I like William's citation of the Joshua Reynolds line:
"He who follows must necessarily stay behind."
I knew the Reynolds line, but the second line William cites, I didn't know,
and it's also good:
"It was said that the most adventurous American
frontier pioneers moved on when they heard the sound
of another man's axe."
Neither line proscribes spending ample time in "civilization" before moving
on to unexplored territory. I myself can't think of a creator in any of the
genres who didn't do so. I often refer to the astonishing draftsmanship Picasso
was displaying by his mid-teens. His father, an orthodox painter and teacher,
put the young Pablo through a home-course of life-drawing etc.
Once a would-be creator has learned what the genre has had to offer, he may
face a dilemma. He may want to be "new", and yet intuit that he wants to work
within some of the old forms. In my two genres -- fiction (as an editor and
publisher) and theater as a playwright -- I did not want to reject orthodox
narrative. The challenge then becomes how to retain basic traditional elements
and
yet do original work. (Recall the temporarily suspended thread about "Be
different!")
Ideally, original work should emerge from a combination of fresh imagination
with sufficient education about traditional forms. We need to know what those
traditional forms brought with them, why they were cherished, so that when we
leave them behind, we do it advisedly, and can feel our "novelty" is worth --
in our creator's view -- the cost of what we're abandoning. Therein --
potentially -- lies the value of a good art school, a Yale school of Drama, a
Juilliard School of Music.
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