The Quotes That Matter Most to Me
Jul. 27th, 2020 04:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zaniidaI don't have time, this morning, to write a particularly long post about why these matter to me, but I got reminded of one of them, and it seems like a useful thing to post.
My favorite poem is Curiosity by Alastair Reid, from which I get my personal motto:
A reminder to always seek out new and interesting things, and not be content to go through life with only what is necessary or useful.
Would you believe that I made a writing shirt with... a misquote of this line, because of course I didn't double-check the wording before I started adding the puffy paint? (sigh)
The quote comes from To Boldly Flee, the fourth crossover movie from the Channel Awesome group; I assume that Doug Walker wrote the line, though he doesn't play the character who spoke it, so I'm not sure who to attribute it to. But it stuck with me.
There are those who hold that it's meaningless to say that this or that art is good or bad, better or worse; that it's all subjective and there are no objective qualities by which to measure art. I hold to the opposite, that while no piece of art is worthless, some pieces of art are worth more, and this quote finally gave me a data point by which to understand the distinction.
Books, shows, films, and games that stick with you and have you thinking about them for years after you've read/watched/played them -- the ones that have you return to them, or have you convince friends to experience them, the ones that give you better ways to describe key principles or inspire you to improve your life -- those are the ones worth emulating.
Throwaway popcorn movies, read-once-and-forget romance novels, random clones trying to cash in on the Flappy Bird craze? Not so much. The romances that you keep returning to, and the cult classics still being enjoyed decades later, and the franchises that started out as clones but found their own niche, those have something in them that's worth preserving and passing on.
(To be fair, it could be argued that under the "changes people" definition, those pieces so bad that they inspire a ton of artists to improve upon them might count. Does a bevy of Fix Fics imply that a piece was Great Art? I can't say. And while any piece of art, however base or seemingly pointless, might change a life, I'd venture that Great Art more properly refers to those pieces that have changed many lives, so that the change is more a quality of the art than a quality of the reader/viewer/player whose particular life experiences made the piece hold some deeper meaning for them.)
In an Extra Credits episode (How to Explore Sensitive Themes Tastefully), they discuss a particular role-playing game that approaches the Holocaust; the introduction to that game includes these two lines:
That second line felt like a gut-punch the first time I heard it, and it can still bring me to tears. My whole life, I have self-identified as a writer, a storyteller, a bard, as I grew to understand more terms for the concept -- and, thinking on the great need for such story-bringers in these trying times, I am reminded of how vital that first quote is: that lessons may be rejected in one form, but make it through to the heart in another, and it is the story-bringer who is most able to bridge that gap.
The film version of the Cirque du Soleil play Alegria has this piece of wisdom at the end:
All the details of our lives, the world-shaking and the seemingly insignificant, they add up to a reality that can be teased apart and amplified into our stories. Knowing one grief empowers us to write about many griefs. Knowing one fear empowers us to write about many fears. And, of course, knowing love or joy or awe empowers us to write about those as well.
Finally, this quote:
This is from me. It is one of the things I said during my first rambly blog-like video on YouTube, wherein I discussed the barrier of "it has to be good before I can show it off," and how much that gets in the way of actually making things. The many creators that I have followed over the years tend to start out, nowadays, by making something bad and posting it, and then making something else that's bad and posting that, and over time getting better at their art or their writing or their voice work or their video editing, until they are notable and well worth recommending to others.
But the thing is, they would almost certainly never have gotten to that point without the early work. Because holding back and working on your stuff in private... well, it's not impossible to improve that way, but you don't get the feedback (and the psychological push) that seems to get public creators (fic writers, fan artists, Let's Play gamers, what have you) through the iteration cycles of improvement much, much faster than average. Just two years tends to make a tremendous difference in the art style of a webcomic artist.
So go forth, and do, and see what you come up with! You are more capable than you may think.
My favorite poem is Curiosity by Alastair Reid, from which I get my personal motto:
Only the curious have -- if they live -- a tale worth telling at all.
A reminder to always seek out new and interesting things, and not be content to go through life with only what is necessary or useful.
Bad art is a distraction; great art changes people.
Would you believe that I made a writing shirt with... a misquote of this line, because of course I didn't double-check the wording before I started adding the puffy paint? (sigh)
The quote comes from To Boldly Flee, the fourth crossover movie from the Channel Awesome group; I assume that Doug Walker wrote the line, though he doesn't play the character who spoke it, so I'm not sure who to attribute it to. But it stuck with me.
There are those who hold that it's meaningless to say that this or that art is good or bad, better or worse; that it's all subjective and there are no objective qualities by which to measure art. I hold to the opposite, that while no piece of art is worthless, some pieces of art are worth more, and this quote finally gave me a data point by which to understand the distinction.
Books, shows, films, and games that stick with you and have you thinking about them for years after you've read/watched/played them -- the ones that have you return to them, or have you convince friends to experience them, the ones that give you better ways to describe key principles or inspire you to improve your life -- those are the ones worth emulating.
Throwaway popcorn movies, read-once-and-forget romance novels, random clones trying to cash in on the Flappy Bird craze? Not so much. The romances that you keep returning to, and the cult classics still being enjoyed decades later, and the franchises that started out as clones but found their own niche, those have something in them that's worth preserving and passing on.
(To be fair, it could be argued that under the "changes people" definition, those pieces so bad that they inspire a ton of artists to improve upon them might count. Does a bevy of Fix Fics imply that a piece was Great Art? I can't say. And while any piece of art, however base or seemingly pointless, might change a life, I'd venture that Great Art more properly refers to those pieces that have changed many lives, so that the change is more a quality of the art than a quality of the reader/viewer/player whose particular life experiences made the piece hold some deeper meaning for them.)
In an Extra Credits episode (How to Explore Sensitive Themes Tastefully), they discuss a particular role-playing game that approaches the Holocaust; the introduction to that game includes these two lines:
We must teach them through the tools with which they are comfortable...
...but there are few bards now.
That second line felt like a gut-punch the first time I heard it, and it can still bring me to tears. My whole life, I have self-identified as a writer, a storyteller, a bard, as I grew to understand more terms for the concept -- and, thinking on the great need for such story-bringers in these trying times, I am reminded of how vital that first quote is: that lessons may be rejected in one form, but make it through to the heart in another, and it is the story-bringer who is most able to bridge that gap.
The film version of the Cirque du Soleil play Alegria has this piece of wisdom at the end:
...When you step into the light to do the show, play your role with everything you've got. Invest every tear... every laugh... everything beautiful and ugly from your lives. Do your show and live your lives with... humanity. Because whatever you do, it changes someone's life forever.
All the details of our lives, the world-shaking and the seemingly insignificant, they add up to a reality that can be teased apart and amplified into our stories. Knowing one grief empowers us to write about many griefs. Knowing one fear empowers us to write about many fears. And, of course, knowing love or joy or awe empowers us to write about those as well.
Finally, this quote:
You have to be willing to make the bad stuff so that you can become a person who can make the good stuff.
This is from me. It is one of the things I said during my first rambly blog-like video on YouTube, wherein I discussed the barrier of "it has to be good before I can show it off," and how much that gets in the way of actually making things. The many creators that I have followed over the years tend to start out, nowadays, by making something bad and posting it, and then making something else that's bad and posting that, and over time getting better at their art or their writing or their voice work or their video editing, until they are notable and well worth recommending to others.
But the thing is, they would almost certainly never have gotten to that point without the early work. Because holding back and working on your stuff in private... well, it's not impossible to improve that way, but you don't get the feedback (and the psychological push) that seems to get public creators (fic writers, fan artists, Let's Play gamers, what have you) through the iteration cycles of improvement much, much faster than average. Just two years tends to make a tremendous difference in the art style of a webcomic artist.
So go forth, and do, and see what you come up with! You are more capable than you may think.
Thoughts
Date: 2020-07-28 08:16 am (UTC)Nonsense, and the same is true of poetry. There are many technical aspects which can be accomplished well or poorly, and judged on objective grounds. The lines of perspective either are or art not parallel. The head is or is not in proportion to the body. And so on. Matters of personal taste and systemic aesthetics are different.
Then too, there are different reasons to make art and thus different criteria of success. Do you want to express yourself? Send a message to others? Fool with paint because it's fun? Record your nature observations? Experiment with the science of colors? Cover a stain on the wall? Make money? Those are just a few reasons why people have made art, and if it does what you want, it is successful. Whether someone else likes it is only relevant to a subset of goals.
>> I hold to the opposite, that while no piece of art is worthless, some pieces of art are worth more, and this quote finally gave me a data point by which to understand the distinction.<<
Well said.
>> ...but there are few bards now. <<
I am a bard, in the sense of being a storyteller, a poet, and sometime word-cracker. I haven't got my musical ability in this life, but oh well.
Yeah, not a lot of us left, but some. Plenty in SCA and Pagan circles.
>>You have to be willing to make the bad stuff so that you can become a person who can make the good stuff.<<
Maybe, maybe not. I always liked my writing, even though it got better over time. That is, I was always able to make some really good things, it's the average quality and the top quality that went up. Compare with drawing, where I was rarely happy with any of it and soon concluded that I hadn't got the skill for that in this life.
It's totally true of cooking, though. You can't make spectacular things in the kitchen if you're not willing to take some risks and face the occasional flops.
Then there's this beauty:
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
-- Scott Adams