Art & Fear

Kevin Kelly’s review of Art & Fear (via Parking Lot), a book about making art, makes me think this it would also be useful for writers, musicians, or anyone involved in trying to express themselves creatively. Some excerpts of Kelly’s review are below. [Note: I fixed some odd character marks that appeared on his page, at least in my browser.]

Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.

 

To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience of shaping that artwork. The viewers’ concerns are not your concerns (although it’s dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.)…Your job is to learn to work on your work.

 

The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars. One of the basic and difficult lessons every artist must learn is that even the failed pieces are essential.

 

The truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse. Art is like beginning a sentence before you know its ending.

3:35:09 PM      trackback [] 

Politically mixed marriages

"He yells what he thinks and I yell what I think and we're done."

This is how one mixed-politics couple handles their political disagreements according to this fascinating article today at Salon.com (paid subscription). This particular couple also say that having opposing political views is great for their sex life. Says the Democrat wife: “I never know when we're going to agree and when we're going disagree, so it's much more exciting to have someone who's going to surprise you." The Republican husband agrees: "It's sort of like I sought out somebody different because I already know me. I already have a set of views. Why would I want to go out and marry myself?"

Clearly this is a couple that respects and enjoys their differences. Not everyone is like that. That beastly GOP pundit Ann Coulter says that political difference in love is not a turn-on and that “It's an obstacle to be overcome and then eliminated through the process of conversion." Conversion. To be fair, there are liberals who also look at it this way and the article cites one who claims, "My sister has always dated Republicans and is very good at converting them... You find one and you fix him!"

This problem of not accepting each other’s views and trying to “convert” the other person is the cause of much marital strife among Washington couples, according to DC-area social worker, Andrea Maloney Schara:

"I deal with this all the time," she said. "When people who you love say things that upset you or that you don't agree with, you think, 'I don't like you!' And sometimes more than that. 'Not only do I not like you, I'm done! I hate you!'" said Schara. "It's all about fear – fear that they're going to take you over, control you to be like them, that you're going to end up merging with them. That's when we fight."

The article mentions mixed political pundits Mary Matalin and James Carville, who I alluded to in a previous post on my discomfort dating in mixed political company. But most interesting to me were the profiles of long-married couples with opposing views. Each maintained their own political opinions and found a way to get along – some of them by yelling out their opinions and some of them by avoiding hot-button issues they know will upset the other. Says one husband, "I think she respects my viewpoint. She thinks I'm crazy, but she respects my views."

1:47:47 PM      trackback []