Michael Pucci (MP): My first impression of you from print and your website is that you don’t tend to talk about the artist or artistic expression so much as art and the media as an epistemology – a means of knowing the world in a different way. Do you want to unpack that idea?

Kelvin Tan (KT): Epistemology is very important for me; not just what knowledge is but how we attain knowledge. I think I’ve been very inspired by philosophers or thinkers who have suffered; who have been through a period of suffering and also because of my own suffering. The thing about suffering is that it doesn’t matter if it is major or minor – suffering is suffering, it just affects people in different ways. So I think when I was going through a certain period of failure in my teens, I questioned God’s existence; I think we all go through that. I know a lot of Christians who tend to say, “Avoid all these philosophies because they’re bad for your faith,” but it was the so-called atheistic philosophies that actually stirred me back to God. That’s where I realized that I have to live a life of questioning. If I didn’t question myself about my faith, I couldn’t deepen it. That’s where I got into art because it inspired me to delve deeper – art forced me to question things and humbled me.

MP: There is a certain way of engaging that is a responsibility of the Christian, in that we cannot affirm everything. You cannot just say, “Hey the status quo is OK,” and whatever I receive I just accept blindly. Some things that we see and understand in the world, we have to say, “This is not good.” And at some level that kind of questioning, that wrestling, is a posture that is more Christian. Yes, maybe that has more affinity with a postmodern worldview but it is more Christian to sometimes affirm “Praise God; look at the amazing world we live in” but at other times confront “This isn’t right, this suffering or injustice is really bad.” We have to stop pretending and ask “Why is it like this?”

KT: That’s one of the reasons why I tend to go totally against the grain of theologians who talk about postmodernism as being a very bad thing. I look at it as a very good thing. Because what these philosophers were trying to say is not that God doesn’t exist but that do we really know who God is, and the only way to do it is to plow deeper into the consciousness, so you have to strip the layers. Maybe the postmodernist philosophers do not have a belief in God. I don’t think that’s important. What is important for me is what the philosophy is teaching me about my faith.

MP: How would you characterize an artistic mode of engagement with the world, an artistic epistemology? What makes it different from an empirical or objectifying way of looking at the world?

KT: The great pleasure I take from an artistic epistemology is that I can be myself. I feel that all this follows the tenets of our Lord. He was always Himself. And He had profundity of knowledge. And through the connection with people, He created this spiritual realm and I feel that can be done by us. We have to first become real with ourselves. I find that when you do that people tend to open up and you create a certain realm, a space. For me, art gives me that freedom to create that space to say and do what I want.

I always feel that a lot of people think that mysticism has died. I kind of disagree as I think it just takes a different form. I think there is a spiritual realm still somewhere but just because people don’t acknowledge it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not there. I think I’ve learnt a lot about that as a lecturer at LASALLE because I deal with mostly non-Christians, students, and all. And I realized that if I were to talk to them, connect with them as friends, learn humility, and learn from them as much as they are learning from me, I’m creating a certain spiritual realm there which we don’t understand. It’s something that is bigger than us. And for me, that is in a way to live by example.

MP: It seems like in contrast with an epistemology of empiricism, of objectifying things and others, that art is more relational. You know the world in the same way you get to know another person, and this way of knowing is very biblical. So it’s no surprise that we can come to know something qualitatively different about the world if we approach it that way. The concepts you emphasize in the artistic engagement with the world are: humility, awe, suffering, authenticity, complexity, creating a space; it is actually very spiritual. It’s interesting because the world will tell you that this is important information and this is the way to get truth, furthermore, that this kind of truth is important; meaning mostly that it is economically valuable – in today’s world, truth is very pragmatic. What kinds of truth are you able to uncover with this epistemology of art?

KT: I really appreciate your question because I don’t even get that from the press. Well, what our Lord did in a profound way was to confront the darkness and then embrace it. As Nietzche described it, knowing the truth causes you fear, but you have to confront it. You have to deal with the deepest layer of truth. You have to see it. You have to connect to the world and then let your life be an evidence of that truth. And I think that is really challenging for us all to do, and I realized the only way I could do that was to confront the darkness. So a lot of what I do as a musician or writer is very dark to a lot of people. I’ve got very nasty criticisms thrown at me, “Your music is depressing, your work is depressing.” I’ve heard this all my life in Singapore. But I feel that it is important to bring those things out because I think that is what life is.

I’m trying to use art to reach out to people far away from Christian communities like at LASALLE. Truth is hard to explain so you sort of put it in your music. The whole idea for me is that my art is a means for me to realize my own identity, my relationship with God. It is also my means of embracing the darkness and understanding it. And I think that is useful in LASALLE because I see a lot of students there and they are suffering. I feel that at least I can understand and maybe I can make a difference.

MP: That’s the whole idea of Christ’s vine branching through all of us and reaching different people…with different people.

KT: I am also very inspired by St Paul. He had wisdom and knew how to speak very well and how to inspire people. So sometimes I see that’s what I do here. I preserve a certain strong fierce individuality, which some people consider radical, but I think the Lord was radical too. There is a need for individuality that says, “I don’t have to go this way,” I guess I’m doing that by living my life and just doing my art. I’m very inspired by true individualists who do music, that’s why Johnny Cash is a total individual. He is like Paul to me. Paul used to torture and crucify Christians, and Cash went through this dark drugs period and then he became a better person yet, he was still very humble. That guy is an inspiration to me. He was one of the few people in the rock and roll tradition who had a devout Christian upbringing – stuck to it no matter what. You can also feel the suffering in his singing.

MP: I think that there is something pretty flawed in the way of thinking of the message as something different from the person as medium anyway. It is amazing that God chose us; we are His medium of choice. He chose to put the fullness of the expression of Himself in human form in Christ. And then He chose to send His mission, His embrace of the world through humans. It is not accidental that He has chosen the medium that is messed up, work in progress as we are, just to say something. What do you think He is trying to say by choosing humans to relate with humans rather than propositional truths?

KT: For me the most important challenge is to follow Christ’s example because I feel that what Christ has done in His parables and teachings is so incredibly profound. He has this great complexity of thought, but He processed that into simple parables that everyone can understand. How do you listen to classical music; how do you read philosophy and have it make sense to someone who doesn’t go to school? If you go to LASALLE, most of them are secondary school dropouts and they say, “Why should I read this?” and they are right. If I could tell them, “This is what the author is trying to say” it excites them. A lot of academics and theologians can’t do this. It comes out very convoluted and I stay away from that. That is why rock & roll and blues is so important to me, as they have a simple sense of refrain.

MP: The western notion of the artist is like the academic. It is removed, distant. But you are trying to put the artist in the middle as a bridge – a translator in between.

KT: Exactly; the medium, I think that’s what all the great prophets were, that’s what St Paul was. He translated the intellectualism of God’s wisdom and tried to make them see and that’s such a great thing. I’m not worthy but that’s what I’m trying to do in art in the same way.

When people look at me they have this impression of what kind of a person I am and it’s probably not who I am at all. They think I’m a total atheist but when they find out that not only am I a theist but I go to church every Sunday, it just screws their mind up. So that’s the challenge. It’s like a blessing and a burden. It’s a blessing because God made you different but it’s a burden. I just look at God and say, “Ok, I’m just a messenger and if you want me to do this, fine, that’s your problem, not mine.” I realized it freed me. I could do what I wanted and I’m really happy about that. But I just have to have faith that God will give me the strength and survivability to keep on doing what I’m doing. I believe if He is making me for this, it must be for some purpose I do not understand.

MP: I think there is a good reason why the Holy Spirit is called the Comforter because we are living in a world that is painful to experience authentically. We can put in a lot of false idols that will comfort temporarily. We frequently see the great artists who are closest to the edge of reality and existence getting comfort from their suffering in all the wrong ways – escaping through sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Should it surprise us that it is proportional that the closer artists are to the raw experience of life that their pull toward false comforts intensifies and amplifies?

KT: In my case it’s also about standing in the gap because you could always move in front. That has been my challenge. One wrong move and you can go the other way. You see that world but you are not part of it. You are just skirting around the edge, but it’s also quite dangerous. So I try everyday to focus on God and what I’m doing because it can affect you, just like that. The madness of the great artists and thinkers is actually quite disturbing. This is what they went through, and I could go through it, and I tell myself not to step in there. Basically it’s like Jonah trying to get out of the whale. Stay long enough in it to learn humility and get the hell out of there.

MP: All the things that we find to judge people is to separate them from us – their poverty, race, culture, and religion. It’s more about protecting me than it is about trying to engage them in love. I think it’s an essential part of the artistic space that you talked about earlier – to create a space that drops the guard, that allows an opportunity for a new kind of encounter without the lines, without the definitions. It’s a little bit more like play and less like judgment. This kind of humility invites a renewal of engagement.

KT: We talk down to people because of fear. We look at a youth and say he has not eaten enough salt. We are always talking down to people without knowing it. There is this poison that Satan has put in us that we feel that we are better than someone else. It robs us of encountering truth in the other person and the world. I feel that we live in a very condescending world. I hope that God will help me not do that. Humility is the antidote and people sense that. The thing I find very exciting is the way God molds us. His fingerprints are all over us but it’s invisible. I don’t even dare to assume that I’m doing a good job. I can only say that I’m doing my best. God is working and hopefully they will see something in me.

Dr Michael Pucci is part of the Eagles VantagePoint editorial team. He is currently the International Director of Academic Programs for FH (Food for the Hungry).