man i'm having fun
I'm in a creatively very exciting place at the moment. I'm finding that everything is a potential poem or part of a poem. This is different from normal aesthetic appreciation. It's not at all unusual to find everything beautiful in some way, but for that aesthetic appreciation to be converted into worthwhile art is more unusual. You can always try to put what you find beautiful into your art, but it's not the same as it actually being art. I'm not sure how to clarify this difference. I think that ordinarily you can appreciate many things, and have the capacity to describe or name them in your work. But when you're in a more highly attuned state you can give them an autonomous life, allow the audience to discover their beauty for themselves.
That level of independence from the usual establishing contexts (grammar, syntax etc) allows you to unhook your work from other, less important supporting mechanisms. You are able to disregard what are normally considered rules and create in a completely new and unexplored space. In fact the rules are little more than guidelines, but they are very useful inasmuch as they provide accepted limits for reader and writer alike within which experience is mediated. The good writer can use these limits brilliantly, and achieve amazing harmonies. The only drawback is that these rules are easily learned, so that bad artists can master the technicalities as well as anyone. They can then appear to be as good as, or better than, artists of much greater sensitivity or alertness. The acquisition and practise of technical skill, the extent to which work conforms with particular rules, becomes more important than having anything to say, or being really attuned to the world around you. Because this is the easiest art to understand it becomes the most accepted form of art. In a vicious cycle artists and audiences alike find it harder to think outside those limits. So that an artist, even when really flying, might still find themselves restrained, their work mis-shaped by having to fit expected forms it doesn't match with at all.
Of course, just because work breaks rules doesn't mean that it's good, or that the artist is a visionary. All I'm saying is that conformity to a set of norms isn't desirable in and of itself. I guess in a way the accepted parameters of art are a kind of average, the boundary within which most people, audience and creators alike, are content to operate. And the bounds of what's acceptable do change, expand and contract with public opinion.
That level of independence from the usual establishing contexts (grammar, syntax etc) allows you to unhook your work from other, less important supporting mechanisms. You are able to disregard what are normally considered rules and create in a completely new and unexplored space. In fact the rules are little more than guidelines, but they are very useful inasmuch as they provide accepted limits for reader and writer alike within which experience is mediated. The good writer can use these limits brilliantly, and achieve amazing harmonies. The only drawback is that these rules are easily learned, so that bad artists can master the technicalities as well as anyone. They can then appear to be as good as, or better than, artists of much greater sensitivity or alertness. The acquisition and practise of technical skill, the extent to which work conforms with particular rules, becomes more important than having anything to say, or being really attuned to the world around you. Because this is the easiest art to understand it becomes the most accepted form of art. In a vicious cycle artists and audiences alike find it harder to think outside those limits. So that an artist, even when really flying, might still find themselves restrained, their work mis-shaped by having to fit expected forms it doesn't match with at all.
Of course, just because work breaks rules doesn't mean that it's good, or that the artist is a visionary. All I'm saying is that conformity to a set of norms isn't desirable in and of itself. I guess in a way the accepted parameters of art are a kind of average, the boundary within which most people, audience and creators alike, are content to operate. And the bounds of what's acceptable do change, expand and contract with public opinion.
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