Can someone help me chew on this?
When did obscurity become a prerequisite for creativity? I see it all over these days… in songs, in poetry, even in art. Why is the obvious no longer poetic, artistic, and creative? Why must good poetry be veiled and elusive?
This of course is in contradiction to popular movies though. Our movies today show everything: sex, gore, violence, the answers, etc. There is no mystery left in them. Yet write a song, pen a script, and in order for it to be successful it must be ambiguous to say the least.
Which leads us here: For something to be creative and artistic, must its mass audience be able to interpret or simply recognise its obscurity by the author?
Bottom Line: If I don't know what a poem means, if I can't interpret what it is saying, if I don't see it or the author more clearly, then is it good poetry? Is it a good song? Is it a good movie? Etc.
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6 comments:
I think it's part of the push for relative truth rather than absolute truth. The more vague something is the more it can be interpreted in personally pleasing ways.
I am all about embracing the mysterious and understanding my own limitations in finding some answers, but I am not about to associate confusion and ambiguity with mystery.
I feel like published art should speak to the people, instead of just speaking about it's creator. Sure, you can learn about a creator through the art, but I don't want to read a poem about how much they love another person...I'd rather read a poem that (I can understand! hehehe...the whole vauge thing you wrote about) inspires me to show love.
Soooo...that's how I feel about published art.
If you're just creating art for yourself, then feel free to splatter paint a canvas or whatever!
but that's just my opinion.
Great thoughts Bobby and Brittany... MORE MORE please!
You know who may be one of the biggest interlopers in this area? The former DC Talk great, Kevin Max.
He's always been a little eclectic, but some of his music now is incomprehensible.
I completely agree Robert. You know when I first started taking guitar lessons from Steve D. that is one thing that he cautioned me about in my writing. He was like don't just write a bunch of crap and methaphors so that at the end of the song nobody has a clue what you were trying to say to begin with...if you want to talk about the stars then talk about the stars not...then he painted some huge paragraph long description filled with veiled references and obsurities. I have never forgotten it. The problem I run into though...is that sometimes the normal or ordinary...say a flower for example...can appear to me to be so beautiful that it can only be described in grand or perhaps obscure terms. Because that flower can remind me of certain things in my life, teach me something I never knew, etc. Sometimes words are not enough...and I think when that happens...we end up using too many words to describe it and run the risk of obscuring our meanings. Just a thought.
That makes sense!
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