John Green asked me to go to the quietest place within walking distance as a part of his wife's incredibly pretentious Art Assignment on YouTube. Not that I have anything against his wife, but the idea of asking thousands of people to create the same art as yourself just strikes me as selfish, foolish, or both. I actively failed the assignment, because I know the storm shelter is the quietest place within walking distance and I instead walked the dog outside. I can hear his collar clinking, a hundred bird calls, mower, a handful of frogs and insects, wind through the trees, and cars on the highway. It's noisy. Chaotic. Cluttered. And I'm on my phone, which I think was against the rules. I'm not sure.
But is my "art" less valid because I broke the conventions of its origins? Is my thought somehow incorrect? I don't think the purpose of art is to challenge or uphold the establishment, but to release something built up inside or to communicate some emotion otherwise contained. Art, in my experience, is not prompted as well as exploded.
*nods*
ReplyDeleteBut maybe Green was speaking to the people whose lives are cluttered by noise and distracted by phones. Like the teens who make up the majority of his readership.
Whereas, with you (and me, to a point), the details are just as important to the feelings as the feelings themselves. The little details make things more poignant and significant (in my view).
Sometimes. Sometimes the details can get in the way of a greater feeling. For example, at the reception on the 20th, there was a power cable running between the lights and I didn't notice it at all. If I had, it wouldn't have made me retrospective about the work involved in putting everything together, nor would it have made me melancholy that everything looked hand-made. I would have ignored it.
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