already in tune with his vision whether through artistic endeavor or drug fueled hallucination?

What is universal in the here and now?  The world is much smaller today.  Technology has bridged gaps of physical distance and the audience for any artistic output, ranging from a high school student's sketch to a gallery-backed art phenomenon's masterwork, is potentially global now.  How do we tap into truths accepted across cultures and economic strata.  Can fields of color and dancing shapes and lines be "superempirical" any longer?

But maybe I am overanalyzing.  Perhaps like many great artists, Belson created the films he created for himself in the hopes of tapping into the universal by happy accident.  Perhaps his practice was a means of justifying his existence to himself.  Because I feel like this is ultimately at the heart of any successful creative practice: creating things that resonate with the self in the hopes that it affects someone else.  Not in a universal sense so much as an intimate resonance between the artist and an audience member, the artist and a fellow artist, or the artist and God.  And from this resonance, the hope that our pursuits are not in vain grows and we continue to pursue the universal, all the while growing in our craft.