Interesting post. If you make a some thing and it defies your own expectations, is that art? Is any strong experience an implicit poem? Is anything one makes for onself worth making--better done poorly than not at all? It seems that if youcan make something well, it is worth doing so and calling it a craft and if you can make something that influences or has bearing on the way the whole of art is viewed, then it is worth doing so and calling it art. Maybe you underestimate or I overestimate the extent to which the standards of our times get into the guts of us and shape our notion of what art is. There is a nice feeling that goes with the notion of a mass-production of individualized self-expressions---it has the feeling of shared creativity and the feeling of togetherness in defying the personal limitations that get in the way of making things...but there are some people who appreciate art, but do not consider themselves artists, and this is not a result of fear, but of a fair assessment that they have nothing to contribute at the moment, while there is also the superfluity of very predictable things that people make which defy expectations in a thoroughly uncreative way. Though nobody should be prevented, I'm not sure that everyone should be encouraged---I do not believe the paucity of art in the world, if there is a paucity, results from people's fear of articulating the inarticulate poems within them. I doubt that the exuberance of human emotion will be sublimated into art if people are encouraged to make things---making things is usually the result of necessity and making things in response to passions is a diversion and not the surest way to make something well, which requires a devotion to improving one's skill and involves a kind of perfectionism. I won't go as far as to say that I think that there should be more perfectionism and less things, but I think for most people the best thing they could make today would be breakfast and that is perfectly fine, since it is probably in art and not in life that people should be improved upon anyhow.-JG
Meanwhile, today, I just learned, is an/the International Day of Peace. I do not doubt that this event offends or riles up some people with charges of indulgence or self-congratulation, pacification and/or passivity, but I buy into reflection and celebration in the name of peace and change. It makes at least as much sense as busting shit up in the name of peace and change. It does become an indulgence if it's an end in itself, but it's my opinion that the effect of coming together to celebrate peace is likely to be inspiration, a sense that people and groups are not alone in being desiring of global facilitation of nonviolence, and this can be motivating. It needs to be made motivating, on an individual and collective level this needs to be insisted upon, but I buy in.
What peace has to do with my rant on "making things" is that creativity is an antidote to violence. I endorse a definition of violence that describes oppression of the potential of an individual or a group, the infliction of suffering, the quashing of the opportunity to flourish. I had the fortune, for example, of an elementary school education that was encouraging of individual creativity, or at least, certainly compared to what is out there for mass multitudes of children. I find restrictive education to be violent, I find movements that have debilitating effects on creative expression and a sense of the validity of the self to be violent. I also do believe that violence against the self is unacceptable violence, even before stating, as I would, that violence against the self is violence against humanity. My suggestion here is that to convince yourself that you are not creative is a violent act.
My definition in my previous post of art was perhaps distracting. I do not believe that those who "appreciate art, but do not consider themselves artists" necessarily disagree with my demand, because I truly believe all people are artists or have the capacity to be. My definition of art allows that while theirs may not. But I contest the idea that they make "a fair assessment that they have nothing to contribute at the moment." No; because every person has creative contributions. It would be absurd to demand that these individuals start presenting visual art or literal poetry. But I do plead for creative acts, and internal facilitation of creative acts, and honest representation of selves. Meanwhile, predictable, uncreative things are not what I'm advocating at all.
So, in contrast to the violence of self-censorship, I do believe that creative acts build peace. I think protective acts build peace. I think practice and learning and development build peace. I intended in my post to allow for the definite truth that "to make something well requires a devotion to improving one's skill and involves a kind of perfectionism." However, making things in response to passion is a damn good assurance, as assurances go, to making something well for a number of reasons, and to call that diversionary is utterly false. It is diversionary if things get in the way of effective expression, but rejecting and innovating and playing things out, imagining and inventing the best way to do justice to one's passion is part of the creative effort I'm advocating. It's not easy to be creative.
I don't agree that most people's capacities are limited to the making of breakfast. That said, I'd ask that it be conceded that in making something as simple as breakfast, something, perhaps integrity, can be absent. Don't make breakfast a copy; or maybe all I'm saying is, in my opinion it seems that it's worth identifying why we do what we do, and it's worth intending that our actions be honest. There is a link between honesty and creativity, and between creativity and peace. Frankly if we're going to talk about breakfast, I think many people could find themselves a lot less fucked up if they started with deciding to figure out a breakfast that honestly reflects their needs and tastes rather than their believed roles, their unconsidered habits, or their externally-focused fixations, like low-carb diets, to pick a stupid thing at random.
Not to get all meta, but what I am making here is crude. I volunteer that. I pursue it because it seems true and seems to me to be a part of something I want to be building.
Making things, that is, inventing, painting, writing, organizing, overt and active creating, is important. It inspires, it builds, it offers alternatives, it offers solidarity, it offers comfort, it offers help, or, it can do these things. I believe that this, which I have perhaps distractingly called poems or art, is the macroscopic representation of what I'm talking about. But it is built from the smaller acts of creativity, the bravery of being I've alluded to.
Inspired creating, I think, comes when the self is present and honoured. It comes when assumptions are identified rather than given, when boundaries are questioned, when in great stress a sense of possibility is what is fundamental, rather than an ideal.
My entreaty isn't actually about a dearth of art, I suppose, but about the potency that seems evident in a mindset that strives to limit mimickry and honour self-expression. It seems in my observation linked to qualities like perceptiveness, empowerment, and basic security, and in this fertile way of being, creative improvements can grow. And these "poems" do indeed have lives of their own. I unashamedly want there to be more of them.
On a day devoted to peace I'm thinking about violence and though I know my words might seem murky it's an antidote to violence that I'm grappling with. From so many human beings I know to have beautiful, creative inner selves, there is too damn often a sense of a person stifled. Their stress, as I said earlier, is about their devotion to creating more perfect copies. That is not the exacting "perfectionism" of a passionate devotion to a cause, but a manifestation of a fundamentally uncreative, fixated, stressful mindset. They are themselves from the outside in, rather than from the inside out. This and other kinds of violence against the self - where violence is stifling, wounding, dehumanizing - I do feel can be antagonized by a paradigm of critical thought and self expression. Moreover I defend that such a way of being invites ideas and that these ideas blossom outward; that creativity is a cornerstone on which peace - where peace is is nurturing potential, emphasis on points of connection rather than division, and motivation not from fear or hate or vengeance but from something else... I suggest perhaps discovery, and joy, and contribution - can, or maybe even must be built.
Make art, make music, make decisions, make a garden, make breakfast, make peace.
And make a fool of me - if you can say what I'm trying to say better, or if you think I'm full of shit, please do speak up. I'm using annoying things like the word "paradigm" and semicolons for my own reasons but if they're getting in your way, make it better.
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