"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Paul Lytle

The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
-Isaiah 40:8

I pulled out a CD yesterday that I haven't heard in years. It is not that I did not like it, quite the opposite, but I have many CDs. The shorter ones (this particular CD has only six songs) often get left behind simply so I will have enough music in my player to last a reasonable amount of time. After all, a twenty-five minute CD is only going to get me so far. About twenty-five minutes, in fact.

This CD, called EP, was recorded by The Point in 1996. To my knowledge, it is the only CD the band produced. Normally, even the most obscure CDs from my collection can bring up a few matches with an internet search, but this one only brought up one link from Google. All of this is to say it was not really well known at the time, and now it has drifted into musical obscurity. The only reason I found out about it, in fact, was because my mother knew the mother of one of the members. Some of the best stuff comes to you by chance.

Again, I hadn’t heard it in years, but the music came back to me quickly. After a verse of each song, the following lyrics leapt to mind before they leapt from the speakers. I had listened to this CD more than a few times in 1996, and was now recalling every note. The last song, "Sahara of the Heart," returned with a flood of memories. There is such emotion and sadness in that song that the mood lingered upon me for several days after listening to it again. It is haunting and wonderful.

Hearing such great art on an out-of-print CD from an apparently defunct band brought its own sort of sadness to me. It reminds me that, though great works of creativity and inspiration from centuries gone by still exist, we have lost the bulk of it, if not the very best of it. "Sahara of the Heart" (which ironically asks "Have you forgotten me?" in its chorus), in my opinion, can stand up to any song by any super-group. But even the worst teeny-bop music remains while The Point is largely forgotten.

Ten years ago they asked, "Have you forgotten me?" The answer is more yes than no.

The Point is not alone, of course. My favorite P. M. Dawn CD was never offered in stores and cannot be bought new now. Another of my favorite bands, Wanderlust, never became very popular. And these are only modern examples. We know that Sophocles was a great playwright because of the seven plays that remain intact. He wrote a hundred and twenty-three. Consider that Charles Dickens’ great mystery, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, will never be solved since the only one who knew the solution, Dickens himself, died before finishing it.

They say that true art will live forever. Those of us who are art lovers soon learn the truth. True art normally slips through the public consciousness as fast as sands through an hourglass, and often unnoticed. Those works of art that do survive are often trivialized or guarded for only a select elite. Few, relatively, have read The Iliad. Fewer still have read The Divine Comedy, which is not as often required in high school English class.

In other words, if you are delving into art to be remembered, you'll have a better chance as a serial killer.

These musings have taken on a personal note with me lately. I have always been a writer, and I have always assumed that my works will live on after I am dead. And yet all those great works of art I loved ten years ago cannot even be special ordered now. It was not their quality; it was something else. Even this magazine, which can right now be read from all over the world, will disappear the second we are lax in our payment for the website. Oh, yes, it will remain on my computer, but that will turn to dust also.

Have you forgotten me?

The answer from the world is: Not yet, but soon.

I was reading lately something that was a comfort to me. The point was simple: that art, as we have already discovered, is fleeting. But we will live forever.

This is exactly opposite of what we are always taught, of course. We are told that people die, but through art they may remain forever. But the last part of that statement is untrue; we have already seen that. Art dies. Some art lasts longer than others, but most art has already disappeared, and the rest will go eventually. If we are seeking permanency, then we must look elsewhere.

But what of us? The Bible teaches us that we have an immortal soul. Christ tells us, "He who believes has eternal life."

The statement, though we have always known it to be true, is shocking. I do not think I have ever realized that art was the temporal one and man the eternal. And isn’t that the way it should be? Art is meant to teach and please, but if art is the highest thing, then what are we teaching with it? Of course, we use it to teach because there is something higher than art, something more eternal. Art is simply the metaphor used to describe what truly matters.

The refrain in "Sahara of the Heart" asks, "Have you forgotten me?" I used it before to ask whether The Point was forgotten. But their question is a thousand times more important. They ask whether God has forgotten them, while I wondered whether we have forgotten them. The answer to each question is very simple, but sometimes hard to recognize.

To the first question, no, God has not forgotten, and nor will He ever. Our souls were meant for something more. The answer to the second is that the world has not, perhaps, forgotten, but it will. In time, even Shakespeare will be forgotten. Art is simply a means of expressing that which is eternal. Metaphors were meant to die. They are meant to bring us to a point and then fade away, their purpose achieved.

The Point will be forgotten. The three men who made up that group are meant for an eternity.

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