﻿ Unnatural Light

“But the Book was Better”

Sunday, 18. July 2021 23:04 | Author:

How many times have we heard that, and what does it really mean? Does it really mean “the movie was different from the book, and I liked the book version better”? Does it mean, “The film didn’t make me feel the same way the book did”?  Does it mean, “I am superior because I read the book and most people who saw the movie didn’t”? Or does it mean, “The movie wasn’t what I expected, (and I expected the book)”? Or is it some combination of these things?

Not long ago I found myself saying exactly those words in connection with Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I had just listened to the Audible audio book of Dracula (narrated by Alan Cuming, Tim Curry, Simon Vance and others). Then I followed it up by re-watching Francis’s Ford Coppola’s 1992 film version by the same name, which I had remembered as being quite good—and I remembered correctly.

The first question that should come up when making a statement such as the one in the title is: “better” according to what standard? If the answer is any of the ones presented in the first paragraph, it’s time to move on to another discussion because none of those, while they may be honest, are legitimate answers to the question of standards. In the case of Dracula, the book was better because of the level of detail and nuance available to the reader/listener in the book that was not available in the film.

There should be no question that the two versions would be different. They are presented in different media; therefore, they communicate in different ways. Description of locale, for instance, can take pages in a novel; the same information can be presented visually in a film instantly, thus allowing the film to be more compact than the novel. But again there is that issue of nuance; sometimes, directing the audience’s view to some tiny particular detail may be more difficult to manage in a film without being clumsy than it is when describing the scene in words. And if we were to consider a stage play version of the same material, it would be different yet, emphasizing certain things, diminishing others.

And the book does have the advantage of being able to be longer, not being meant to be taken in at a single sitting. For example, the audio version that I listened to is 15 hours and 28 minutes long; Coppola’s movie is 2 hours and 8 minutes. Just the idea of compressing hundreds of pages into such a short time frame is staggering. What is interesting about the film and novel in question is how closely the film follows the events in the novel, but is really telling a different story—no more or less interesting, just different.

And difference, I think, is the point. The book is not always better, but it is always different from the film, which is different from the stage play, which is different from the miniseries. What really matters is how well the medium fits the story being told. And each medium has its own impact, its own advantages and its own disadvantages, and we need to recognize that—particularly before selecting the medium for our next project.

As creators, we must select the correct medium to be the vehicle of our creation. Even though we could force the idea into a hostile medium, the best choice is to exploit the medium that the idea requires, even though that may not be our forte. The material selects the proper medium, and we must serve the material if we are to reach our full creative potential.

Category:Communication, Presentation | Comment (0)

More Thoughts on the Artist/Audience Relationship

Sunday, 20. June 2021 23:17 | Author:

The relationship between the artist and the audience is a complicated one. If the audience is really a collaborator in the work of art, then it behooves the artist to take that into account. But how do artists do that?  It much depends on the artist.

This relationship is perhaps better understood if we talk about the performing arts. At one end of the spectrum are producers who are interested primarily in income. These producers mount productions and make movies that are calculated to, above all else, make money. Thus we get the annual stage productions of A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker ballets. This is the same reason we get the 10th sequel of whatever film franchise pulls in the most consumer dollars. At the other end of the spectrum we get shoestring theatre companies who produce bleeding edge stage work that appeals to a very tiny audience. In dance, we get productions that appeal to a very limited clientele, and in film we get Jim Jarmusch.

This latter group of producers seems to not care about their audiences, but my intuition is that they care very much, but are not driven by greed. Rather they would prefer to exchange potential income for more artistic freedom. Please understand that this group is not superior to the first group; it’s just that they have different artistic goals. And members of each group can be successful—or not—on their own terms. Each can be said to have, in the words of Seth Godin, found their tribe.

There are also those producers who fall somewhere between the extremes, trying to produce works of artistic vision but, at the same time, maximize the audience and therefore the income. These are more or less successful depending on the approach of the producers and the production content.

The same sort of breakdown applies to other media. So no matter whether we are writers, photographers, painters, sculptors, or composers, we must make decisions about our goals in creating art, and also about the audience we would like to reach. As noted above, these are very much intertwined, perhaps inseparably. This is not intuitive; we more often come to creating art as an inner need, often not thinking about the audience until later, and then the question often generates confusion because it implies needs other than the urge to create. Making such decisions can, however, lead to far less frustration on our part when we discover our work appeals to a group different from the group we hoped, even though we were not consciously aware of that hope.

So we might want spend some time thinking about that potential audience we are creating for—if we haven’t already. One of the things that we are likely to find is that knowing who that audience is influences the work that we produce. If we are producing work aimed at the general consumer market, we are likely to produce a very different artifact than if we are making art for a very specific like-minded audience. Again, one choice is not necessarily better than the other, just different. However, if we are to really involve our audience in the collaborative art experience, and perhaps guide that collaboration, we would do well to know who our audience really is.

Category:Audience | Comment (0)

The Importance of Structure

Sunday, 6. June 2021 23:10 | Author:

Another blogger I know was recently having trouble with a post. The problem it seemed was that he could not get the material arranged so that it would make sense to his audience. He told me that he had tried four or five different approaches to the material, and nothing seemed to work. When I asked him how he was structuring his material, he said, “I just write it. I don’t worry about structure.” There, I thought, was his problem.

Often when art does not “work,” the reason is lack of structure. Structure, of course, is “the arrangement and relationship of the parts.” Structure comforts the audience and lets them know that the piece is organized, and they can understand it because the piece has a form which will lead them through the work, regardless of how complex it might be. Without structure our ideas, no matter how good, can be understood only with great difficulty.

Structure does not just happen; it has to be created along with the work of art. How a creator achieves structure depends on the type of work involved. Structure for narrative arts is usually found in the plot and/or character; those are the things that hold the whole together. Plot provides a support to undergird the whole, whether that is a short story or a novel.

In some rare cases what holds a narrative together is simply an idea or theme; works that rely only on theme often have a far more tenuous structure than those relying on plot or character. They may be far more difficult for an audience to follow. Still, any structure is better than no structure.

There are also non-narrative pieces such as essays or non-fiction. These also require some sort of structure. Often we find that the author will approach the material in a narrative form, presenting a story. There are, of course, forms of argument and logic which can be used to structure a non-narrative piece and can provide a very solid structure for the presentation of ideas.

All that can be said about written work can also be said about visual and plastic arts as well. Here, logic and argument do not apply. What does apply varies with the work. There is a theory that every piece of visual art should tell a story. In those cases, the sorts of structure used in narrative come into play, except far more subtly.

But what about those pieces of art that don’t tell a story or those called “meditations”? These non-narrative works, whether written, spoken, or visual offer thoughts on a subject or try to create a mood. Regardless, unless there is some underlying structure, something to hold everything together, then we are left only with disparate disconnected elements.  If the work is visual or plastic, often the structure can come from the principles of composition. These principles are not the only source of support, but they go a long way in providing cohesion.

But what If the meditations are in written form? Perhaps the idea can hold the piece together. But structure can also come from putting the meditation into a formal structure. For example, the author might put the meditation into a sonnet form and thereby provide the work with an external structural foundation. Or the author might frame the written piece using one of the forms of logic or argument so that the audience is guided from part to part and does not have to wander around among disconnected ideas.

No matter how grand or original or new our ideas might be, we must still provide a framework for our audience’s understanding. We must give them the structure to support our ideas, our images, our art. So, upon embarking on a new project, we would do well to first consider the structure that will support the work. If we develop solid underpinnings, our work will benefit.

Category:Aesthetics, Audience, Creativity | Comment (0)

Collaboration with the Audience

Sunday, 23. May 2021 22:56 | Author:

Neil Gaiman, in his book of essays and introductions, The View from the Cheap Seats, says that “no two readers will ever read the same book, because the reader builds the book in collaboration with the author.” In another place, he discusses other aspects of this collaboration, noting that “you bring yourself to a book, and children are capable of imbuing words with magic that not even the author knew was there.” He takes the idea further in citing an instance of someone remembering the excitement of a particular scene in a book, only to find, upon returning to the book, that the exciting part had been supplied by the reader. Gaiman goes on to say of the reader in a different circumstance: “then, perhaps, you will come back to it [a book] when you’re older, and you will find the book has changed because you have changed as well, and the book is wiser, or more foolish, because you are wiser or more foolish than you were as a child.”

This is not a new idea; it is one of the fundamental tenets of post-modernism. Gaiman, however, develops the concept further than most, boiling it down to the notion that each reader “builds the book in collaboration with the author,” and is likely to build a different book each time that reader comes to the book, even though the text remains the same.

You may have experienced Gaiman’s ideas yourself, finding that a book or poem or play that you had experienced was not the same as you remembered it. Or you may have had the experience of discussing a painting or performance with someone and wondering if they really had seen the same thing you did, so different were their impressions.

This notion of collaboration gives considerable power to the reader. The trick for the author is, of course, to create a narrative that will engage the imagination of the reader regardless of what the reader brings to the book.

The same is true for other arts as well. Whatever the art, audience members bring their preconceptions, feelings, and imagination to the interaction with the art work and thus build the meaning and impact of the work in collaboration with the artist. And sometimes, like the children Gaiman noted above, imbue the work “with magic that not even the author knew was there.”

If that is the case, how does the artist then create for her audience? She can make some assumptions about what response her work is likely to get, depending on what sorts of responses she has gotten previously. That, however, is no guarantee. She can, of course, manipulate her materials so that she has a fair idea of what reaction the work is likely to get. The fact of the matter is that she has no idea what the audience members are likely to bring to the collaboration.

So what we as artists to do? Exactly what our hypothetical artist above finally does: manipulate the materials so that we have a fair idea of the reaction the work is likely to get, and then put it out into the world without further expectations. The audience will bring what they bring, and while all the collaborations will be unique, there is likely to be enough similarity that we can judge our “success” or lack thereof. And if our audience finds things in our work that we didn’t know were there, so be it.

Perhaps the best that we can do is create work that simply satisfies ourselves, release it into the world, and then see what our audience makes of it.

Category:Audience, Creativity | Comment (0)

Reopening the Performing Arts

Sunday, 9. May 2021 22:49 | Author:

Earlier this week, I attended a combined band/choir concert at the college where I teach. It was their first performance in 17 months and was an outdoor event on a warm Texas early evening. The audience was invited to bring their own chairs and many did.

While the concert itself was interesting, the audience was equally interesting. The audience arranged itself into rough rows with people who came together sitting together. Between every group there was a space: without direction, the groups had socially distanced themselves. About half of the audience was masked.

The concert seemed to provide a concrete example of the way people are feeling in May 2021: anxious to get out and do things, but cautious because there’s still a pandemic going on. And, of course, there are those who have pretty much ignored the virus from the beginning in the mix as well.

One wonders what this bodes for performing arts in the future. Some movie theatres are already open. Broadway is scheduled to reopen in September. But will the audiences be comfortable with going back inside for their entertainment? If the concert I attended is any indication, audiences who voluntarily social distance outside will certainly want to be socially distanced inside. To accommodate that need/desire, some ticketing software companies have added a social-distancing feature to their software which automatically creates a “bubble” around sold seats. Then there is the question of masks: will an audience be comfortable wearing masks for the entire length of a performance? Will they be comfortable with no one in the audience wearing masks, or some wearing masks and some not?

With all that social distancing, at what point will performing arts, which struggle to make a profit under the best of circumstances, be able to support themselves? How will they manage to survive if social distancing limits them to 50%-75% of capacity? Or, if they operate at 100% capacity, will audience members be comfortable enough to purchase tickets?

In addition to the question of finances, there is the question of audience response. It is well-known that a tightly-seated audience will respond better than when audience members are separated by empty seats. If a significant portion of seats are empty due to social distancing, what will that do to the audience response? And what, in turn, will that do to the performance?

As difficult as performing arts have been during what we hope was the height of the pandemic, the return to “normal” may be just as difficult. Just as we had to climb the learning curve of virtual production and adapt our techniques to streaming, we will have to adapt again—to the “new normal,” which will not be, cannot be as things were before March 2020. Then as the situation hopefully improves we will have to adapt again, and again, and again.

And we will. The world has seen pandemics before, and the performing arts have survived. And so will they this time. However, I suspect, they will be changed. Indeed, some performing arts companies have already announce permanent changes based on things learned during the pandemic. So we may never go back to “the way things were before.” And that, once we figure it out, will be just fine.

Category:Audience, Theatre | Comment (0)

How Do You Measure Success?

Sunday, 25. April 2021 23:58 | Author:

Sometimes when I tell people that I teach theatre, they will ask, “Have you taught anybody famous?” as though that were the ultimate measure of success for a theatre professor. I suppose the same gauge could be used for any field, but I suspect that it is used more for the arts, specifically the performing arts. Given that criterion for success, I would imagine that there are a number of quite successful arts instructors out there who would suddenly be labeled “unsuccessful.” Success in teaching in the arts is not measured by famous ex-students; that’s a marketing technique used by for-profit arts schools.

But that question raises other questions, the chief one of which is: how do we measure success in the arts?

If you are a producer is it a whole run of full houses? A run of three-quarter full houses? Breaking even financially? Making a profit? Winning an award? Making the audience laugh or cry? Bringing attention to a political or humanitarian situation? If you are a director, do you measure your success the same way a producer does or is there another way? And if you are an actor, is it the same measure? Or is it the response of an audience?

If you are a painter or a photographer, is success getting into this or that show? Is it winning an award? Is it having x number of collectors? Is it having individual pieces of your work featured on the cover of magazines? Is it having your work accessioned by this or that museum? Is it bringing in y number of dollars with your work? Is it making work that moves people? Is it making work that records world events or that comments on them?

If you are a writer, does success come with publishing your first book? Does it come with publishing your 50th book? Does it come with writing a “best-seller?”  Does it come with being published in this or that journal? Does it come with begin reviewed by the New York Times? Does it come with winning an award? Does it come with acquiring a specific number of readers? Does it come with being able to support yourself with your writing?

If you are a musician, is success measured by being able to play or sing a certain piece of music? Is it making and distributing recordings of your work? Is it making money from your work? Is it public recognition of your work? Is it performing before huge audiences? Is it getting a gold or platinum record? Is it being able to play multiple instruments? Is it winning an award for your work?

Other artists have similar problems in determining what makes for success. The quick and easy answer is that if we can make a living doing our art, we are successful. The difficulty is that we all know artists who do that who do not consider themselves successful because they have not created their masterpiece or accomplished this or that goal. At the same time we all know artists who do consider themselves quite successful even though they have to have a day job to survive financially. Then there are the artists who don’t trouble themselves with the question of success at all; they just keep making art. The obvious conclusion is that—at least in the arts—we all measure success differently. It turns out that it is a very personal thing that is tied to our artistic goals. And it’s likely to be different for each individual.

Category:Uncategorized | Comment (0)

Make the Leap

Sunday, 11. April 2021 21:16 | Author:

Sooner or later all of us arrive at a metaphorical cliff in our creative lives. We are effectively blocked from going forward—unless we make a leap. What that means exactly is up for discussion. Google says that “to make a leap means to make a choice decision or commitment without any logical reason to do so. To make a leap can also mean to jump and spring forward with force or energy. To make a leap can also mean to commit to a change in the way that you think or in what you do.” Whether or not such a move has a logical reason, it decidedly involves the idea that forward progress requires a commitment and change in the way we think or act that is somewhat out of the ordinary.

Such a move necessarily involves risk of some sort. Otherwise, it’s just another step forward or a short jump “over an obstacle.” “Making a leap” definitely involves the possibility of failure. It is not like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff where there is no possibility of getting to the other side. It is more like this image, where there is the possibility of success but the danger of failure as well.

And what does failure mean in this context? It means that, like Wile E. Coyote after the fall, we have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and climb back to our place on the heights, perhaps learning something along the way. Although it may feel like it at the time, it is not the worst thing that can happen. We may learn about new tools, new techniques, new approaches as we climb back to, not necessarily where we were, but to hopefully some higher place in terms of creativity.  So while taking the leap and failing can be considered a setback, it can also be considered an opportunity.

But what if we succeed in making the leap? Then we can move on to new levels of creativity. Our work can take different directions and make advances, perhaps that we had not foreseen. The momentum of our leap can carry us forward to creative successes we had not imagined. And we can continue forward until we reach the next metaphorical cliff. But, having made one leap successfully, we will be mentally better equipped to make that leap as well, thus ensuring our continued creative evolution.

Possibly the worst thing we can do is to stop on the cliff and decide not to take the risk of making the leap. Then, not only are we blocked from moving forward, but we are, for all practical considerations, stuck on the edge. We may continue to produce the same sort of art that we have produced before, or we may become depressed and despondent because we feel that we cannot move forward. In that case, it is likely that our work will suffer, that we will produce less creatively or that we will cease to produce at all.

So—if we are interested in moving forward with our art—there is really no choice. We have to acknowledge the risk, then make the leap. It is the only way we will be able to move forward creatively. It’s a risk well worth taking.

Category:Creativity, Productivity | Comment (0)

Move at Your Own Speed

Sunday, 28. March 2021 22:29 | Author:

Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about the difficulty of making changes in one’s life. “The thing is,” she said, “you have to move at your own speed.” So very true, and that same advice applies to art as well. We all get caught up in believing that we have to crank out piece after piece because the Internet expects it. We “need to have” x number of postings to whichever platform(s) we are on every day/week/month to remain relevant. And if the quality suffers, well, that’s just the way things are.

Except that’s not true. If the quality suffers, it’s likely that no matter how many pieces we upload, we will lose viewers. We need to move at our own pace, whatever that pace is. It doesn’t matter if we produce three novels or thirty, so long as we are satisfied that they are the highest quality that we can produce at the time. Each artist has their own rhythm. Each artist has their own workflow. And it is the rhythm and the workflow that determine the frequency of quality output of each artist.

And that frequency may be at odds with the “demands of the Internet.” And if it is, that’s okay. I follow some people who post multiple times per day, some who post daily, some who post weekly, some who post monthly, and some who post whenever they have something to say or show, and I find that I don’t appreciate one more than the other. In fact, I would much rather see the quality work of those who post infrequently than mediocre work of some who post daily.

After all, the “demands of the Internet” are nothing more than marketing ideas. Admittedly, we have to market our art, but we don’t have to follow marketing ideas slavishly. Indeed, there are a number of artists who completely ignore Internet marketing advice who do quite well. The question is: are we trying to develop a large social media following or trying to market our art. Those two are not necessarily the same thing, regardless of what social media marketers say. And we need to remember that being active regularly on social media does not necessarily mean posting our work; it can also mean commenting on the work of others or the political situation or any number of other things that keep our names before our followers.

So, perhaps instead of feeling pressured to produce at a rate determined by outside forces, we might take note of our frequency of quality output and then determine the frequency of our public posting of work based on that.

That way we can indeed work at our own speed, and be far more comfortable in producing work of quality instead of feeling pushed and prodded by an external system. Additionally, we can remind ourselves that our speed does not have to match anyone else’s.  Maybe then we can produce and market our best work, saving less successful pieces for reworking and revising until they too meet our personal standard of quality.

Category:Productivity, Social Media | Comment (0)

It’s the Making that Matters

Sunday, 14. March 2021 21:58 | Author:

In his book Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad, Austin Kleon describes his two-year-old son’s approach to drawing as a model for the artist because it displayed “a kind of lightness and detachment” from results: “he cared not one bit about the actual finished drawing (the noun)—all his energy was focused on drawing (the verb). When he’d made the drawing, I could erase it, toss it in the recycling bin, or hang it on the wall. He really didn’t care.”

A similar approach is exemplified in an episode of the Amazon Prime television series I Love Dick. Dick is an enigmatic icon-cowboy-sculptor who sponsors fellowships for artists and scholars in Marfa, Texas. In this particular episode, an intoxicated Dick discovers that his brick sculpture has been broken into three pieces. Instead of exploding with anger the way Paula the curator did, he instead takes a moment, considers, and arranges the three pieces into a new configuration. Smiling with satisfaction, he looks at his new creation and then changes the date on the label. (Dick does not name his pieces.)

In both cases it’s the making that matters. In the section cited above, Kleon goes on to say that “art and the artist both suffer most when the artist gets too heavy, too focused on results.” He continues with example of Kurt Vonnegut who advocated making art and then destroying it in order to keep the artist’s approach to the work light and detached. Then, of course, there is the story of the art professor who, in every beginning ceramics class, would have students destroy their first finished pieces to drive home the point that it was not the product that mattered.

Both film and stage directors will sometimes spend months shaping and molding performances to create the best work that they can, but then, instead of dwelling on the finished product, they move on to the next project. Indeed, the only time directors revisit already-done work is when they want to better what they’ve already done. One example of this phenomenon is Francis Ford Coppola and his revisions of The Godfather, Part III, Apocalypse Now, and The Cotton Club. Again, it’s the making that matters.

In the most extreme case, some artists want some, if not all, of their work destroyed. This includes Franz Kafka, John Baldessari, Claude Monet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Aubrey Beardsley, and Francis Bacon. In these cases, nothing but the making mattered; the product mattered not at all.

Certainly, I am not suggesting that we take things to the extreme. What I am suggesting is that we move our focus from the product to the making of any project that we might be attempting. By doing so, we can maintain a healthy detachment from the results and concentrate on those things that are necessary to craft that project.

Concentrating on the making rather than the result changes the way that we think about the project. It frees us to really dig in and focus on the details of the project; it allows us to exploit the full extent of our creativity rather than just focusing on the outcome. It allows us to lose ourselves in the project and do our best work. It’s the making that matters.

Category:Creativity | Comment (0)

Hang on to your Dream

Sunday, 28. February 2021 21:08 | Author:

We all start out with dreams. Some are grand; others more humble. But we all have them. We want to accomplish; we want to become famous; we want to live a certain lifestyle; we want to do this or that with our lives; we want to discover things; we want to be recognized; we want to publish. Then, as we go through life our dreams change due to circumstances or choices that we make. Sometimes they are worn away completely. Some people call that “growing up.” Others say it’s “just being practical.” Still others say it’s “coming to terms with reality.”

Whatever we call it, it’s not a good place to be. We, as humans need something to look forward to, to aim for. The “First Lady of American Cinema,” Lillian Gish has said that “a happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning.”  We need that yearning for the dream, the goal, in order to keep going. Consider the writers who have received rejection after rejection, only to have those books finally published and become best-sellers.

And our dream really doesn’t have to be “practical.” How practical is it to endure over a hundred rejections of a book and still keep trying? It probably isn’t, but a number of authors have done that. Dreams may not even have to be realistic. But they do need to be. We are pretty well lost without something to aim for, something to hope for. The absence of dreams causes some people to become depressed and despondent, and often they don’t realize that having voluntarily or involuntarily given up their dreams is the cause.

But what if you do realize that that has happened, that your dreams have disappeared. If they have disappeared because you have achieved them, rejoice! If there is some other reason they are no longer guiding you forward, you might want to discover what happened. In either case, you will probably want to think about what else you might want. Even though you might have achieved your initial dream, you may find that life without something to strive for is a bit empty. And it doesn’t have to be something grandiose. It could be something quite simple. What is important is that it is something that you do not have and would like to. On the other hand, dreaming big should not be frowned upon; grand dreams can lead to grand accomplishments.

And what if it’s impractical or unrealistic? So what? It certainly doesn’t’ need to be either of those things to be functional in the sense of giving you direction and meaning and stimulating your creativity. No matter how far out of reach a dream seems to be, it can be motivating and inspiring. And that’s what most of us need to keep going—something to aim for.

So if you’ve lost your dream, look around for something that you might turn into a new one. If you still have your dream, hang on to it!

Category:Creativity | Comments (1)