Any kind of creative endeavor is an optimistic act on one level. You're acting, first of all, as if there will be people in the future to act as your audience. And also that they will have an interest in what you wound up saying, even though your time and theirs might be quite alien from each other.
In many ways it's gotten more difficult to nourish that kind of hope. Especially as culture has been overtaken by politics, and those politics have become stupider and more binary. Yet some people are still out there, making things.
And there is a way. You can focus, even if your focus needs to be private.
2 comments:
It's long been my understanding that writers write to please themselves first with the hope that their contemporaries will find the work worthwhile. Although I may well be wrong I can't imagine that Shakespeare, Cervantes or even Dickens to name just a few ever envisaged their plays and novels would be appreciated so far into the future. But maybe they did.
Of course with the way things are nowadays both politically and culturally even the greats are often considered politically incorrect. Seems silly, doesn't it - actually, as I'm sure you'll agree it's gone beyond silly to a scarier place.
Meanwhile, you can focus on pleasing yourself by continuing to record your observations honestly. That appears to be a good way of writing something memorable.
No, I'm pretty sure you're right that those guys and others wrote for themselves and secondarily the people of their own time. Although I also think it was more feasible back then to get a big reaction. Everything is so diffuse now, and the old art forms aren't as valued.
There's a question of how many people find, say, Shakespeare or Homer offensive as a rule. Not many, I think. The political and cultural rules of our society are being rewritten with the input of only a small group of people. In the short run it's working for them. Longer term I don't see how it's sustainable.
Well, it clears my head and sometimes amuses me. Maybe you as well.
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