I'm reading White Oleander, and while my feelings are very mixed up at the moment toward Ingrid (the mother), I can't get this one idea of hers out of my head:
...nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.
I've pondered before, probably somewhere on this blog, the idea of not being interesting and/or tragic enough to be a writer. It's not that I don't have "a story"; maybe I just outgrew that story, or for one reason or another cannot, will not write about it anymore. I could maybe write a whole book for you just about the why not. It did lead me there, though, to writing, I can't disown that.
And I'd like now to be a bigger person who is so filled with the pain of the world, because lord knows there is enough of it, and that would keep me in art. More art, deeper art. But when it's not your pain, even if you can imagine the pain on so many levels, how can you really speak to it. It can't have the weight of your own, you can't know it through and through.
There are people, I guess, with that particular gift or set of talents that enables them to discover others' stories and write them. They are the interviewers, the probers, with a dash of the charismatic and the extrovert. I am not one of those people.
I guess I just wonder sometimes, what's the point: do I need to? Not so much as some people. The things that led me here, even if outgrown and/or no longer mentioned, are still part of me, though, so. And each voice, no matter where it lands on the spectrum, can have its own value.
This is all keeping in mind that I fully consider the blog, this blog, our blog, to be art. Or at the very least, considering the more vapid, reality TV-related posts (all mine, I know), I feel it's important. And yes, needed. Even if it doesn't fully reflect my bleeding soul.
Ha ha ha.
Anyone else, thoughts?
3 comments:
can we trust ingrid? and her opinions? that's my first thought. then i think, self, that thought bums me out. but then i think, self, that's true. but not true. what defines need...and more critically why WHY why does it have to be about PAIN- and why does pain in this context DEFINE art?? that is too deceptively simple. Pathos is broader than that- and encompases humor, sarcasm and many other methodologies of communicating the human experience. Epicness, destructiveness, "deepness" isn't necessarily the hallmark of great "art" no matter how tantalizing- couldn't it be just very expertly communicating the truth of who you are in a way that makes your experience relatable to mankind? greatness just is, it doesn't strive to be anything...
and the vapidity or pointlessness speaks to something about our society just as much even if its in avoidance of depth or in reaction to it...
So funny -- I just happened to be reading this before I turned to your blog:
"You can either impose yourself on reality and then write about it, or you can impose yourself on reality by writing." (Hunter S. Thompson, from The Proud Highway.)
...So maybe this need to create art is also a matter of imposing the self on reality by writing, you know? It doesn't always have to be about pain.
This is a good post, but I have nothing deep or reflective to add - I was looking to comment on a *vapid* post about last night's ANTM! ;)
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