Blessed Are the Pure in Heart

Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.

Having just written of how tone-deaf the Oscars were, I feel I need to add an immediate caveat. Actors are not the problem here.

They are the ones most visible, in their suits and sequins and on the stage. But they are not the establishment.

Invariably, someone who has become an artist has emerged from a difficult background, an experience of oppression. A small number may end up rich and successful. But they are still members of an oppressed group.

Such an experience instills pureness of heart; because it crushes the ego. As I have noted before, an actor needs a very small ego in order to inhabit the mind of another for a role. So does a writer, writing the role. So does a director, trying to see things from the viewpoint of the audience.

And a pure heart, a heart not adulterated by ego, is a heart open to the spirit, to inspiration. Only they "see God."

Accordingly, talent comes from being abused. You need to have suffered to sing the blues.

Unfortunately, without ego, chameleon-like, as Keats had it, the artist is also open to being easily influenced by others. Being themselves guileless, they will not suspect guile in another. And so they can be weaponized by others or a more cynical frame of mind.

They are child-like in this way. They do not question or hold back; they see what they think is right, and they will invest in it totally. They are pure in heart.

Joaquin Phoenix’s speech at the Oscars was politically berserk, with its objection to putting milk on cereal, but Joaquin Phoenix’s heart was clearly in the right place.