Tuesday Aug 23, 2011
It looks like all the high tech stuff will not be hooked up the first day of class. I thought we would do something different, The first assignment is to read ?Emerson's essay, 1841, on self reliance. And one might read Steve Pressfield's tHe War of Art. And then I ran across this August 20, 2011 reflection from Kirk Tuck's Visual Science Lab. Take a read, reflect, that's what college is supposed to be.
http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/
One of my acquaintances was telling me about a documentary he recently saw of a very good photographer who is still working, collected and revered, deep into his eighties. After a while the interviewer asked him if the "revolution" in cameras, which had made it easier for "everyman" to take good photographs, had profoundly and irrevocably changed photography for the worse for professionals. The older photographer laughed and said, "No more than pencils and paper changed the game for writers. You still have to do the work. You still have to have the talent. You still have to be creative. That's never changed."
I love to hear those stories but it always brings me back to the idea of talent. I believe that it's innate and easy or that you can work hard and try to get close to what the talented people can do with the flick of a wrist and a quick squint through the viewfinder. And I'm one of those without a drop of native talent for visualizing. (Back to that!!!)
So, I was kicking on a kickboard in the pool today and I was talking to Jane about creating art. During our quick conversation she helped me with a new perspective. The idea was that everyone, either through hard work or native talent, or both can be an artist. We can all do it. We may come to it in different ways but we all have the potential to creatively express our own vision. But the bottom line is that most people allow themselves to get boxed into conventional lives and don't have the courage to try and live outside the box. Or to create outside homogenized parameters. They fear the trade off of possible having to deal with defeat, censure and failure time and again. And having to "eat only what you kill" by the skill of your brain. And only that creative side of your brain. So they choose security and assurance instead of a life in art. And by dint of just showing up and doing the process you are providing a set of ingredients that trumps talent. You've shown up. You've done the work. You've battled the demons that tell you that you'll never make it. The ones that tease you with the idea that the money will always elude you even in the face of evidence to the contrary. And the people at large respond to the fact that you've conquered that fear and done something they really fear to do. To step into the box of creating for themselves and making it work, without instructions. Or a safety net. Real skin in the real game.
It sounded lofty as we talked about it and kicked through the cool water as the white hot sun peeked over the tree line and sent a laser beam of energy glancing off the lane lines and bouncing off the lenses of our goggles. And for a few hundred yards I was convinced that I was an artist because I'd had the courage to step off the farm and go into the woods in search of images only I could make. The hell with the wolves….
But by the end of workout, as I got on my bike and headed back home, I realized that I'd already slid back to that place that says, "Yes, this could be an art. But it's also a business and we have to please the client…" So you can see that I slide from dilemma to dilemma and realization to realization. It's an examination of life that I'm sure we all mull everyday. And in the end we die with it unanswered. Because there really isn't a right answer or a definitive calculus that defines what we SHOULD be doing and what we SHOULD value. But we never stop looking. And we never stop longing.
Professor Elam 
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