Events in my personal life have led me to question why I, as a sometime playwright, felt the need to share stories with other people and why I don't so much anymore (though all things are in flux).
I think it's safe to say that today's world doesn't afford too many people, particularly men, a place to express and interact with their feelings. The result is the cliched but apt vision of the repressed straight male whose inability to grapple with his own emotions is legendary. As a further consequence, men become deeply alienated from themselves, from their own desires, and are crippled by their insecurities, anxieties and fears. We erect titanic defenses to shield ourselves from being hurt, we unwittingly design entire personalities to deflect the emotional hazards of everyday life. Maybe we can't stop making light of everything (nothing can hurt you if you can laugh at it right?), maybe our shield is irony, cynicism, or an empty and giddy optimism. Regardless, these defenses are real impediments to knowing others, to fully engaging with life's volatile mix of pleasure and pain, and to constructing an identity devoid of the disfiguring effects of fear. We're never really taught how to interact or understand ourselves the way we're taught how to read or write. If anything, we're encouraged to seek comfort in the material world to assuage our existential dread. Buy a computer, an anti-aging cream, a car, a dress, a nice suit, a house, it'll make you feel better; the sheer act of accumulation will make you feel better. And if it doesn't, be quiet about it. Suffer in silence. This message has been encoded into popular culture. Heroic figures talk little, suffer much. Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Keeanu Reeves and others teach us that real strength comes from an avoidance of ourselves and our feelings. Genuine longing and hurt, devastation and exultation, are regarded with disdain and discomfort. We feel uneasy in the presence of true emotion, it unhinges us, exposes us, opens us up to the possibility of getting hurt. Of course, our squeamishness is simple cowardice, an understandable cowardice, but cowardice all the same, and hardly the embodiment of fortitude we think it is. In our everyday interactions with society we're expected to work and produce, not to reflect, or just experience in the purest sense of the word. Our society values speed and efficiency, not mental health. And what we're left with is the modern artist's principle subject: the breakdown of communication and understanding.
I wonder if art then doesn't become a socially acceptable way of interacting with and expressing our feelings. It's not really okay for a man to be distraught by, well, anything (unless it's the Redskins losing), but it sure is cool when he writes a song about it! Or a book! In fact, the artistic sphere of life is the only one where the individual is allowed to fully and honestly engage and dialogue with his true emotional self. He can even make a fortune while he's at it! The problem is that this particular form of interaction seems inert. While society has no difficulty with Morrissey or Thom Yorke emoting on stage, they better shove those feelings back down their gut when they unplug their guitar, or the writer Don DeLillo better shut right back up after he closes his laptop. Are sculptures made of cold stone, reams of paper stacked to the sky, rolls and rolls of beautified celluloid, are these barren fictions the only monument to our emotional lives? What if our lives themselves could be living, breathing expressions and negotiations of feeling, what if we found a way to integrate all our feelings into a work of art that was us, every day, in every word and thought and action? Would art become irrelevant if society weren't so emotionally repressive and repressed? If you begin to find a way to connect to yourself, to know yourself, if you can express your feelings to yourself and those around you, does art become irrelevant? Aren't artists just dodging the tough work of getting to know themselves? Isn't everyone else even worse off?
4 comments:
Great post greer. I don't believe that when humans begin to understand themselves, their place, and each other that art will become irrelevant. I think it will actaully become more relevant. The compartmentalization of our lives, between work and home, emotion and logic, etc. will disappear and expression will move effortlessly between what we have divided into the categories of art and functional living.
My thoughts immediately turn to the writings of JRR Tolkien. An important event happens in the story - an enemy is defeated - what happens next? The characters break into song. It shows a freedom of expression that is art as a function of living. The characters don't take note of the happy moment to write a song about it later, they do what comes natural.
I am not convinced that being civilized translates into being free.
I agree, great post, and rich soil for discussion.
Well, I'll leave the question of what drives people to produce art to the artists. I suspect, though, that as "something you can do with your emotions," art has advantages past being socially sanctioned. Certainly there are things we might like to express that are difficult to put into words, that might find expression as a picture or song, if we've developed the ability to produce one. Some art forms (the ones you've described in mere material terms) have the advantage of capturing an emotion, or idea, or many emotions and ideas in a relationship, and allowing us to revisit it and see it in a different light, in a different mood, having had different experiences. Maybe that applies more to the person experiencing the art, especially since artists have a tendency to want to push past what they've done before. But maybe it helps to have something, some artifact, to push off from?
I don't know, it just seems to me that even someone who feels comfortable expressing their emotions as they arise, in the situations they arise in, might desire an artistic outlet, as a way of increasing their range of expression, or of communicating with people they would not otherwise have any contact with, or of creating some symbol or record of the emotional experience that they can return to in a different frame of mind.
More to come. Tired.
A bit more left in me...
It's difficult to address this question from the artist's point of view only, since art is not just self-expression--releasing feelings or thoughts into some void--but also communication, interaction. And I don't think there's any question that art makes it possible to communicate and interact in ways that aren't possible in everyday living. Having an emotional interaction with strangers, for example. Potentially having an emotional interaction with a multitude of people, or with people who will be around after you're gone. Of course, that last possibility goes to show that "interaction" may be the wrong word. "Transmission" might be a better one, since many art forms only allow for one-way communication. Some do allow for limited communication back the other way: a musician responding to an audience, for example.
Anyway, time for bed, so let me just throw out one or two things to possibly return to some other time. One is that, whatever motivates an artist to produce art in the first place, it's profoundly important for us to experience art. Good art, that is. It's "the axe for the frozen sea inside us." I'm quoting Matthew Thurber quoting Kafka. Though I would argue that art can thaw the frozen sea in addition to hacking at it.
In order to operate, it's sometimes necessary for us to limit our emotional exchange with the world around us--basically other people, but sometimes their works as well. For example, it's a good idea to wary of someone or something that's trying to sell you something. It's kind of like, we're physically capable of having a sensory exchange with the world that's more intense than the one we're normally limited to. Mushrooms will get you there, and I'm sure there are methods that don't involve substances. But it's not to our evolutionary advantage to get lost in the pretty colors, so our sensory exchange gets capped at a certain point. I would say that certain caps or filters in our emotional life are equally important. I wonder if you'd agree with that. Clearly, we let down our guard with people we trust, and in general, we try to push our limits, little by little. Or all of a sudden, in some cases. But anyway, given that situation, it's important that we have some means of drawing out our emotions, of coaxing (or jolting) ourselves into a more pervious state. Other people can do it for us too, but art is another important way to get there.
Last thing, I promise myself. Is it important that of the three heroic figures you mentioned, two are from half a century ago, and one is kind of a doofus whose influence is probably limited (and whose stoicism has more to do with bad acting than anything else)? I'm not saying there aren't figures like that out there. Bruce Willis comes to mind as an example of a wisecracker under fire. But at the same time, you've got plenty of countervailing forces. Daytime talk shows, self-help, not to mention actual, respectable therapy and its many proponents and participants, all urging us to do precisely what you described: engage, interact, open up. Actually, a figure that might be interesting to look at, and that might in the end back up what you're saying, is the guy who's encouraged to open up, even though his natural inclinations are, shall we say, tougher. Your Tim Allen or Tony Soprano.
Won't get into it now, I'm off to bed for real. Make of these ramblings what you will.
Jon, good point about good art or maybe it could be called "real" art. A song, painting, picture, poem, story, play, film, ballet, opera that has any value is one that has the ability to edify a host of people. The idea you mentioned about art being a source and outlet of communication is really important.
Real art allows spectators to feel like the artist themselves. There is ownership. You may not have the ability to express what the artwork conveys, but you feel like you could and feel like it is a song you were singing before you ever heard it, or a story you told before it was ever written, or an image you had in your head before it was ever printed.
Real art has that power. It trancends the artist and treats the audience as equals.
It's friggin' incredible and that's why when we each find that piece of art that we love in private and love to share, we feel a purpose in life satisfied.
man, I feel like i write some pretty weird stuff. does any of that resonate with anyone?
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