art

As a teenager I used to frequent the Dallas Art Museum. One particular exhibit was a by the sculptor David Smith whose name I had long forgotten until I looked it up a few weeks ago. I was able to look it up because I remember the title of the work that made the greatest impression on me: “Star Cage.”  Welded steel rods captured small metal clusters representing the constellations of the night sky. The sculpture balanced on a pedestal resembling a traffic cone (which is probably what it was supposed to represent, given the sculptor’s engineering background).  “I could have done that,” was my first thought. Immediately followed by, “Yes, but could you have thought of it?”

All the arts begin with thinking. Dorothy Sayers, in The Mind of the Maker, calls this the Idea: that germ of an impression or image that darts into your mind. Often it darts right out again, but sometimes it sticks and gathers possibility dust until you think, I could do something with that. This is the artistic imagination: to “do something” with the found objects in your world. But you don’t have to be a capital-A Artist to think this way. I trained myself to think this way while becoming a writer, because writers always need material. Fortunately, material is lying all around you—much more than you can use, once you’ve taught yourself to notice it.

(Pssst—that’s what Wordsmith, Part Three, is all about.)

Beginning writers, animators, cartoonists, songwriters, etc. typically exhibit two weaknesses that turn out to be the same. One, their art is derivative. Two, they try to be original.

The derivative part is not illegitimate, since all art is imitation (didn’t Aristotle say that?). We all tend to copy each other, and if we didn’t our work might be so far out there it couldn’t find an audience. But trying to be original usually results in ignoring what’s right under your nose in order to construct some sort of new reality . . . which ends up becoming a copy of somebody else’s new reality, like . . .

• A boy with a mysterious mark and profound destiny.
• A girl with warrior instincts competing in a contest to the death.
• A mortal and a supernatural being who fall in love.

High-concept plots that require intense world-building are beyond the reach of most of us, and by striving for a new world you will most like fall into the patterns of those who Did It First. The path to true originality is learning taking notice of yourself and what’s around you. Because, even though all humans share a tremendous amount of common experiences and emotions—otherwise we wouldn’t be able to communicate at all—each of us also possesses a unique perspective that’s at a slightly different angle from anyone else.

Don’t start from the perspective of your favorite author or film director. Start from you.

What makes the poetry of Nadim Shamma-Sourgen so striking is not that he’s one of the youngest writers, at four years old, to ever sign a book deal. It’s that because he’s four years old he has no other perspective than his own from which to notice things. And he notices—that’s pretty unusual, even for a 40-year-old. Life seems to pour past us and through us too quickly for us to pause and observe. Details, both small and significant, make so many demands on our time there’s none left for paying attention. You have to make the time: for example, deliberately set aside half an hour to write an observation in your journal or tuck a notebook in your pocket for quick takes.

Nadim can’t write yet. When he has a thought, or a poem sprouts in his head, he dictates it to his mother. She probably helps him to shape his poetry, but he’s the one with eyes to see and a rapidly-developing brain to make connections in his little world. We all have our little worlds and our peculiar connections that, in the rush of daily events, don’t seem all that special. But somewhere in their worlds David Smith conceived of trapping stars in a steel-rod cage,* and Nadim Shamma-Sourgen saw home as a place where you don’t have to be brave.

What do you see in your world?

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*Here’s more about Star Cage from the collection catalog.