Leroi Jones once said:
" I am a Man
Who is Loud
On the Birth
Of His Ways."
There is and application in this - not in Jones necessarily, as what I understand to be the birth of his ways is a lot of drugs, luxurious lunches, and masturbating while reading romantic poetry (not that there's anything wrong with any of that. kinda).
However ostensibly filthy his methods seem, it is his worship of his own experience which is fascinating.
But I find throughout the infancy of my education in literature that this is the essence of creative writing.
Is it fair to say that authors and poets have more worship for their own animus than everyone else? probably not, but it's still true, whether even the writer in question knows it. Jones obviously does, but that's besides the point.
Take a look at this, something I peeped on Deadspin this morning. Yes it's about sports, but it still helps my argument.
How will that runner remember this race? Coming to a foreign country and excelling on the pinnacle of international sport against all odds, or expectations, or actual written rules?
Or will he remember it as the day he performed at an elite level and received absolutely nothing due to his own mistake. But then again, does he really need a medal and his name written in the right book?
How would he do that if he was Leroi Jones? and what if it was what led him to be a writer? To what level would his prose or poetry be about disappointment or perhaps a daddy issue that led him to be a long distance runner? Or even about Success and personal fulfillment? What would Jones, Ginsberg, Lowell, or even Ashberry think of this?
What do YOU, English 323 Class, think of this?
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6 comments:
Cool post, B.
(Translation from Bernese:
1: Love of one's own experience is the root of all art;
2: All creative artists love themselves more than non-artists do;
3: Blah blah tangentially connected sporting event.
Discuss.)
Well, okay. I'm not an expert, and I'd feel about as much at home in ENG 323 as in a jar of pickles--but I think I disagree.
Certainly there is some creative art (never mind whether or not it deserves the appellation 'art'; if it's meant to be art then let's call it that) that turns on an expansion, exhibition, projection, instruction, inversion, or other process that enlarges the author's character into the basis of a poetic world. (Anything remotely autobiographical, impressionist, or dialectical would fall into this category at least in part.) In this case I think the artist's innermost self (animus, since Jungian terminology apparently wins points in English classes) is indeed the root of this kind of art, and in order to see one's self as worth waxing poetic about, the artists must revere himself as a subject--love his own experience. We can even stipulate, though there's no logical basis for the claim, that an artist's narcissism exceeds his fellow-man's.
But is all art in some way autobiographical, impressionist, or dialectical? Does all art function as a communique from artist to audience, explaining the author's self, his sensations, or his opinions? I can't think of what that misses, but it seems like a profoundly reductive framework in which to understand art; worse, I fear it smears all artists as self-obsessed, masturbatory fuckheads. Cannot art access insights about the human condition through humble observation instead of navel-gazing? When an author invents a character, does he just fill it with himself? That seems like a hallmark of bad art to me.
Help me out.
i'm not explicitly trying to argue that artists love themselves - there are countless examples of the contrary. i would however say that artists love what makes themselves themselves. it isnt about how one feels or what one thinks necessarily, although it could be. i think its more about what an artist sees, and inspires them to create something. most modern art (at least visual art, poetry, and finnegan's wake) is widely defined as exhibiting some sort of stream-of-consciousness philosophy). im trying to explain what fills that gap. i think it IS observation, not necessarily 'humble' though. i find that a hallmark bad art is an art without an 'animus', to stay with that word. creativity can be fun and wonton, but the works that rise to the top aren't. it isn't exactly what the author thinks of themselves, but what they think of the world around them that makes them themselves. well, not necessarily finnegan's wake. that shit is mad fucked.
Mmm. Won ton.
You're still arguing that all art is a product of the author's innermost self, and of his relationship to the world. If all art is a communication in which the artist represents his own world in art, then no art can transcend or even equal the artist, since the art is only the artist's self, and there must be some insights of the self which are not communicated....
but youre assuming that the life of the art stops at completion.
we agreed earlier that some of art (but not all) lies in the interpreter.
that said, an art is created or at least started in the artists own world. from there, it has all possibility to leave, but will remain tangentially tied to the artist.
Didactic, not dialectical. Duh.
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