I stand corrected on my Beagles history. It's funny how when other
people are telling their life stories we never pay as much attention as
when we are telling ours.
There are rules. If you follow the rules you can build a fine birdhouse
and a batch of lasagna that is mighty tasty, but there are no rules for
painting a picture or writing a song or a book or a movie. Well there
are rules, but they are more like guidelines and then there is something
else, and I think that is the thing that pops out of your
subconscious. Hard to describe, just something kind of odd and
ambiguous, and people recognize it I guess in their subconscious, and
maybe they take away something that they can't quite explain, or maybe
they don't see anything.
Or something like that, I don't know, hard to explain and really not
sure that I understand it at all. There are all these discussions about
creativity, but I don't think they ever define what they are talking
about very well. Maybe you just look at the world a little sideways so
that you see it a little different and then when you reproduce it you
bring in all these extra little things that you noticed when you looked
at it sideways. Well I don't know if that makes any sense either.
The strangest thing is that when you follow the rules you make a
birdhouse that the birds love or you make a lasagna that everybody
cleans their plates of, but maybe you put a whole lot of effort into
your painting or song or book or movie, and everybody thinks yeah so
what.
I agree with you on the lag time thing. Orally is way too short, you
know you just open your mouth and whatever comes out comes out, and you
don't really think too much, you may try to make your point, but then
you can't find the words, or maybe you are unsure if you are right about
this thing but you have to keep on talking because you are in a
conversation and nobody wants to talk to someone who keeps taking
breaks, and sometimes you don't remember what you said earlier. I mean
it's a fine thing, I love to talk, and sometimes something may just
spark in you and you get a new idea, but really writing is the best.
You can read and reread it, take a little time to think before you put
your words down, you can see where somebody might misinterpret something
you wrote and rewrite it, everything is just so much clearer when you
write it out
And you do kind of need that relatively immediate response that you
can't get with snail mail. After a few days you might not remember as
well what you said, and maybe you don't care about it anymore. I email
some people who only respond every couple of weeks and I always tell
them to reply rather than start a new letter because I don't remember
what they said the last time.
One nice thing about painting over writing is that I can always show my
paintings. I can spring them on people who visit my house or I have
those shows where people walking on Ashland can see them. But writing,
just try to get somebody to read what you wrote, it's like pulling
teeth. One of my early shows, I wrote little stories that went with the
paintings. I thought they were great but nobody would admit to reading
them. http://www.bckat.com/KenSchadt/woment/storieshtm.htm
I don't know about your truth thing. You hear talk about art revealing
some kind of truth, but i don't know if I buy into that, and sometimes
you hear about art being like science, or science being like art, in
seeking truth, and I think that is just crazy man crazy. I think art
and science are almost polar opposites. We can discuss that this week
in our nice baby bear mode of conversation.
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