Dakota Fanning's new movie.

[Texsox]

Of course the Church is preaching. So is the NRA, the Sierra Club, and every artist that displays their works. The works crossed their line, and that's exactly when they should speak out. Like an audience viewing a work of art, it is up to them to agree or disagree. Many will disagree, many will agree. But the process should be allowed. For some the Church speaking out will guarantee they want to see the movie, others will stay away.

 

This is all part of free speech. If you want free speech for your works, than how can you argue against free speech?

 

And to partially back up to Mary Shelly and Frankenstein, I also enjoy knowing her background and the stories surrounding that work. But I consider them in two different piles. I guess I want to give the artist the opportunity to shed their skin and create something. For example, if to better grasp the Conservative agenda I decided to write a pro conservative book, and it has merits as a pro conservative book, shouldn't that be enough?

 

Historical fiction, something I have just started reading, seems to be about the hardest. To take something like the Civil War and weave a fictional work into it, while remaining historically accurate, boggles my mind.

 

Not to get this off to a tree falling in the woods discussion, but does art exist without an audience? Or does something become art as soon as an audience is involved?

 

I'd rather be having this conversation over a beer . . .

[BobDylan]

Of course the Church is preaching. So is the NRA, the Sierra Club, and every artist that displays their works. The works crossed their line, and that's exactly when they should speak out. Like an audience viewing a work of art, it is up to them to agree or disagree. Many will disagree, many will agree. But the process should be allowed. For some the Church speaking out will guarantee they want to see the movie, others will stay away.

 

This is all part of free speech. If you want free speech for your works, than how can you argue against free speech?

 

Well, I guess I like to think more about myself sometimes...

 

And certainly the process should be allowed. But unless the Church is going to make this a long standing argument and pick against all work that crosses their limits, why speak at all? Do they believe what they preach or not?

 

And to partially back up to Mary Shelly and Frankenstein, I also enjoy knowing her background and the stories surrounding that work. But I consider them in two different piles. I guess I want to give the artist the opportunity to shed their skin and create something. For example, if to better grasp the Conservative agenda I decided to write a pro conservative book, and it has merits as a pro conservative book, shouldn't that be enough?

 

I'd say that's enough. If a story can't be enjoyed without knowing the author, I don't think it's a very good story. This is very subjective, however. I tend to write my stories to one specific induvidual and make sure that one person can fully understand what I'm saying. I can't say all writers write that way, though in many "craft" books, they say to do it that way. I think either way you look at it, it's impossible to pull every nugget out of a story and understand it 100%. The reader can't get into the authors mind just as the author can't get into the readers head.

 

I'd consider them in two piles as well the more I think about it. There are stories I enjoy just because it's a good story. I read a lot of existentialism, and with those types of writers, I try to get a little background information on them. For instance, Camus argues in favor of suicide in some of his work. Many might think he's mad. But I can understand where he's coming from. He lived through wars. He didn't fight in them (not 100% certain on that), but towns he lived in were bombed, he's seen his loved ones die, he's been at the point of having nothing but his sanity. While I don't agree with much of what Camus said, it's just damn interesting for me to listen to his perspective on life because it's different from mine.

 

But then there are the stories that I love just because they're great stories. Adaptation, though it's a film, is an incredible story by itself. Sure, I know a lot about the writer as he's one of my favorites, but I've talked to others who just love the sheer creativity behind it. I mean, first, the writer writes himself into the screenplay, and then he writes himself into a screenplay that he's writing in the actual movie, and then he gives himself a twin brother and gives him a writing credit for the movie. That's fantastic!

 

I guess it depends on the work, and moreover, what the writers goals are.

 

Historical fiction, something I have just started reading, seems to be about the hardest. To take something like the Civil War and weave a fictional work into it, while remaining historically accurate, boggles my mind.

 

I reccommend In Cold Blood to anyone that is just getting into creative non-fiction. It's not historical so much, but Truman Capote has quite a gift. I can count on two fingers as many writers who have that kind of gift for language: Jack Kerouac and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

 

Not to get this off to a tree falling in the woods discussion, but does art exist without an audience? Or does something become art as soon as an audience is involved?

 

That makes my head hurt thinking about it. I'll say yes just because I believe failed art is just as much an art as successful art is. There's only one way for an artist to get better, and that's to fail (and for most, fail A LOT). Some art gets to an audience and THEN fails, but some, the artist creates it and just knows that it's a failure. I still believe that's art. And then there have to be plenty of great works out there that are locked away somewhere. J.D. Salinger has locked away his work, Franz Kafka did the same. Eventually they'll get to the public, but hey, art is art. It just has to be created.

 

I'd rather be having this conversation over a beer . . .

So long as it's not Bud Light.

[Texsox]

I should have phrased the last question a little differently. At what point in the creative process does something cross over and become art? I remember eating a Pat's Pizza in Grayslake and a lady far smarter than I put forth the idea that this lump of clay is just a lump of clay until the artist shows it to someone. If the audience comes forward, looks, digests, and says, hey, that's just a lump of clay on a wheel! We might not have art. But walking into your context argument, and here's where I will agree with you. If the audience approaches, looks, and says "hey that speaks to the terror of an artist without inspiration" then you have art. She went on with other really good examples. That was 25 years ago, and I remember thinking she is a genius. Maybe I can get her drunk and she'll go out with me. (she did, and didn't)

 

I believe the Church does speak out on about everything, but the publicity is always different. If the Church is standing with everyone else, they aren't mentioned. As soon as they are standing apart, it is news and gets reported. That leaves a mistaken impression that the Church is always by themselves.

[bmags]

i roll my eyes at your 'kerouac'

[BobDylan]

I should have phrased the last question a little differently. At what point in the creative process does something cross over and become art? I remember eating a Pat's Pizza in Grayslake and a lady far smarter than I put forth the idea that this lump of clay is just a lump of clay until the artist shows it to someone. If the audience comes forward, looks, digests, and says, hey, that's just a lump of clay on a wheel! We might not have art. But walking into your context argument, and here's where I will agree with you. If the audience approaches, looks, and says "hey that speaks to the terror of an artist without inspiration" then you have art. She went on with other really good examples. That was 25 years ago, and I remember thinking she is a genius. Maybe I can get her drunk and she'll go out with me. (she did, and didn't)

 

I believe the Church does speak out on about everything, but the publicity is always different. If the Church is standing with everyone else, they aren't mentioned. As soon as they are standing apart, it is news and gets reported. That leaves a mistaken impression that the Church is always by themselves.

 

I guess this goes alongside with some of what you were saying. The lump of clay may be a lump of clay, but to the next person, it's a symbol of freedom (or something). And to that too, does art really need to be created by man? As I look down at some of the Kerouac quotes I showed to bmags, look what he did with the forest.

 

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass."

 

Kerouac simply takes one instance, the forest, relates it to another, and bam, he's got new meaning. He's got his own meaning. He didn't create the forest, nobody did (unless you want to argue God, but for the sake of this argument, we won't say God did). (And yes, there are obviously other elements -- an entire book -- that I'm ignoring in which Kerouac was able to lead us and give that forest meaning.) But with that said, can I look at a lump of clay that nobody has ever really touched, ever really molded and created into something, and call it art? I say yes because I, with my own experiences, with my own imagination, can easily give meaning to it. I'm sure if I dig down deep enough I can relate it to a part in my life. If somebody takes that piece of clay and makes it into their own vision, then I believe it is something entirely different. It's still art, but a different kind of art. I guess what I'm trying to say is that one's imagination is art. We have the ability to believe whatever we want to believe. And it's beautiful that way. One might not find anything in that lump of clay, but the next sees a world unlike any other. Yet, it's just a lump of clay nobody has ever touched. And perhaps what I'm saying goes alongside what you said, "hey that speaks to the terror of an artist without inspiration!" And that's exactly right. You made that lump of clay art.

 

i roll my eyes at your 'kerouac'

 

"I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' "

 

"He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings–all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end. This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it."

 

"A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world."

 

"But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?"

 

"Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America."

 

"I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass."

 

To each his own, I guess.

[bmags]

That isn't writing, that's typing.

[BobDylan]

That isn't writing, that's typing.

 

 

HE'S NOT A WRITER. HE JUST TYPES!

[hammerhead johnson]

 

HE'S NOT A WRITER. HE JUST TYPES!

 

And there ain't a god damn person on this site who took the time to ready any of it.

[Rex Kickass]

I heart Kerouac.