Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Why

Why does art, writing, whatever, have to be hard and sad and bad for it to be taken seriously? Why? Isn’t joy a legitimate thing? Do we not want to read about joy? Why not? Will we get jealous? Is it boring? Why? No, really, why?
I will write about my dad soon, and it will be joyful, and I will write about some other people I love, and I encourage you to do the same.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmm? Tis my little assumption that to have joy one must go down a helleva dark hallway to find it. So, perhaps, we examine the darkness in the arts to see the light in our own lives. Anyway, who wants to live with creepy, clown paintings on their walls?

Anonymous said...

this is mui interesting. TIME magazine just had a good piece about it. it touched on the fact that in the days before the industrial revolution (and therefore, pre-advertising) much of art, literature, music was about happiness. there were enough reminders in day-to-day life about gloom. and they were so caught up in hellfire and brimstone and guilt, etc. that art was release from that. now that we're constantly bombarded from every usable space by advertising telling us how to be happy and fulfilled, our art naturally balances that out. um, yeah. lots more to say about that in some other forum. sorry.