[MD] Code of Art

[Heather Perella]

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 <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [MD] Code of Art
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> 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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