I've been asked to reflect on a lot lately. Not in a sedate lay-on-a-couch sort of way, but in a 5:30 AM bootcamp "who the HELL do you think you are?!" sort of way. I've been asked about my merit, my ambition, my history, and my self-worth. I've been asked to evaluate myself through online surveys, ranking statements according to how they best described me.
Blabbering and stammering has been the bulk of my replies... I do not interview well. To me, the interview process is grueling and artificial and anxiety inducing... I guess that's most people... who on God's green Earth LOVES job interviews?!
During one particular interview I was asked what art means to me, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.
My real-time response went something like this... "art is humanity :: fart noise fart noise fart noise drawn out fart noise :: this is hard." Given time to think about that question, I feel like I've developed a better answer... although, I've been farting a lot while thinking about it... maybe I've been eating too much cheese... anyway...
Art to me is reflection. Art reflects the human condition, and that condition is that life ends. My life and your life will end, and that is the condition to being alive. I get the privilege of experiencing love, laughter, music, cheese, Tina Fey, etc. ... with the condition that everyone I experience will someday cease to exist (I really hope there's infinite cheese). Depressed yet?!... lolol, I SOWWY!
So what is art then? Art is a form of permanent reflection. One creates art in order leave something behind after one perishes and turns to dirt, or ashes... or science museum exhibit if you're into plastination.
A photograph freezes a moment in time.
One creates art so that others can reflect on who they were, on who they are, and on who they are going to become. One does not create art for their own possession. If you so boldly refer to yourself as an artist, and you create something, and you put it before any size of an audience, your ownership is immediately removed. Your art is now in the possession of your audience and what "you meant" while creating it... doesn't really matter anymore. All that matters is what a stranger feels or thinks when he sees or hears or touches or smells or tastes what you've created. What was yours is now theirs, and they are all that should matter to you.
This is not to discredit what you meant. What you meant and what you felt was critical for the inception and creation of whatever art you've produced. Who you were and what you were doing at the time you created whatever it is we're talking about is something to take into account with the exception of comedy... (no one seems to care what comedians were "feeling" except other comedians).
One is drawn to a particular artist because one is able to reflect on one's own life through the vehicle that is the artist's work.
Then there's the critic, and I don't mean the guy getting paid by the New York Times. I mean the guy who surrounds himself with creative people and then ridicules or criticizes them because he's so insecure, has never produced ANYTHING, and doesn't have the balls to plant his own two feet on a stage for five minutes to talk about what he thinks is "honest" or "real" or "meaningful"...
What the hell am I blabbering about now?!... AHEM...
An artist's responsibility is to hold a mirror up to the world, and to say... "see?"
That is all that matters. The mirror effect.
The reflection.
