About How They Take It

Post 409:

            How do we take things in? Another way to say it—how do we process stuff? I’m talking heart and head, British Empiricism and Continental Rationalism. These are just dumb philosophical ways of getting at the business of knowing and understanding.

            Good questions to ask if you’re an artist, because you’re trying to get someone else to process the junk you’ve decided to conjure up. You might want to be very direct and appeal to their reason. Good approach. Or maybe you like a more emotional approach. Get them to feel your creation more than understand it.

            Also solid.

            I step way outside the bounds of expertise, but I’m fairly sure this is how Impressionism works in art. Everything’s all pastel and bleeding together—that’s the point—how the world is—nothing is super clear and easily understood. Still, you can feel it.

            I don’t know. For me, I like a direct method. This is probably because I’m a simpleton. Smart people like symbolism and callbacks to whatever and whoever and yada yada blah blah. I just like knowing what’s going on, is all. This doesn’t mean the writing or painting has to be simple—it takes loads of talent to create clearly and give things a sense of reality and weight.

            I was reading an Agatha Christie thing the other day. Seems like they all kind of follow a thing: there’s a murderer, everybody’s suspicious, and it’s most likely the one person you’d never suspect. Am I moved in my soul by this formula? Not really. Do I want to know if my guess was right? Absolutely. That, plus my brain is forming it’s own imagery—imagery some snotty artist can’t predict.

            That’s the point. Trying to get people to take your offering the way you prefer is a tricky business. You don’t know your own mind that well—let alone a whole other person’s. Do your best. Be yourself. It says so, right there in that Jimmy Eat World song.

            Cheers. Create and worry later. See you after.