Creation through destruction

I was watching an episode of Northern Exposure yesterday - no surprise. Somehow the episode meant so much more to me than it did in the past. In the episode Chris wants to fling a cow using a catapult. At the same time Maggie's mother is coming to town to visit her. Her mother burns down her house accidentally in the same day that she tells her that the parents are getting a divorce. There seems to be some symbolic correlation between the two events. Simultaneously Chris discovers that Monty Python flipped a cow and he must stop work on his "living art" project. Depressed that he can't think of anything else to do, he finds inspiration out of Maggie's situation. He quotes Picasso, "Every act of destruction is an act of creation." He is smitten with her situation. He tells her "You are at ground zero of creation." She cannot see this, but just agonizes over the destruction of her house and her belongings. Chris eventually decides to take Maggie's burnt piano and fling it over a lake in front of the community. The "living art," while environmentally disturbing, showed symbolically that art has multiple meanings and that something that was once constituted as destroyed has now been used anew.

The part of the episode that grips me is the connection between Maggie finding out that her house has burned down and that her parents are getting a divorce. Both events seemingly caused by her mother. I would not be so smitten as Chris was seeing that some act of creation could flow from this destruction. I would be more akin to Maggie who is tied to the fact that her family life as she knew it is destroyed and her house has burned down. But Chris is right. If you extend the metaphor, then her house representative of her family had many issues, some beyond repair, and in burning down, while it may be painful may have been better for her. But as she disagrees in the episode, "It was my house, my house!" Much like it was her family life that was destroyed here.

I really feel for Maggie. I think about my own life, how painful the end or destruction of something can be and yet the creation or new beginning that generally comes of it can sometimes be more plentiful. What significance should we take from the fact that we always want things to be the same, but that they are destroyed in preparation for something new?

The episode really shook me up in that light. Beyond that it had some really interesting questions like - what constitutes art? Is flinging a cow or a piano art? Is art in the hands of the audience, the maker, or a shared medium? Do both have to enjoy the experience for it to meaningful?

Again Northern Exposure shrouds me in reflection for a few days. Reflect with me:)