dmb and all,
What I've found very difficult, and sometimes a set-back, a set-back for
months, sometimes years due to my misunderstandings is how just when I think
I've figured something out, and I try to make art out of it, I find what I've
figured out to be something many, many people have already figured out too. So
then I find my effort to be noncreative and nothing new it would seem, for then
I see it everywhere. I find hundreds of voices speaking about the same thing.
So then I question how what I'm saying and how I'm trying to relate this
understanding in such and such word-painting, how is it worthwhile for hundreds
of voices are saying the same thing. Yet, I've recently been at a point for
about three or more months now that this is how I can contribute. This is how
I can help. Maybe it takes hundreds of voices, thousands of voices all saying
the same thing for the understanding to be loud enough. Also, these voices are
scattered at times and in
one long written statement or two, these voices may find home in one place, in
one writing or painting for that matter. It's pulling these voices together in
such a way that yes they may all be found in many places but sometimes they are
not found in the same place at once (a book, a painting, a musical, etc...).
So, in one way it's reassuring and supportive to find out somebody else had
already put it that way (whichever way or topic we are pointing out, so, I'm
generalizing), but in another way it would seem I'm not being creative at all
and that sets me back. Yet, I'm steadily growing out of this set-back, and
finding more meaning in these thousand voices.
woods,
SA
--- On Mon, 6/16/08, david buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: david buchanan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: [MD] Code of Art
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Date: Monday, June 16, 2008, 7:43 AM
> Platt said:
> I too enjoyed your paper, especially your summary at the
> end where you attribute progress to the individual, citing
> Pirsig's "history is biography" and
> writing, "The struggle is personal."
>
> dmb replies:
> Thanks. How about the part where I quote John Dewey talking
> about why most aesthetic theories fail? He says they,
> "fail because they do not take account of the
> collective civilization that is the context in which works
> of art are produced and enjoyed" and "their whole
> conception of morals is so individualistic that they miss a
> sense of the WAY in which art exercises its humane
> function". Based on your track record here and on the
> present comments, I'd say you share in that failure.
> The idea of taking account of the "collective
> civilization" always rubs you the wrong way, namely
> leftward. Taking account of the context usually strikes you
> a commie plot or some such thing. More specifically, here
> you emphasized the personal and the biographical as if it
> were an assertion of individuality. But those words are
> meant to emphasize the particular situation, the specific
> and concrete problems encountered in experience as opposed
> to dreaming up solutions in the abstract. Its about
> context, not individualism. Creative people, in fact, often
> describe their inspired moments in terms of letting
> something else flow through them, as if they were
> channeling a spirit or possessed by a Muse. David Lynch in
> a big fan of transcendental meditation and uses that method
> to make his ego shrink, for example. And besides all that,
> the point is that the evolutionary nature of art totally
> depends upon its ability to resonate with the whole
> culture. Its transformative power operates on a collective
> level, and you always refuse to acknowledge such a thing -
> oddly - for political reasons. That refusal makes no sense
> for lots of reasons, but that's another thread for
> another day.
>
>
>
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