I spent a significant amount of time today thinking about art. The term art is both relative and abstract. It is definable, but that definition encompasses a spectrum of activities and items. I find that art is extremely important, if for no greater reason than to stretch one’s imagination of what is possible and what is meaningful. Recently I heard Daveed Diggs talk about the relevance and necessity of the same Trap music he railed against in his youth. He learned to recognize the value of the voice if for little more than providing a voice and stretching our understanding of possibility in terms of cadence, rhyme variation, and what kinds of stories matter.
Other art forms have the same dialectic. We seek to place value in some things while subtracting it from others in a spectrum relative to our own desires and understanding. Often that is reflective of our own cultural, generational, socio-political, and socio-economic biases. Take for example the recent crowd of youtubers. My kids get very excited about what they do and have to say. This is art to them. It is trash to me. This shows that we see them on different parts of the spectrum and that we, possibly, have different understandings of that spectrum. Yet it is all an art form, regardless of whether I approve of what these ‘tubers are doing or not.
Some Thoughts:
- I want to write a story about someone developing an allergy to a person. Where being around them–where they work, live, etc. is toxic. Then I want them to be forced to be near that person for the entire story…