New Theory
I'm too careful. In writing, that is. In life...well, I'm a single-mother who, with no life savings and bigtime student debt, is working on an MFA in POETRY. You do the math.
The truth is that I don't know shit about shit, but that shouldn't stop me from flinging handfuls of steaming ignorance into cyberspace more often.
I'm not talking about belligerent opinions secretly held in reserve for fear of giving offense. On the contrary, I'm not sure what, if anything, is worth having a belligerent opinion about.
And here's a case in point. I immediately began wondering if that was really true, and whether or not I should delete that sentence until I'd given it more thought. But what if it were untrue? What if I happened to have a very belligerent opinion that I wanted to express three weeks from next Tuesday? What difference would that make?
None. At all.
Every now and then I cringe at the things written in my archives, but I don't delete them because it feels too much like image control. There's something worth having a weak opinion about. We're all in the image business with varying degrees of consciousness, but the cultivation of a tightly controlled persona strikes me as stupid.
So what's the difference between corporate branding and originality in art? What am I after when I sit down to write? How is what I'm after different than what your average marketing director is after? At base what we both want is for people to be won over by our products.
I could argue all the similarities and some of the differences, but at the moment I'm already bored with that line of thinking.
The question, however, has something to do with a certain uneasiness I have about why I arrange words in the first place. I don't want to be the spokesperson for me or for people like me and I'm certainly not comfortable speaking for anyone else.
Friday's night's reading went great, by the way, and while that ought to come as some sort of affirmation, it only adds to my confusion. I don't know what people liked or why they liked it or whether I'd consider myself successful if I knew.
Reading about Futurism & German Expressionism & Dada & Surrealism, I think it must be lovely to have something to really rail against. I rail privately against systems of social organization I find cruel, or at best indifferent--but smarter people have said it better and no one listened to them either. Worse, every last gesture of aesthetic racialism is eventually co-opted by the establishment if it's appealing enough to get the public's attention.
Oh, well. Bedtime.
Comments
The difference between art and science is that in science the goal is to create results that can be repeated over and over again: two plus two is always four; sodium and chlorine always (under the right conditions) combine to make salt. Whereas in art the goal is to create something that is essentially unique: one Mona Lisa or Van Gogh olive orchard, not ten thousand of them. (The Mona Lisa on ten thousand T-shirts is a statement about industry and technology, but it doesn't augment the value or validity of the original painting.)
The difference between art and entertainment is that art tries to get us to concentrate on what it's bringing to us, whereas entertainment tries to distract us from what it's not bringing to us.
The difference between art and science, and the difference between art and entertainment, both speak to me about the differences between poetry and marketing, among other things.
Posted by: Lyle Daggett | November 13, 2007 01:12 AM
Most of the poets I like to read are pretty dumb; generally naive or stupid people who've, in my very low opinion, done some very ridiculous things with and in their lives. Most of the poets I read or enjoy are people I probably couldn't stand very long to be in the same room with, and I'm pretty sure the feeling would be mutual.
So you needn't rail against anything outside of your mind and body. Just be yourself, and rail against that. Don't worry about other people and marketing. Marketing is mythical. It doesn't really work. People like what they like. You can't change their beliefs in art and entertainment. You can try to influence, but you can only do that from a position of respect. And all those positions are currently taken or non-existent.
Posted by: James S. | November 13, 2007 09:14 AM
and let me just disagree with lyle's assertions about art and science; i've never even seen the mona lisa, but i'm quite aware of her effect on people. the breakfast club is a work of art that elicits the same results every time i watch it. the intensity and transformation of the characters is amazing. the wonder years never fails to bring tears to my eyes. these are repeatable results to me. 2 + 2 is the elementary equivalent of drawing a line. a line is always a line, especially if i'm using the same pencil and ruler.
as for poets, the best are known for producing a certain style, voice, and form. repeatable results. very few consistently reinvent their voice and style. springsteen, waits and dylan, perhaps, maybe even eliot and pound, but complete originality on top of the original achievement is even rare amongst the best. didn't shakespeare invent the sonnet to achieve a repeatable form to fill out with poetry?
as for the mona lisa, whose value or validity i don't give a fuck about, the mona lisa is an industry all by her stupidly smiling self. she has gone far beyond the repeatable results of her creation.
Posted by: james s. | November 15, 2007 09:22 AM