The following was written by me as a comment on this post at Peanuts and Bubblegum, a really neat and fun blog:
I look at it a bit like this — and of course, there’s no need for you to agree — we are each sending out spotlights to see what’s out there. If there were no truth (or reality) those spotlights wouldn’t reflect off anything. It’d just be a cold meaningless blackness.
But it’s not. Our spotlights pick up all kinds of wonderful, beautiful images when we look to see what’s out there. Only each spotlight is picking up but one narrow aspect of all that’s out there to be seen. And where we make the mistake is when one person thinks what his spotlight reveals is the whole thing, the whole truth. Even to the point of thinking someone else’s spotlight just can’t be right, because it isn’t his or hers.
If I say the world’s flat, there’s a little bit of truth in that, isn’t there? I mean it certainly looks that way. Just like no spotlight ever gets the whole truth, most of them are picking up at least some bit of truth.
I think artists are in the business of creating more and more spotlights. Highlighting this one or that one, fixing up this one, dusting off another, just trying to catch as much as they can of all the wonderful truth that is out there to be shined upon.
There are those practical people whose business is to determine which spotlight is best for which problem, and which spotlight is more limited than another, and how to classify spotlights and so on, but I don’t see that as the artist’s job, necessarily. The artists just has to keep revealing more and more, as much as they can, of all the beautiful and radiant truth that is out there to be seen.
Having written this much, I guess, I’ll throw this up at my blog …
Any opinions! Please comment.
Let there be light… so much light… everyones’s light…
What a great post…
Thanks Matt.
Matt, I agree with you, and I want to add that EVERYTHING is out there, the ugly, the scary, the discordant – as well as the beautiful images – and we CHOOSE where we direct our spotlights. Our predisposition determines whether we shall keep seeking for things we call beautiful or things we call horrible – and every person and artist is free to focus on what interests him/her.
Therefore, I differ from you in respect only, you wrote:
“The artists just have to keep revealing more and more, as much as they can, of all the beautiful and radiant truth that is out there to be seen.”
There is no hypothetical ethical imperative that the artists “have to” reveal the beautiful and radiant; artists are free to reveal the ugly and the depraved, just as artists are free to describe their highest ideals and most depraved thoughts.
We are free to accept or reject what is revealed and revere some artists and reject others on the basis of our own taste and ideas, so I only want to enlarge your concept of what artists can do – while emphasizing our individual right to enjoy or ignore their work.
As for sending spotlights searching for things we love while knowing it is but a small aspect of “truth” – I agree with you 100%!
Aptly said man. The job of the artist is to show rest depends on the readers, viewers, users of the art. Any piece can have a different meaning for everyone
Rock on!
N
Thank you for the wonderful comments. I think there is a lot of merit to what Agent Snowflake says. Also I wanted to note that my opinion above was shaped by Karl Popper’s ideas about searchlights. I wanted to find an appropriate quote, but still haven’t found the time ….