Walter Martin’s 2022 album The Bear slows the world down, turning the listener’s attention to little things like “the holes where blind moles blink” or mixing paints or a baseball’s circuit between pitcher and catcher. This fixation on little things combined with Martin’s voice (in no way “done up”) gives the album its charm. And listeners will notice that Martin routinely stumbles upon the profound; little things, after all, add up to big things.
This is especially so in “The Song Is Never Done” where Martin sings of wanting to write the “perfect song.” But, he points out (tongue-in-cheek), “it’s not this one, it’s another one.” This other song will be his masterpiece, delivering like none other because in it Martin sings (in what sounds like a hurried, rambling footnote to the song), that he will
[E]xplain so perfectly what it’s like to be and what is so frightening
And what my life really means and how I find meaning in what I see
And what I understand about eternity and the way I want my children to remember me
And I want to say it all so eloquently and make all the rhymes nice and tight.
When Martin finally finishes the song, he hopes it will make him “fully known” and “not so damn alone.” Admittedly, his masterpiece in progress is “a lot of work, man, but it’s coming along.”
Martin’s longing to leave a mark in the world is reminiscent of J. R. R. Tolkien’s character Niggle from the short story, “Leaf by Niggle.” Niggle is a mediocre painter who works tediously on what he believes to be his masterpiece. Like Martin, Niggle focuses on little things, mostly painting leaves. But what begins as a single leaf keeps growing into more exquisitely detailed leaves. Niggle struggles to see “the tree for the leaves.” On top of Niggle’s obsessive attention to detail, his project is continually interrupted by the exigencies of life, especially the physical needs of his neighbor, needs which ultimately put an end to Niggle’s life and his beloved painting in progress. The painting is never done.
For those involved in creative labors, I believe Martin moves us in the right direction but doesn’t go far enough. The real hope lay not in the dawn of a new day but the dawn of a New Age—the new heaven and new earth.
On the other side of death, though, Niggle is astonished to see his tree gloriously complete and transformed from art to reality. Tolkien writes, “All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.” The leaves’ host branches, Tolkien writes, were “growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch.” Niggle, seeing his tree alive and beautifying the landscape, can’t help but exclaim: “It’s a gift!”
Tolkien’s story and Martin’s song tap into something that accompanies creative endeavors: the desire to make something of lasting value, to leave a mark in the world. These creative works often get stuck or slowed somewhere between our imaginings and real-world limits (of time, ability, or health). Niggle’s tedious painting was regularly interrupted. That Martin was singing a different song than his masterpiece in process underscores the point that our creative imaginings often reside more comfortably in our imagination than in reality. Pushing one’s creative aspiration out of one’s head and into the real world is often the work of Sisyphus.
There’s a tension, then, that Martin and Niggle (and Tolkien?) face in their creative work: what resides as a masterpiece in the creative’s mind has a way of getting dinged, nicked, torn, even mangled as it makes its way into the world.
Tolkien resolves this tension for Niggle in the next life or “the Beyond,” as Martin calls it.
Tolkien’s instinct, it seems to me, squares with the broad, eschatological hope of the Scriptures. Consider, for example, the scars of our Lord. The soldiers who pinned Jesus to the cross were doing their job. They woke up that day, perhaps somewhat aware that a more controversial job lay ahead, perhaps not. In any case, they had work to do and it was not a creative (that is, creating) work but a destructive one. Yet as Darrell Cosden points out, the result of this work is “guaranteed to carry over into God’s as well as our own future and eternal reality.” The hymn puts it this way: “Behold his hands and side, / rich wounds, yet visible above, / in beauty glorified.” The destructive work of the soldiers carries on into eternity, albeit beautifully glorified.
If the soldier’s destructive labor endures beyond this life what about the creative energies of countless humans over the course of human history? Might Jesus’s little scars (no more than an inch or so in size) signal possibilities for bigger things? I believe so. Jesus is described as the “firstfruits” of the resurrected world order, which suggests that his scars do indeed speak to broader resurrection realities. Little things add up to big things.
The arc of the biblical story moves from a garden to a garden-city, the New Jerusalem which suggests that the cumulative, creative labors of humanity will somehow spill over (albeit gloriously transformed) into the New Creation. Revelation hints at this when it describes the glory of the kings of earth being ushered into the new creation (Revelation 21:24).
Martin’s song concludes with a recognition that “the song is never done.” He sings, “the tune wants an answer but I don’t got one.” Yet the song ends on a note of hope: “But the light coming into my studio from the morning sun / fills the room and a new day has begun.” In other words, Martin, while recognizing the ongoing difficulty of creating the perfect song, takes solace in the Creator’s work evident around him, granting not just a new day but a gloriously radiant one. For those involved in creative labors, I believe Martin moves us in the right direction but doesn’t go far enough. The real hope lay not in the dawn of a new day but the dawn of a New Age—the new heaven and new earth. If the destructive work of Roman soldiers is beautified in the New Creation, just imagine what he who makes all things new can do with humanity’s humble creative labors.
