Why exactly does one start writing? Most of what I do is really a stream of consciousness type thing with some loose editing thrown in for balance. I guess the fundamental question is – what do I want to communicate? Is there a story I want to tell? Is there some lesson I want to impart? Am I trying to make a reader laugh? Am I trying to entertain myself? At this point – it is too early to tell for this piece. The truth is…for myself…I seek transcendence. I want to fly. I am interested in the power to be able to look to the heavens and ascend, looking down as I propel myself forwards and backwards and in any direction I so choose with only the power of my mind. This may be unrealistic. Nonetheless I will keep going and see where it gets me.
The authors that I love the best always seem to be people whose writing is a mix between the voice of someone whose ideas I am stimulated by because of their originality or insightfulness and those people that are so starkly brilliant that it takes several passes to understand what I have read. I don't know if it makes any sense to emulate these voices. Somehow I envision these kinds of people as the ones at parties who can be the center of any conversation just by the force of their intellect, ideas or observations. For me social interaction is somewhere between awkward and excruciating. At parties I am the one most likely to have a whole conversation with something stuck in my teeth or my fly down halfway. That captures attention but in other ways.
Artistic endeavor seems most true to me as an almost biological compulsion. I am a general fan of philosophy and have been since a teen. It was then that my enveloping passion for rock and roll (specifically very loud rock and roll) began to make me wonder whether it made much sense to be so interested in something like very loud rock and roll. Seeking answers I turned to Aristotle's Poetics for insights into what the meaning and purpose of art means to our existence in a philosophical sense. This may have been overkill for an obsession with the Scorpions and Mötley Crüe but it made sense to me back then. Aristotle to the mind of a fifteen year old Chicano male may indeed be very different to the mind of said same Chicano male at forty years of age – but the conclusions of the former have certainly shaped the perspective of the latter.
I think that I still see things roughly the same as then – that we seek to produce art in any form for some basic need to express ourselves; to take what is within us and bring it outside of us. What happens then is really up to the universe. In some cases we may toil in obscurity making our paper maché replicas of first generation Star Wars action figures or we may be swept up by the random finger of fortune and consumed ad-nauseum by forces far beyond our own control. To me, however, it still comes back to the artist as a singular producer birthing those ideas, feelings, lessons or the primal need to make some monument to the infinite that characterizes the artistic endeavor. This is my basic problem with "Project Runway".
What the hell does this beast mean? In my home I have a teenage daughter who is seemingly obsessed with this program. Can this be good? Is this art? Is it art about aspiring artists? Would Picasso or Wagner have participated in such an endeavor? Would Nikki Sixx? Sometimes it is mesmerizing to me when she watches – it depicts a world that is completely foreign to me. As an obviously overweight middle aged Chicano who would wear shorts, tee-shirts and athletic shoes every day of every year if social convention allowed; perhaps this sort of product is not being marketed directly to me. Nevertheless it is a visible component of my universe and its existence and consumption in my own home is causing some kind of intellectual, artistic or paradigmatic tension which yearns for resolution or at least some kind of ad-hoc philosophical truce (a stalemate perhaps?)
I watch with her to try to understand and am confronted by my own baggage about certain things far too often. It makes me wonder whether my face actually contorts into a sneer during any other programs. I don't really know, but I know that my facial muscles definitely contort when I watch this program and abandon the quest for understanding for the far more accessible yet vinegar tinged disdain that I feel for so many shows about fashion (she also seems to love a program called – "What Not to Wear" – this discussion I will save for therapy.)
You may find it ironic that I would decry the artlessness of "Project Runway" since it's very medium (Television) in the minds of many relegates it to a category beneath consideration. I guess for me it is because I tend towards the optimistic view that the masses are fundamentally moved by art and that the medium itself (in this case Television) does not limit the possibilities. I have seen programs which are both enlightening and beautiful in storytelling, form and even intent on this box that sits in my living room. While it is suspiciously tainted by commerce it is important to remember that commerce has been a historical factor in art since the beginning. There was a consuming public buying tickets for Shakespeare's plays at the Globe and there was a rioting crowd to walk out on the Rite of Spring when Stravinsky first premiered it. Then again perhaps my populist interpretation is mere rationalizing since, for me, this exploration still started with Mötley Crüe and the Scorpions.
If you have not seen this program you probably instinctively know what it contains anyway. It pits several aspiring fashion designers in competition with one another for the praise and support of fashion icons. In the episodes she is watching lately the "judges" are Heidi Klum (a super model), Michael Kors (a successful fashion designer himself) and at least one other bratty sneering "expert" that I don't care enough about to look up. There seems to be a host who is in some way or another also connected to the fashion world. He is not a judge but wanders through the work area to clarify the assignment challenges and serve as de-facto narrator for the "action" and the drama. He has an accent of some sort which I cannot place – if I had to guess I would say he was born and bred in the same place that Richie Rich's butler grew up.
Last night's episode was the motivator for what I am writing now. The drama seems to be getting intense. There are four designers left in competition and each and every one of them was reduced to blubbering several times because the next step in competition for each of them represented achieving their life-long dream. Really? None of what these people are designing looks anything like anyone I would know would wear in their entire life! Maybe fashion is not art. Maybe the balance between art and commerce is skewed on a medium so profoundly influenced by the one and not the other. Maybe art is more about serving temporal and contextual ends than I have ever imagined. Maybe I am just a jerk who looks down on the aspirations of others.
There was a quote that I used to know from a movie that I saw several years ago that said something like: "some people can spend years in the library of congress and still not find enlightenment, others can unravel the secrets of the universe from a gum wrapper." I think that one of the things that this quote implies is that all things may be worthy of consideration. I KNOW that Project Runway means something and I know that my general feeling is that it means something that is fundamentally discouraging. The final four that I was watching last night (probably a re-run) may be the four horsemen of the apocalypse or they may be as significant as the last four American Idol contestants were to real meaning in the universe. What scares me, in what may be a far too myopic way, is that I don't see these people doing what they do in order to take flight –but instead to bathe in dollar bills and champagne.
The Scorpions may actually have bathed in dollar bills and champagne.
Tension: unresolved.
The authors that I love the best always seem to be people whose writing is a mix between the voice of someone whose ideas I am stimulated by because of their originality or insightfulness and those people that are so starkly brilliant that it takes several passes to understand what I have read. I don't know if it makes any sense to emulate these voices. Somehow I envision these kinds of people as the ones at parties who can be the center of any conversation just by the force of their intellect, ideas or observations. For me social interaction is somewhere between awkward and excruciating. At parties I am the one most likely to have a whole conversation with something stuck in my teeth or my fly down halfway. That captures attention but in other ways.
Artistic endeavor seems most true to me as an almost biological compulsion. I am a general fan of philosophy and have been since a teen. It was then that my enveloping passion for rock and roll (specifically very loud rock and roll) began to make me wonder whether it made much sense to be so interested in something like very loud rock and roll. Seeking answers I turned to Aristotle's Poetics for insights into what the meaning and purpose of art means to our existence in a philosophical sense. This may have been overkill for an obsession with the Scorpions and Mötley Crüe but it made sense to me back then. Aristotle to the mind of a fifteen year old Chicano male may indeed be very different to the mind of said same Chicano male at forty years of age – but the conclusions of the former have certainly shaped the perspective of the latter.
I think that I still see things roughly the same as then – that we seek to produce art in any form for some basic need to express ourselves; to take what is within us and bring it outside of us. What happens then is really up to the universe. In some cases we may toil in obscurity making our paper maché replicas of first generation Star Wars action figures or we may be swept up by the random finger of fortune and consumed ad-nauseum by forces far beyond our own control. To me, however, it still comes back to the artist as a singular producer birthing those ideas, feelings, lessons or the primal need to make some monument to the infinite that characterizes the artistic endeavor. This is my basic problem with "Project Runway".
What the hell does this beast mean? In my home I have a teenage daughter who is seemingly obsessed with this program. Can this be good? Is this art? Is it art about aspiring artists? Would Picasso or Wagner have participated in such an endeavor? Would Nikki Sixx? Sometimes it is mesmerizing to me when she watches – it depicts a world that is completely foreign to me. As an obviously overweight middle aged Chicano who would wear shorts, tee-shirts and athletic shoes every day of every year if social convention allowed; perhaps this sort of product is not being marketed directly to me. Nevertheless it is a visible component of my universe and its existence and consumption in my own home is causing some kind of intellectual, artistic or paradigmatic tension which yearns for resolution or at least some kind of ad-hoc philosophical truce (a stalemate perhaps?)
I watch with her to try to understand and am confronted by my own baggage about certain things far too often. It makes me wonder whether my face actually contorts into a sneer during any other programs. I don't really know, but I know that my facial muscles definitely contort when I watch this program and abandon the quest for understanding for the far more accessible yet vinegar tinged disdain that I feel for so many shows about fashion (she also seems to love a program called – "What Not to Wear" – this discussion I will save for therapy.)
You may find it ironic that I would decry the artlessness of "Project Runway" since it's very medium (Television) in the minds of many relegates it to a category beneath consideration. I guess for me it is because I tend towards the optimistic view that the masses are fundamentally moved by art and that the medium itself (in this case Television) does not limit the possibilities. I have seen programs which are both enlightening and beautiful in storytelling, form and even intent on this box that sits in my living room. While it is suspiciously tainted by commerce it is important to remember that commerce has been a historical factor in art since the beginning. There was a consuming public buying tickets for Shakespeare's plays at the Globe and there was a rioting crowd to walk out on the Rite of Spring when Stravinsky first premiered it. Then again perhaps my populist interpretation is mere rationalizing since, for me, this exploration still started with Mötley Crüe and the Scorpions.
If you have not seen this program you probably instinctively know what it contains anyway. It pits several aspiring fashion designers in competition with one another for the praise and support of fashion icons. In the episodes she is watching lately the "judges" are Heidi Klum (a super model), Michael Kors (a successful fashion designer himself) and at least one other bratty sneering "expert" that I don't care enough about to look up. There seems to be a host who is in some way or another also connected to the fashion world. He is not a judge but wanders through the work area to clarify the assignment challenges and serve as de-facto narrator for the "action" and the drama. He has an accent of some sort which I cannot place – if I had to guess I would say he was born and bred in the same place that Richie Rich's butler grew up.
Last night's episode was the motivator for what I am writing now. The drama seems to be getting intense. There are four designers left in competition and each and every one of them was reduced to blubbering several times because the next step in competition for each of them represented achieving their life-long dream. Really? None of what these people are designing looks anything like anyone I would know would wear in their entire life! Maybe fashion is not art. Maybe the balance between art and commerce is skewed on a medium so profoundly influenced by the one and not the other. Maybe art is more about serving temporal and contextual ends than I have ever imagined. Maybe I am just a jerk who looks down on the aspirations of others.
There was a quote that I used to know from a movie that I saw several years ago that said something like: "some people can spend years in the library of congress and still not find enlightenment, others can unravel the secrets of the universe from a gum wrapper." I think that one of the things that this quote implies is that all things may be worthy of consideration. I KNOW that Project Runway means something and I know that my general feeling is that it means something that is fundamentally discouraging. The final four that I was watching last night (probably a re-run) may be the four horsemen of the apocalypse or they may be as significant as the last four American Idol contestants were to real meaning in the universe. What scares me, in what may be a far too myopic way, is that I don't see these people doing what they do in order to take flight –but instead to bathe in dollar bills and champagne.
The Scorpions may actually have bathed in dollar bills and champagne.
Tension: unresolved.
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