An Infinite Language

What does it mean when a writer creates a character?

A poetic-essayistic exploration of the idea of what if no one listens, reads, sees the art? And its opposing notion: what if audiences truly listen?

What do you write about when you have nothing to say?

From Scrooge to George Bailey, to the modern comedic and heroic stories (including Elf, National Lampoon’s Christmas, and Die Hard), a consideration of the lessons that Christmas stories can teach us about the creative process.

Is generational affinity good for the artist? Is it good for creative work to have some sense of an affinity towards one’s generation? The disparate cohort and a sense of connection to various creatives from various times. The milestone occurrences and crossovers of concentric aspects of life, these might be valid as commonalities.   A sense of grouping together of periods, works, and individuals as from a time and a context.

Notes on a dream, pulling a spaceship out of a swampPowerful dream. How do we bring a creative work into existence? Sleep dream. Dream come true… You know the whole thing… You’re trying to catch it. Will the notes look like the thing?   Explains an aspect of the creative process.   We are walking in the woods and we see what looks like a half-sunk spaceship in a swamp. The strategies we use to get it out…   Writing: improvisational or planning? Improvisers use pre-planned things. Outliners have to improvise while making the outline… is there an outline for an outline?   Whatever process we use is the way we make sure the spaceship doesn’t sink… And the perception of complete control…. That’s even a way… that perception is a way, that’s the yarn, the magnet…   compared to music theory and grammar: maybe grammar could be called language theory? What is style? Is it the culmination of the how and the what?  Descriptive vs. Prescriptive grammar. Style is our own vocabulary developed as we get the spaceship out of the swamp.

an exploration of the common grounds of three questions:Why the self portrait? Can we create art and not reveal who we are? Should we do commissioned work?

Can you perform with just a notion of technique and without a sense of sincerity? Working with purity: either just passion or just technique… as a comparative structure to inquire into the question. Is it better to have feeling or a technical sense of the work? We can find examples of great performances of both. Sometimes as we learn more effective techniques in creation, we might get more of a reaction but we can feel more about the technique than the content. Authorial intent: can we know the intention? Do we need to? The audience’s reception: that’s the counterpart to intent of the author. And then the idea of expression. And communication.

Can we separate content from technique? What is the meaning of the lighthouse? One question here is the technique. One is the content. Perhaps they are one in the same. What is the meaning of the lighthouse? Symbolism: pre-figurative plus derivation of figurative meaning. The lighthouse is a structure that allows for people navigating to know that there is a place. A lighthouse is located in public. It is a public good once it is built. Free and open to all to find their way.   In painting, the lighthouse becomes a look at painting techniques again and again. The content stays the same and the technique becomes experimental. Breaking down technique into phases and parts. This has been a technique exploration for me, as it has been a subject exploration.   It might take practice and help for audiences to understand how to begin to appreciate technique instead of content.   The meaning of the lighthouse for me is also a practice not only in technique but also in inventive rendering rather than representational rendering. Tendencies: towards rendering from representation or from imagination. This process has helped me work less referentially. And has enabled some traction with referential type of work in an imaginative way, without direct representation as a reference. The work with the lighthouse has been as an actual guide for me in expanding a particular type of painting process of representational invention.

What is a mask? Literally and figuratively. Do creative pursuits construct a truer self? Or do they allow for a mask to be constructed? Or perhaps another persona? What is a mask? Masks that we can see. Masks that are hidden. A mask conceals important parts that we rely on in order to identify a person from the outside. The mask hides the face but creates a new face. Recognizability is both obscured but renewed. A mask is like a key into another portal of a persona. A foundation for presenting another persona. A transformative device for understanding who someone is. Identity isn’t it necessarily it. Outside and inside might not always coincide. The features of the face converge into a whole. No particular part is more important. But once a significant portion is covered up, the recognition of the whole becomes difficult. What is a face? Explored as a portrait painter. A technique is a way for the artist to make what they’re trying to do accessible to themselves. It’s almost the opposite of what a mask is. My technique to convey the face is to start with the nose because it helps me to triangulate the face. A face is: the features converging within the margin just enough to convey a recognizability. The mask then is a cover up in part or whole of a recognizable form of communication. Well then what is the possibility for the individual to become a truer or more masked self via creative production?

We can view Halloween as a festival of creative participation. Anyone can participate to any extent or no extent. It allows for a creative way of engaging across genres. The levels of participation can be judgment free. Freedom of acquiescence It’s about the idea enacting the representation of beings that don’t exist in this world or are looking to invade the living world. And we come to this with a sense of nostalgia and joy. A wholesome scare. Sounds contradictory. Dealing in the plate tectonics of the subconscious.

What is a ghost? Something that has the visual semblance of a human being, but not all aspects. Sometimes it can create sound. Not fully formed visually. A ghost can manifest as a visually present enough version of a human being. Ghost stories are often in houses. House is a central human symbol of comfort. The ghost is a disruption to the norm. Why does the ghost scare people? The ghost represents the prior existence before the current occupants. This represents a cycle of life. The ghost’s presence connotes a sense of vulnerability for the living in its appearance in less frequented places (attic, basement) and in the evening often, when the character is alone. And then the fear is premised on the question of whether the ghost is a good or evil presence. The ghost can show the dweller their own mortality. The ghost is a representation of impermanence. Or in the reverse, what’s scary about the ghost is the lack of impermanence. There are other kinds of ghost stories. A ghost story is a story in which you have a character whose placement in this world is somehow out of order. Place is important: where the ghost appears and what they’re doing. We often see ghosts looking to repeat the same thing. There is something that is not reconciled for them.  They are often held back from the completion of a reconciliation.

Sometimes we need to pursuit a question more within our range. Sometimes a question is too bold for the now. How is a creative question situated within a comfortable reach from where you are working from today? Shifting from one approach to another. Within creative pursuits you place yourself in control. And you are sometimes in a predicament where you choose something that enables you to get something accomplished. It would be a mistake to call this choosing the easy path. You sometimes encounter junctures of perception, of changing the dial a little bit. When we change the paradigm, then we can do some work. Creative work is good for us because we can get into the details of where we are in our work and provocations from that work. Can creativity save the world? Compelling question. Too much to take up right now. Where is the leverage for this question? Why are creative pursuits good for us? Still bold but seems navigable and challenging. We place ourselves in positions to reach beyond what we can do. And in that process, we have to decide whether we are reaching too far or within a challenging plausibility.

Consider the nature of the question. Consider what it all means. What is a mission statement or statement of purpose as a creative individual? Often with words. An articulation of where you stand and where you’re coming from in why you create what you create and what you anticipate the effects will be, perhaps. It’s another way to add a unique signature to who you are as someone who is involved in creative work. It overemphasizes a certain mapping of creative experience to advocate for just one approach. It’s good to consider what it all means. (recording contains ambient sound)

There’s so much already done, why make my art? It is possible to have a sea of doubts in the creative process. Among such doubts, are there legitimate and illegitimate ones? Whole other topic. In the life of creating, we will doubt. Why does the world need what I’m going to create? What can I possibly offer given the great works that already exist? Everyone lives in a context. In the game of human history. We are from specific contexts and categorical ones. This converges into a unique fingerprint of existence. (Episode was recorded outside and contains ambient sounds)

Why we love an idea: wonderful simultaneity. We have it but don’t. What is the difference? Is there a difference between an illustrator and a painter?   Illustration: the line tells us where one thing begins and ends. Critically and extremely important… we have to know what we’re looking at. Or do we? Another topic for another day. What is painting? We do use the line in painting. Color and value are painting’s “lines.” What is value? It’s connected to saturation. Simple definition: the color itself, with gradations of white or black added to it. The mixture of black and white and the gradations of gray in the middle. This is with or without a color added. Light and dark and all in the middle are relational considerations to that which is in the picture. They are contextual in that exact picture that you are working with. Value is an explaining tool of painting. The other explaining tool is color. Cold and warm colors.   Hawthorne on painting What I said in the podcast is the idea that “It’s all color…” That was my recollection of the idea. Perhaps he does say this. Though on skimming the book, I couldn’t find that exact statement. What he says on page 26 that is pertinent to the considerations here is, “it’s the relation of one color as it comes against another that you must see correctly.” (Page 26, Hawthorne on Painting, Dover Edition 1960, ISBN: 978-0-486-20653-0). He discusses color in many ways throughout the book. The major point is that the tools of explanation in painting are color and value.   Palm cancelation not necessary as a consideration for a painter. When I was learning in eighth grade to prepare for art high school in NYC The teacher taught us to hold the charcoal with the palm facing the surface, so that we are using the forearm more so than the hand.

What is the value of the humanities and the arts? An acquiescence to the norm of a clear-cut value system is often behind such a question. There are modes of asking the question. Because we can’t see what you do in the humanities, we don’t know if it’s worth anything. The economy of straightforward worth.   Frequent answer given: studying the humanities has a derivate value. Employs practices that have easy transference to other activities. In this justification, the idea is that the intellectual activities have transference. And it is those activities that have value.   Isn’t it fundamentally worth it in and of itself? Or, we don’t need to justify a utility because it’s already about our lives, the humanities. What does it mean for the creator? A whole other talk. Is the creation of arts a viable career?

How do we derive value for a work of art? Monetary value Meaning value Pattern in these inquiries: Understanding how the question and supposed answers are built rather than chiseling out one defined answer. The question is always: when considering such a question, what can be taken into account, and how so? This show is like interpreting maps and discussing the terrains of a region. The inquiries being regions. How do we declare that art has value? Two value systems are proposed for the purposes of illustration: classical period and post-classical period in terms of value systems   Why do we make a dividing line in the history of art which we call “modern” art? Is it a distinct line or a period of transition? Stylistic concerns, representational approaches, conceptual work Modern art can mean many things: in addition to the above, it can be about when the artists are the ones steering and deciding the subject matter, scale, format, etc, of art. Difference: artist is now deciding what the subject matter is. When painting was the only way to make large color pictures. The older value system: resembles valuing approaches that we still use today. This involves recognizable and externalized things that have value that have nothing to do with expectations and not stylistics and can be easily understood in terms of time. Work as certain levels of precision, volume, time where none of it is variable in terms of voice or style. This classical system of valuing is clear cut and has been around a long time. It was at play in the art world for a long time.   Side road: the lens from now applied to then.   Once artists define the subject, they begin to steer the stylistic approach. The subject matter and the style are now within the artist’s control. What are the parameters of the question? What does it mean to pose the question? Is modern art more about stylistic or subject matter declaration? It need not be “more about,” but intentionally pitting them against positions the inquiry.   Post classical value system doesn’t play by rules that can be clarified at all times. It could be about sentiment, or about who else thinks it has value. It might be worth something because of reasons beyond what can be understood systematically and consistently. Post classical model of valuing art doesn’t have an outside visible hallmark to it. The foundation of this system is originally steered by there not being an outside valuing system in the first place. It doesn’t have an architecture to it.   Is the valuing of meaning separate or different from monetary value in terms of art? In the classic value system? In the post-classic system? Is there a clear articulation to the reasoning of a meaning valuing system?

There are some ways that offer advantages, perhaps, but not necessarily a “best.” So why phrase it this way? A question can be regarded as a precise linguistic inquiry or as an inquiry that has a heart and many implied inquiries surrounding it. It is not about linguistic exactness. It exists as a conceptual feeling. Like a work of art, where we move in various ways to get a point of view, this inquiry is profound and deserves reverence.   Only one work of art to view or many others around: the context of the “looking.” The viability of the viewability: how much true attention any work of art gets. The drawback to seeing a work of art in a space highly populated with other works of art: viewer fatigue. Mid-range venues: smaller shows with fewer works of art without viewer overwhelm. Notice what you keep getting drawn back to. With one work of art for a length of time, we start to look in different ways. We alter what “looking” means. Looking can equal listening, reading, etc… The feeling of “I need to move on,” while viewing and you’re in a place with other works, an easy solution is to notice other things. But when that is not an option, then you have the option to take on another approach to noticing. In a saturated space: the way of looking can easily stay the same, the content of looking can easily change. But when there’s just one work, or a few to look at, we might alter what it means to look.   For 45 minutes you’ll only listen to this one 5 minute song. Over that 45 minutes, you might do different things that are called “listening.” Compare this to 45 minutes with no limits of what you can listen to.   Looking in such a way that you are keenly aware that you are changing what “to look” means.   Are we going to create in such ways that allow for rich pathways of discovery?   The benefits of taking on another creative pursuit. When you are creating art, you are looking at works for a very long time. Looking for a long time as a creator in that realm isn’t unusual or a challenge. We do this all the time. We look even as we’re not working. Looking is a form of working with creative production.   Music makers know that just listening for four minutes straight through to a four-minute song is not the only way of listening.   It can be beneficial to take up another kind of creative pursuit. It allows you to see the ways of the creative process differently.   Hypothetical: a musician takes up illustrating. What does a day of illustrating allow you as a musician to see about the creative process? When you take up a creative venture that is less usual to you, it allows you to come up with other definitions of what it means to create. This is in the same way that looking at one work of art for a long time (or listening, or reading) allows you to redefine what looking (listening, reading) means.

What are the differences between teaching a creative practice and doing the creative practice?   This topic has many branches. The goal of this talk is to chisel out the general considerations. Creative practice as in painting, writing, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, composing music. The verbal phrase is explored too: compared to, along with, as opposed to.   What about when a teacher has a creative practice in the realm that they’re teaching? Can we teach creative acts? What are the differences between a teacher of great notoriety in a creative field or lesser notoriety? Should the teacher within their teaching advocate for the stylistic approach that they emerge from? Or should they teach within their realm broadly while allowing students to go into their own direction? What is any teacher’s role in the cultivation and construction of any student’s becoming as an artist? The teacher doesn’t have the practice: what about when that’s the case?   A consideration of sports is brought up. I refer to an essay from Consider the volley. The essay is titled “Coaches and Judges” and is reprinted in the show notes.