"Art is about shaping things, it's about craft and deliberation, skill and surprise. It's not a therapy session. I'm so tired of poets who say, 'Here is my heart on a platter -- eat it, for it is a poem, and should be savored, because it is honest!' Such people should be tossed out windows and mocked viciously!"I remember once when a friend of mine said that art should reflect reality. Like a mirror. I think she used the word mirror. And I said something back with enough force that she was pretty sure I was angry with her. I didn't slam my fist down, but I did want to make sure she knew where I stood on the issue.
Because art doesn't reflect the world. You can't hold up a piece of art and say, "this is the way the world is." What you can do is hold up a piece of art and say, "this is the way a world is." It's the world shown in that piece of art. That poem. That novel. That painting.
Even art that looks very much like a report of events is not reflecting the "real" world (whatever that is). It's making it's own world. I don't read The Things They Carried because it's going to look like the Vietnam war. I read it because it creates a remarkable world. Everything in that book is real. It's a real world. It has walls and guns and people and dying animals. But it isn't this world. It isn't the world I see in a mirror.
Hell, I don't trust a mirror anyway. What I see in the mirror is just reflected light. No emotions. No magic. No motive. No life. Just light. Turn off the light, it disappears.
Turn off the light and art still exists. It exists inside you. And that's important. And that's the difference.
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1 comment:
Well said.
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