WHERE ART COMES FROM

Very interesting perspective in the latest issue of Writer's Ask, offered up by writer, Robert Olen Butler:

Question:

Have you ever contemplated what your writing would have been like if you had not gone to Vietnam?

Answer:

If I had been given the power when I was younger to look ahead in my life and have a list of the major events—three broken marriages and being sent off to war in Southeast Asia and several other things—and had been given the power to scratch three things off that list, in an inevitable, human, self-protective way, I certainly would have chosen to take off Vietnam. There’s no question in my mind that if I had, I would not be an artist today…There needs to be a seeking out of life experience. Art comes from life and the intense, ravenous experience of life. It used to be that when you read the miniature biographies in anthologies of famous and highly regarded literary artists, no matter how short the biography was, there would always be a sentence in there saying that he drove an ambulance in Italy and was a newspaper reporter in Toronto or that he picked grapes in California, or that he worked in a powerhouse in Mississippi and painted houses. The assumption was that those real-world, close-to-where life-is-lived experiences were a necessary part of the education of a writer. I think that’s absolutely true and will always remain true. Sometimes, as a kind of final assignment, I ask my students who leave McNeese to go wait on tables in some hole-in-the-wall diner on the Mexican border, or tramp around Europe, or something, In fact, I tend to seek students who have a fair amount of real-life experience before they come in to get serious about being an artist.

“….One of the fundamental things I inevitably find I need to teach my students is that works of art do not come from ideas. They do not come from the rational, analytical, philosophical self. Art does not come from the mind; it comes from that place where you dream.”


“…..The artist cannot find her art in her mind. She must go to her unconscious, and that’s a difficult thing. Most aspiring artists are also generally more intelligent than most other people, and they’ve probably felt like social misfits in some way—certainly felt apart from or detached from the life around them. The way they sought identity and sought safety all their life was by retreating into that sense of one’s self as a thinking person. But all those rational faculties only do harm to the creation of a work of art.”


“…. The early film director D.W. Griffith, who was credited with inventing modern film techniques, credited Charles Dickens with teaching him everything he knew about film. It’s because Dickens understood that the reading of literature is rooted in the reader’s experience of a continuous flow of sensual experience.”


“…Once you understand the writer’s role as an inner filmmaker, you can clearly see how destructive abstract language and ides, analysis, and rational thought can be. For example, if we were watching Jack Nicholson in Chinatown and he’s told a lie about the case he’s investigating, and instead of him arching that marvelous left brow of his, the screen goes blank except for the word “skepticism” and then goes on to the next shot. You know what your response would be. Exactly the same thing happens over and over in so much of the writing I see. Literature, like all the arts, must be a direct sensual experience.”

My thoughts on this in a little while.

On a slightly different note, I have to say that meeting another true artist is like a lottery win to me. We artists truly go through some stuff that I don't think the average person goes through. I would argue, without any scientific data to back it up, but still a valid argument I believe--that artists truly feel things, see things, hear things more intensely. For instance, I'll never forget this past winter here in the Northeast. If Spring didn't come when it did, I truly think I would have been on Prozac. The lack of light, color; the cold weather bothered me something fierce and whenever I described my mental state to others, the response was like...Get over it, it's winter. Easier said than done. We artists are not only observers, we are intense feelers. We feel things in our bones that barely scratches the surface with others. We process, discuss, debate, consider, re-consider, talk some more, look, dissect, peel apart .... we FEEL. On that note, I have to say that if you want to read some truly beautiful prose; prose that is poetic, beautiful and painful at the same time ..... if you want to see compassion at work (which I believe is at the core of every true artist's soul) then you need to check out this sister's page. This sister is making a call for paypal donations for another sister who is in major need of transportation. Period. I'm not sure if she knows the woman or not. Doesn't matter. This is what the Buddhists mean when they speak of Compassion. Helping another person because it's the RIGHT THING TO DO. Helping when you know that the ONLY reward for you is karmic return. Not because you want to be on Oprah or sit face to face with Katie Couric. Just because you know that there truly are six degrees of separation and, as the Buddhists teach, all that you give to others, you give to yourself. What Nakachi is doing, in this one very simple act, is painting her most beautiful portrait, in big, broad, large strokes. Strokes that are bright orange and fuschia and azure .... she is touching the human spirit. And that's what it's all about.

Be well. Be love(d).
ANGEL