Tag Archives: Art

The Other Way Around

I like shiny new toys.

You’re probably thinking right now, “of course he does, he’s a guy.” And, well, its true…we really don’t grow up, its just that our toys really do get bigger and more expensive. More and more over the past couple of years, though, I’ve been questioning why it is that I like new toys so much. Doesn’t even matter so much what the toy is, it gives me a bit of a buzz. Yesterday, Karen and I were brainstorming ways to solve some ergonomics issues in our apartment. The short-term solution was to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for one of our Macs. I nearly tripped over myself getting to Best Buy. Forgot about what I had been contemplating earlier in the day, at least temporarily. The tools for our life briefly became ends to themselves, rather than means.

Today, I was having a conversation with a co-worker who had deactivated his Facebook page, and who refuses to have a Twitter account. He says that he did so because he wanted to be able to spend more time with his family…more human contact and less cyber-contact. We discussed the use of social networking as a tool. Its important that it stays there, remains only a tool. Similar is our hardware, especially with such slick gadgets to grab our attention and time like iPhones and (breathe deeply) the rumor of a new tablet from Apple by Christmas. Nothing is wrong with these things, and I value their excellent craftsmanship. At the end of the day, however, they are only tools.

We were created as creators. Every one of us, to some degree, experiences the creative impulse. Some paint, some write, some compose. Some solve engineering problems, some strategize how to most effectively teach their classrooms. Creativity takes many different forms, but it is ultimately present in all of us to one degree or another. As creators, it is easy for any of us to fall in love with our creations. A friend’s son recently had a publisher butcher characters he had written, twisting them to be more marketable to the public. My friend said his son felt ill at seeing what had been done to his characters, as though they were his kids that had somehow been mistreated. I can relate to that. When I began in journalism years ago, I remember feeling violated the first time my copy was flipped and re-arranged by the editor. While I eventually developed a tougher skin for that, it still stings a bit when it happens to this day. Those are my words they’re messing with!

The danger in this, as Lewis points out, is idolizing our creation. Just as the artist can idolize her art, so can the inventor idolize his invention. The New York Times recently ran this piece fretting over the possibility that the machines we’ve invented may some day control us instead of the opposite being true, a real life Asmovian fantasy…or perhaps prophecy…that has haunted us since we began inventing technology. A quote from Dr. Eric Horvitz about halfway down the first pages leaped out at me, claiming that “technologists are replacing religion,” and likening their inventive ventures to an eschatalogical importance.

The fact that we create makes us feel powerful. This is not the only reason we do so, at least not in our purest motivation (I hope beauty and social reform play in there somewhere), but it is an effect of creating, nonetheless. Let’s face it, we like to feel empowered. The same is true when I get to hold a shiny new electronic toy…I feel a new power because of the material symbol of lifestyle control in my hand. Art leads us to a feeling of superiority, perhaps, as we are so empowered by our pointing to a deeper truth that we become convinced our creation is the truth in itself. All of these lead to a de-humanization of ourselves, either by replacing humanity with tools intended to help it function more effectively, or by replacing it with the beauty that is intended to lift it to a higher level.

Invention and art have the power to become a religion, but not the spiritual substance necessary to complete our journeys. With creativity comes responsibility, a responsibility beyond quality in our crafts and attention to detail. There is a responsibility, while never permitting our endeavors to become utilitarian, to nonetheless hold our creations at their proper level, and that is in service of the humanity that created them, not the other way around.

And that is a delicate…and difficult…balance to be struck.

Saturated by Celebrity

I first noticed the effects this morning. As any of my regular readers know, I’m a news junkie of the highest order. I like to know what’s going on in the world at any given time. That usually involves several sources for my curiosity to be satisfied, even after I’ve downsized my intake in recent months. This morning, I scanned some headlines, and stopped. No streaming CNN or BBC. A quick browse of the New York Times and I was finished, and I knew it was for one reason.

The only thing that anyone was going to cover was Michael Jackson’s death.

I know this because I was watching CNN when the news broke on Thursday that Jackson had been transported to the hospital. I first learned of his death from Twitter later that night. The next morning, that’s all that anyone seemed to cover. Everything else going on in the world, economy and environmental bills in the works, Middle East sabre-rattling, and everyone seemed primarily interested in Jackson.

I have to say that I just don’t get it. As an artist, Jackson certainly had a prolific career, and I enjoyed listening to clips of his songs Friday morning and remembering the times (no pun intended) from childhood and college that were connected to various songs. I respect that three generations of people can connect with his music; certainly, staying power can be a measure of an artist’s success. Jackson did his share of sketchy things, as well, however, things that seem more distant from the public memory. I understand remembering the life of an artist that was influential to our culture, though, and even dwelling on the positive instead of the negative. What I don’t understand are lines of people waiting to place flowers on his star in Hollywood, or people grieving and crying upon learning of his death. Why? It’s not like they knew him or anything.

I suppose that connecting with someone’s art leaves you with the feeling that you know them. Certainly, I remember the surreal experience of first seeing a music star on stage, and the first time I met a star for an autograph. The fact that they were actually human was almost a surprise. I also suppose that this is less the case in the age of social networks…a year or so ago, I sent a Facebook message to the author of a book I found to be an exceptionally good read. The author messaged me back. I still have the message…because, still, there’s something surreal about her dialoguing with me.

That being said, the phenomenon of celebrity worship seems to have taken Western culture by storm in such a way as to cause concern. An oft-quoted HealthDay article that has circulated since Jackson’s death attributes a history of celebrity worship dating back to Chopin and Liszt, stating that we identify our hidden desires with celebrities, and that it is a healthy experience to do so, especially in the consideration of “faltering” religion. While I’m all for some healthy catharsis, I disagree with the article on more than one front. Firstly, religion is not faltering, and secondly, worshipping an artist in the public spotlight is a very poor substitute, even if it were.

Still, celebrity worship is a phenomenon to be reckoned with, even earning the infamous distinction of being coined as a syndrome in some circles (although I’m not aware of any actual diagnosis for such a pathology). I tend to fall more in the camp of Richard Marcus’ 2006 BlogCritics post that celebrity worship is a mark of an intellectually declining culture.

Historically, difficult economic times and war times lend themselves to a public increasingly seeking entertainment as a distraction, as something to take their minds off of the problems that beset them in their current daily lives. I’m not going to take a highbrow approach and say that the art that results from the profit-seeking push to satisfy this impulse is poor (although in some cases it speaks for itself), but I will say that, in the absence of the glamorous life that many of us seem to wish for at some point, it is normal to attach ourselves to a celebrity’s life and work. I had a crush on a music star or two in my adolescence, just like everyone else. The difference is that I grew out of it…many don’t seem to do that, and I think that not doing so is developmentally an issue.

When this happens, the “entertainment industry” (the fact that there is one is an issue of its own right, but one for a different post) pushes to satisfy the public’s desire for more of a star, or a type of star. That, after all, is how they make their profit, and that profit is far more important to them than artistic substance. Thus, not only is an enormous amount of attention focused on an artist, but artists are created by the media, and ones with what Marcus describes as having “dubious talent” at that (at the risk of insulting anyone here, I’ll simply point you to his apt examples on page 3 of his post). With this, mediocrity reigns supreme, and artistic substance declines as a culture becomes much more interested in vicariously living lives of caviar dreams than of appreciating quality, to say nothing of engaging in reality.

My intention is not to debate whether or not Jackson’s work falls into a definition of substance or quality, or even to offer a definition for either within this limited space. I simply wonder if, in our media saturated age, we aren’t failing to outgrow that emotionally developmental period in which we feel the need to follow, and even duplicate, every aspect of an artist’s life. I’ve expressed here before that, when this occurs, we feel as though we own that artist, that he or she owes us something, leading to their publishers or studios to see potential profits and take control of what that artist is producing. This leads to a universal loss of artistic quality in the name of money.

This also leads to individuals being grief-stricken over the passing of one whom they did not actually know, to a point that their own lives with those that they do actually know are affected.

Catharsis and dreams aside, folks…this just isn’t healthy.

The Evolution of Expression

Is literature evolving?

That’s a stupid question, I suppose. All art forms evolve with time and the societal context in which they exist, but I find myself wondering if literature is evolving a great deal more than the intelligentsia would like to admit. Specifically, I wonder about it’s function of maintaining a record of society. Tillich said that, in it’s artistic expression, a society conveys it’s spiritual substance. While I question his concept (as I understand it) of “ultimate concern,” I agree with him on at least the level that a culture’s artists communicate what is prevalently on the collective mind of that culture. That being the case, and depending on the definition of art that one would like to use, it is suddenly easier than ever in our Web 2.0 culture for anyone to contribute to the permanent record in which our culture will be remembered generations from now.

This comes to mind, among other ways, through a comical connection I had a few moments ago with a family member on Twitter. To eschew a great deal of backstory, the haiku has recently been a subject of casual attention for me, and I was experimenting with writing two haiku this afternoon. Of course, I tweeted that I was doing this (Why, you ask? It’s sort of like a “Jeep thing;” if you don’t do it, you wouldn’t understand). This prompted a family member to tweet a joke back at me in haiku form. I replied. Then he tweeted in iambic pentameter. We were joking about the limitations that Twitter would theoretically place on writing poetry. Similarly, a recent venture came to my attention called twit_play, “a story told entirely through Twitter updates.” The concept is essentially a play told through tweets. These sorts of expressions are experiments for me at first blush, sort of a social “what if?” game played out to satisfy hobbies and pose interesting social questions, among other things.

What if they’re more than that, though?

Suppose for a moment that your tweets are a part of a literary collective of sorts, in the sense that you’re answering the question, “what are you doing?” moment-by-moment. Sociologically, a collection of tweets appearing on Twitter’s public timeline from individuals in the same country from a defined period of time could prove a reflection of the social consciousness. Many users of Twitter post reflective and, yes, poetic updates to the micro-blog, lending to the possibility that this could be a sort of new literary genre, generated in real-time, reflecting the thoughts of a culture as it exists right now.

By the same logic, then, bloggers are contributing in the same way, reflecting in detail their thoughts and reflections on various topics and considerations that are deemed important at a given time period in a given culture.

If, then, the interactive Internet is generating a new art form as it streams words, images, audio and video from our shrinking world instantly, thus reflecting the consciousness of humanity at any given moment, then we are all artists easily capable of contributing to this giant work.

Now, this theory would naturally prove irritating to many an artist, especially those who only recognize work in a hard, tangible form. There are those who think the way Ray Bradbury thinks as he is quoted in a recent New York Times article: feeling that the Internet is unsubstantial, floating in the air somewhere, and unreal.

These are two extreme ends of the spectrum, and I’m not sure I’m ready to subscribe to either of them as of yet. I think there is more than a strong likelihood, however, that we are observing the next shift in modality of artistic expression. My concern is that, as we watch a new form of expression evolve, we must be cautious to not permit it to detract from those forms of expression that preceded it. In the same way that film became it’s own medium by standing on the shoulders of the stage, so digital word-play must recognize it’s literary parent as it grows into adulthood.

Retroactive Providence

It’s always good to remember the classics.

One of Karen’s favorite weekend activities is watching a movie. Or, to be more exact, multiple movies. I groaned a bit when she started streaming You Can’t Take It With You from Netflix a couple of hours ago, as I felt I had better things to do. I really didn’t feel as though I had the time to watch a black-and-white oldie that I’d never heard of.

Film is an art form in the history of which I’m not well-versed. Thus, there are many “classics” I haven’t seen. Karen is always amazed by my answering negatively to the now-infamous question in our marriage, “Have you seen _____?” In turn, I’m always amazed when she isn’t familiar with music that I thought anyone would have heard. We all have our interests. I’ve been taken by how excellent a movie this has been tonight, very pleasantly surprised. The quality of story and of acting is a higher level that we normally see today. It’s always important to be able to reference turning points in any art form. How could one be conversant in modern rock music, for example, without being somewhat familiar with Led Zepplin or the Beatles?

Likewise in our lives, it is important to be able to recall critical events, events that have turned our lives in a direction to form us as we are today. Some of the most important of those events were often less than pleasant, even painful ones. After all, discomfort, as C.S. Lewis points out, tends to turn our attention to where it needs to be most effectively. This morning, it occurred to me that my life is in a similar situation as it was several years ago. That time in my life was a critical crossroads, but, while eschewing details, a painful and difficult one. While not painful today, Karen and I find ourselves at a crossroads again, and had this morning’s thoughts not found their way into my consciousness, I fear I would have proven forgetful of the lessons learned years ago. Knowing that history repeats itself when forgotten, I’m glad that I was granted remembrance today. I’ll even say thankful, because I learned long ago that these sorts of things can’t be attributed to mere coincidence.

A strong theme in You Can’t Take It With You is providence. I find that to be a strong theme in our life, as well, and it is that providence that I am comfortable with as we prepare to make major life decisions, a knowledge that, as I heard said today, the things at work that we can’t see are bigger than the ones that are visible.

Let us all endeavor to remember our past as we strive toward our future.

Looking Backward

Last weekend Karen and I received an impromptu invite from some family members to drive to Bedford, VA, and visit the National D-Day Memorial for Memorial Day. In the absence of other plans, this seemed as good as any, so Monday morning we awoke (much to my chagrin) early and we were off.

The D-Day Memorial isn’t quite completed yet as I understand it, but I was surprisingly impressed with the place. I say surprisingly because war memorials really aren’t my thing, but I firmly believe in observing what a holiday was intended to observe when it rolls around, so we felt it a fitting thing to do. As much as I find myself a pacifist, I think those who have fallen in the barbarism of war should be remembered. Somehow, it is the least we can do.

One of our family members who accompanied us is a vet. Visiting one of these memorials with a vet makes it into a completely different experience. He became very emotional during the visit, and for the remainder of the afternoon I enjoyed dialoguing with him about what may or may not constitute a just war. Those who have served in the military bring a very different perspective to this issue, and when they dialogue with a pacifist such as myself…well, I love our family.

Of course, being that Monday was Memorial Day, there was a ceremony there that didn’t intrigue me so much. I’ve never made any secret of dislike for ceremony, and calling a war monument a “sacred” place as one of the chaplains intoned during one of many prayers left me a bit disconcerted (although he ended the same prayer with a request for peace, which I think does not happen nearly enough). I suffered through the ceremony though, mostly by people-watching. I watched the crowd more than I did the presentation of colors or the playing of “Taps.” I observed those around me salute or place hands over hearts during the National Anthem, and I listened to the way in which the speeches were crafted. To me, the whole ceremonial thing smacked of equating patriotism with faith, which leaves a nasty taste in my mouth (although not as nasty as an opening prayer addressed to the “god of all faiths.” I’m all about being ecumenical, but sheesh…). What I found, however, was that most of the audience, at least those I could observe around me, appeared to be, at best, profoundly moved or, at least, extremely appreciative of the ceremony.

The rest of our visit was spent strolling around the monument itself, with Karen as a brochure-bearing guide, which is the way we tend to engage these things. The artistry in the sculpture was excellent, and the creative manner in which the sculptures were arranged brought my admiration (at one point, the landfall of the invasion itself is re-created with life-size statues, complete with water jetting upward to simulate bullet strikes and a stylized landing craft from which they have emerged). The gardens were arranged as a huge replica of the symbol of Operation Overlord, with a large statue of Eisenhower at the head of the sword, and busts of all of his commanders surrounding the garden, complete with biographical plaques. Even the height of the central monument is significant.

I pondered how different people relate in different ways. Our family members connected primarily through the ceremony, Karen and I primarily through the artistic symbolism of the sculpture and overall design of the Memorial. As much as I dislike ceremony, I recognize its importance, and its difference from ritual (which I find useless a vast majority of the time). Ultimately, though, all of us experienced a deep ushering into remembrance for those fallen in combat and the history of that particular hellish day. That’s what the holiday was for, and the designers of the Memorial enabled this to happen wonderfully. I think I may have found a new appreciation for these things, and certainly have a deeper appreciation of those lives and souls lost during war.

I still stop short of having appreciation of war itself.