July 10, 2006

"We work in the dark. We do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." --Henry James

I confess to not being 100% sure what Mr. James means here. Well, sort of. I'm not entirely confident in my interpretation of "our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task." My interpretation is that art being what it is, we can never know completely that we're succeeding at it, but we continue anyway and hope for the best, which is where both working in the dark and the madness of art comes in. I think.

"We work in the dark." Now THAT I understand. As well as "We do what we can--we give what we have."

I have to say that I'm leery of the word "art." I used to have debates with a friend of mine, Rick Weyer, who claimed that the definition of art was, "It's art if the artist says it's art." This is a definition, particularly in modern art, that's allowed a piece of rope nailed to the wall, a pile of bubblegum, and sculture carved out of shit to all be called art. Hey, I'm skeptical.

I rarely think of myself as an artist. Yet, when I look at myself objectively, I realize that I have written and published several poems, two short stories, two novels with 4 more contracted for, hundreds and hundreds of magazine articles. I used to play piano and saxophone well enough to teach it, as well as tinkering with xylophone and bells and marimbas when asked to by the orchestra director. I dabbled in music composition and even sang reasonably well in my youth. Although not much of a sketch artist, actor or sculpture, I went through a period of wood working where I made furniture--Adirondack chairs, bookcases and end tables. So I get I am kind of an artist.

I recently interviewed Barry Eisler and he commented that when you're in your office writing, you're an artist, and that's fine. But when you decide to sell your art, you not only become a businessman, but in most cases you become part of or interact with businesses. I essentially agree.

I'm also not sure that "art" and the mindset that it involves is all that different than the mindset in scientific and technical pursuits like the genetics I was involved with for so many years. Much of it is problem-solving, and the method you use for problem solving, to me, is quite similar for both art and science. You can approach either methodically and logically, or you can use your intuition, which in this case is probably just a deep understanding of what the potential problems are.

The "artsy" folks I've had the most problems with over the years are the ones who seem to feel that, "Hey, I'm an artist, I don't have to work hard or develop my craft." In fact, I have little or no tolerance for that attitude.

I think craft may be the most important aspect of art. I was glancing through the introduction to Stephen King's "Nightmares & Dreamscapes," because as you might have realized, many of those stories have been turned into TV movies airing shortly on the TNT network. I honestly didn't remember the book. I thought it was 4 short novels, but I realized upon looking at it that it's actually short stories, and I only remember a couple of them. But either in the intro or in the notes at the back, King makes a comment, and I'm paraphrasing, about "being someone with a little bit of talent but no signs of genius." Amen, brother.

Talent is not really a precious commodity. Tons of people have talent. Most of them squander it. My favorite metaphor is that talent is a knife. Big, little, in between, whatever, most people have one. Craft is the process of sharpening that knife and learning how to wield it correctly. Geniuses have big, big knives. The rest of us have moderate or small knives, which is okay, given that a scalpel is quite small but can cut most anything because it's so sharp.

I think we're all pretty much better off concentrating on our craft and not espousing our "art." Let the art speak for itself as expressed by our craft, brought to the people through our business acumen or lack of it. Otherwise, we're likely to go mad.

Best,
Mark Terry