Thursday, May 15, 2008

(What's the only thing worse than finding a worm in your earth? Finding half a worm in your earth!)

This evening (or, should I say, morning) it's just me, my hard apple cider and the Gorillaz. This question has been bugging me for a while. Why is it that so much art is concerned with the struggle of artists with art? I mean, maybe its mostly writers, but from Harriet the Spy to JtMH to Emily of the New Moon, to Almost Anything Written By Stephen King, the plot revolves around a creative person trying to find some way to express their creativity. Is it simply narcissism- in an time where no one seems to be able to relate to anyone else, are writers left with with only themselves to write about? Or has it always been this way? Or perhaps is it just that, currently, with all other real and basic human activities like starting fires or making clothing or tilling good rich wormy earth usurped from us by machines and Chinese slave labor, art making is the only really human activity left to us, and thus the only thing left to to write about?

1 comment:

Eternal Asking said...

This is an interesting point. I suppose everything has turned 'meta' these days, art about art, philosophy about philosophy, etc. Lame. I guess its time somebody started working in the post post-modern art era. i wonder what it will be called? or moreso, what it will entail. Art about people reflecting on their relationship with art? probably. Or this really is the end of art having any kind of intellectual history attached to it. If such a thing is possible. Probably not. Oh who knows.