On Being Fireborn
From Vesperisms Season 2, Episode 6, May 2021
This is a free edition of Vesperisms, adaptated from a talk I did in March at the Breath & The Clay arts conference in Winston-Salem, NC. If you’d like to support the podcast and this Substack, consider a paid subscription. Thank you!
Greetings and Salutations, and welcome to Vesperisms: The Art of Thinking for Yourself. I’m here to help you recalibrate toward an artistic worldview. So grab your coffee, and have a seat in my studio, and let’s have a chat. This is Season 2, Episode 6: On Being Fireborn.
So my darlings, It’s been a minute. I apologize for the sizable gap in episode releases, but I have to tell you, not only have I been crazy busy at work on my new novel, but I have been trying to write a series on Censorship, which I will be releasing at long last. But I wanted to be very careful in the crafting of that series. Since we are living in a very censorious season, not just in my country but across the globe, I wanted to make sure I was communicating my thoughts effectively and accurately. I believe in choosing my words with great intention and not letting anyone dictate to me what I should think or say unless I have fully thought it through. So I think I’m ready, at last, to release that to you.
But first, I wanted to offer you an adaptation of a talk I did in March at the Breath & The Clay arts conference in Winston-Salem, NC. It’s always the highlight of my year, when I can be myself and talk to my “home team” as it were. The B&C is also the host of the Makers & Mystics podcast, and starting in June, I’m going to be guest hosting over there for a few months, so I encourage you to go on over there and drink deep.
My heart is to encourage and empower artists—and those who love them. I want you to accept yourself as you are, to operate out of a place of deep understanding of who you are and how you’re wired, no matter how different that may seem from those around you. So it’s in that spirit that I offer you this talk: On Being Fireborn.
“This old anvil laughs at many hammers. There are men who can’t be bought. The Fireborn are at home in fire.”
A friend recently sent me these three little lines from Carl Sandburg’s poem “The People, Yes”, and you know when you hear something that sums up your entire being and you wish you’d written it about yourself? Well, that’s this.
And so I want to talk to you about the artist’s true home.
THE FIRST FIREBORNS
In the Bible, the first allusion to fire is in Genesis 4, when Abel brings God a sacrifice of the firstborn of his flock. The memory of Eden is still fresh in his family’s story, the aching loss, the biting shame, the his parents’ mutual devouring, the children’s knowledge of their parents’ sin, the resentment toward his brother. And into this, they each bring their offerings.
Abel’s offering, of the firstborn of his flock, improves with fire, where Cain’s is utterly consumed, nothing to show for it but futility, failure, and he spirals into resentment, offense, retribution, his own version of justice for the wicked world he was born into, the lot he was dealt and to which he always appeals. He forgets that Abel had the same lot and is struggling back toward the flame himself.
Brothers—tradition says twins. And the result? Cain puts his brother’s blood in the ground, and the ground seizes, hardens against his best efforts, like trying to turn a screw the wrong way until it strips, when a caress would have done, a coaxing of the animal onto the altar. Abel’s blood was shed when Cain’s proper sacrifice would have been enough. “Fire will test each man’s work.”
The next mention of fire is later in the same chapter—Cain’s 3x-great grandson Tubal-Cain is born, the son of another murderer, Lamech. Tubal-Cain becomes the first person to forge sharp things in fire. He’s a worker of copper and iron. The Jewish commentator Rabbeinu Bahya connects the story of Tubal-Cain to Jeremiah, where those of us who are not metallurgists can learn that copper and iron cannot be smelted together.
“I’ve made you a tester of metals among my people, that you may know and test their ways. They are all stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders; they are [copper] and iron; all of them act corruptly, The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed by fire; in vain the refining goes on, for the wicked are not removed. Rejected silver they are called; for the Lord has rejected them.” This unstable combination of elements results in slag.
Rabbeinu Bahya says: “True cooperation between people who practice slander is not more possible than allowing copper and iron—in the end, both metals will become useless. Another anomaly is that you can never separate these two metals again. This is the reverse of what we find with allows containing silver and gold…[this demonstrates] the totally negative fallout of anything involving slanderous statements.”
Tubal-Cain’s work comes to naught; the very next chapter tells us of the flood, where the fires cooled and the slag fell to the bottom of the world.
IRON WORLD, COPPER WORLD
There are two worlds: Iron World, and Copper World. Iron world is the one we know, the world of the mundane. Copper World is the one beyond, outside, where “there be monsters.” You, artist, which one do you live in? The answer is, neither.
You see, between Iron World and Copper World there is an encircling fire. We talk about the flame of inspiration, of passion. Well, this is where that flame burns: in the in-between, the margin, the liminal space, the just-outside. It’s a crucible. Fire will test metals, and fire will test our mettle. Like Tubal-Cain, a tester is an experimenter. An artist.
Artists are the fire testers, the experimenters. We exist between Iron World and Copper World. Prophets live in this space. The wildness of God lives in this space. We’re at home here. And we have a job: to translate the monsters to the known world, and the known world to the monsters. But we’re not to live in the monster realm. And we’re not to live in the mundane world. And we’re not to mix the two. Like Rabbeinu Bahya says, Iron and Copper will cancel each other out; efforts born of Cain’s resentment and bitterness will create useless slag. But we? We are fireborn. Not just fire dwellers, but fire born. Artist, fire is your home. The fireborn are at home in fire.
FIRE IS TRUTH AND LOVE
We artists have a duty to speak the truth. I don’t mean making “political” art or edgy art or shock art. I said that the artist’s duty is to speak the truth. Politics is actually the most low-resolution version of describing reality that man has ever invented. This is why governor Pontius Pilate could look the creator-in-flesh in the eye and seriously ask him, “What is truth?” It’s because his vision was 8-bit politics. His paradigm had no way to scale up to full-spectrum reality.
What then is truth to the artist? Is it to let the institutions define the parameters of reality, to play along with their semantic games and maneuvering of human beings as nothing more than categorical abstractions? What do we even have to do with these pixelated corruptions of human dignity? We are the light of the world, that brings light into darkness and clarifies what the world only fumbles and bumbles with in the dark.
What happens when the artist crosses over into the realm of monsters? Addiction, mental anguish, nightmares—we are consumed by the fire when we cross into the monsters’ realm.
What happens when we try to plant roots in the mundane? We smolder down to embers. We say things like “I used to draw; I used to sing; there used to be a song in me, there used to be a dance in me.”
“Fire will test each man’s work.” Some of you listening have crossed into Iron World. You’re smoldering wicks and embers. God means to fan you into flame, because His fire is truth, AND he is the living flame of love, and he means you to be at home in fire. He’s the one with eyes of flame, and, if you choose to let Him, he’s going to be staring into your eyes for a billion years, so get used to being at home in fire. He means to pull truth out of you like a flame coaxed by breath.
You belong in the fire of the border lands. You’re at home there. Remember the way you used to come alive before a canvas? It’s because you’re fireborn. Remember how you were able to tell the normies about the mischief the monsters were up to? Fireborn. Maybe little by little you let the people of Iron World cool you, tell you that you burned too hot. But every now and then, a hot breeze crosses your shoulders, and you remember.
Still others of you here are raging fires, slashing and burning like wildfires on brush, and it’s hurting and scarring you and the people around you, and the best response you can muster is “well, I’m self-actualizing, and as for those other people, well, those are just consequences, you see. If you didn’t want to get burned, it’s your fault—you shouldn’t have been such dry kindling!”
Which one am I? I’m a rager. I have to channel my fire. I’ve been doing it for decades now—I’m not the same “burn it all down” person I was 30 years ago when God pulled me out of Copper World and into the border where I belong. The burning flame of the word of God has show me, as a fireborn, how to give both heat and light; how to illumine, how to warm weary bones. The word of God lets the artist say to those around her, “here, come in from the cold and stand next to me, and come more fully alive.”
Now you, artist, born at fire, at home in fire—here’s a note based on something I’ve seen just too many damn times: Just because I say that you don’t belong in the mundane world, doesn’t mean leaving your family so you can “find yourself” and get free from the shackles (i.e. people, like your parents, or your spouse, or your children) who you think are in the way of your work. Get outta here with that.
Neither am I saying that you have to abandon your fellow oddballs you hang out with and play it safe and stop keeping it weird.
Being fire born in not situational. It’s positional. It’s knowing that before God, in the realm of your spirit-man, that you are a border watcher. You are a see-er. Your calling is prophetic, which means you tell the truth, you stick your foot in closing doors, you keep the flame lit.
And whether you’ve sojourned too long in Iron World or Copper World, the good news is that you can come home. Any time you want.
But it requires something of you, artist. You must abandon the illusion that you belong or fit anywhere else. Somewhere over there between the safe cul-de-sac and the dark den of disturbance lies your home, a place to rest your thoughts and your emotions and the work of your hands. It’s glorious and bright and you can give your whole self to it, and it will make you love people better and it will insulate you against opinion and offense and show you how to make a proper sacrifice.
When we go back home to the fire, we can detach ourselves from the delusion that playing by the rules of Iron World or Copper World will yield the results we want.
Ask yourself, who are the monsters of our moment? Who are the normies? Both want to take you over, pull you into their realm, tell you your fire is too dangerous or not dangerous enough. Iron World wants to control your words, squeeze you into the conformity of the government, the corporation, pop culture, the news pundits, the approved viewpoints. Censorship, retributive “justice”, categorization, collective guilt narratives, flattening of your fellow human into 8-bit resolution. Copper World wants to drag you into a spiral of degradation, disintegration, dismantling, deconstructing, until you grieve the hope you once had but feel you’re not allowed to have. Both of these worlds want to lure you out of the fire and make you their tool.
But NOT YOU. You are fireborn.
If you go back home to the fiery border lands, you don’t fall for excuses like “it’s not cancellation, it’s consequences” or “they can’t help it, they are just so angry” or “I was born a mistake” or “their voice doesn’t count” or “it’s not sin if my side does it” or “this time this failed philosophy will work, I swear” or “if we just get this guy in charge” or “the kids are alright, they’ll be fine—they’re resilient.”
You won’t fall for any of it, because the fire IS truth and love together in eternal combustion, and both the monsters and the normies need you to BRING. IT. “Fire will test each man’s work.” Because the fire border is the gateway to the kingdom of God, and if you are an artist who understands his or her calling, then your concerns are kingdom concerns, and you get excited about that. You get fired up about that! And the petty, paltry, pasty cold-ember systems of the world become irrelevant.
I can have peace in letting the flame simply burn in me, around me, and from that place I can create, I can be enchanted by what the light reveals, I can translate across worlds, I can say what I mean and mean what I say!
The fireborn are at home in fire. So when the fire of censorship or shame or competition or failure comes to your doorstep, you can say “that won’t work on me!” Attempts to silence you frizzle and dissolve in your heat and light. You can say “I don’t recognize your definition of terms. Because here in my home, in my studio, in my relationships, we speak fire. I know who I am, and what kingdom I’m part of, and I know I am positioned me here in the in-between on purpose, for a purpose.”
By the time the dissident Czech playwright Vaclav Havel was sentenced to 4.5 years of hard labor for defending his fellow dissident artists, he had already mentally gone there. He’d been carrying around an “arrest kit” of toothpaste and cigarettes and razors in case he was arrested by surprise. In this way, he was able to move on to making his work, even in prison. The fire had already burned away the fear of the consequences, so he got back to work.
The fire born are unafraid of having everything burned away. “Woe to me,” says the prophet Isaiah, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips. Go ahead—touch my lips with a coal—I’m not afraid of the fire.”
“Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, slander be burned away from you, along with all malice,” says Saint Paul. When you’re fireborn, you can get about the business of humility, forgiveness, tender compassion, because the fire in you has already burned away everything you’ve tried to protect.
Fire doesn’t burn by itself. Andrew Murray says, “True humility begins and finds its strength in the knowledge that it is God who works all in all, that our place is to yield to Him in perfect resignation and dependence, in full consent to be and to do nothing of ourselves.” It’s not the Temple that is anything, but the God who dwells in it that sets it aflame. Living as a clean lick of eternal flame in the fire-between-the-worlds—this is the key to re-enchantment.
So it’s back into the fire with you, artist. Come back from the Iron World of the mundane, of the cooled ember, of past fear and shame. Come back from the Copper World of debasement and deconstruction and the scorched shell of who you thought you had to be.
Yes, it will cost you. But also yes, it’s where your creativity will kindle and flourish. You will no longer grieve not fitting, feeling homeless and odd and awkward. You will no longer make apologies or excuses for your fire, but simply live in it, channel it, welcome others to stand in the living flame of love with you.
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