DFW

"The way I am as a writer comes very much out of what, what I sort of want as a reader."

FFC

I like this article - and find it very inspirational as I always do when listen or read things Coppola says or see his movies of course or drink his wine.  I think he's a wonderful and true artist and I've always felt that he must have been in order to have a seemingly well-adjusted and artistically "interesting" (for lack of a better word) daughter.

Some thoughts having read this.  I was reminded of some other things that I've read when FFC was speaking about how art is not something that's supposed to make you money.  Thinking about the notion that for a long period of human history an artist's audience was really "just" his local community.  And how we lost something, maybe in the 60's and 70's when art became more and more of a global commodity.  How you never really could achieve fame without the widest possible audience.  In the case of film - the rise of the blockbuster...and worth being measured by global box office...but that misses the larger point and is just going to devolve into a pointless rant about commercialism...the larger point is more that art like everything according to Dave Wixted is LOCAL.  And so FFC speaks about maybe not looking to your art as a source of wealth or a career but more as something you do because you HAVE to in a deeper more meaningful way.  And it thus becomes more of who you are.  And so what is 'your' community in the digital age?  Well I'm thinking that we may be coming out of a short-lived age of global commercial art and a return via the internet and the extraordinary leaps that have been made in digital photography to a more local artistic experience.  I'm writing this blog here for me and the small group of people who I have included in my community of readers.  I find it interesting that after a now extended period of cultural assimilation of the Facebook experience that maybe we're starting to see the real impact and it's a surprising one.  Because ultimately, after a shake-out period, we all end up being who we are, for all intents and purposes, in reality on Facebook too.  And in that way, but tweaked slightly, I think the internet will eventually be a gathering place, for each of us in our own way, of communities specifically organized around the things that make us all who we really are--the things that we self-identify as "really us."  And in those communities and FOR those communities we all have the opportunity, as the spirit moves us, to make our art motivated by the purest of intentions (the art itself) and for the most receptive and RELEVANT audience (people who share our world view and perspective on the human condition.)

FFC's process is fascinating too for itself seeming emphasis on organization via a very tactile set or pursuits.  Reading writing and 'developing' his stories by underlining and hi-lighting, cutting out pages and pasting into a binder which is then itself hi-lighted and annotated.  It's a delicious, organic process that I respond to and one that suggests a certain emphasis on giving physical manifestation to the thought process thereby locating it outside the brain and maybe giving it more life in a way and putting it into a routine where it can be subject to OTHER artistic processes and "aired out" in that way.

And for the rise of these tools that we have that make it so easy to make art.  You can take a modern camera, digital of course and loaded with filters and effects that were previously only achieved in the processing/developing and editing stages now just built in at the "point of purchase"--at the very moment you're actually taking the picture.  Now the old-guard purist would say "that's not how it's supposed to be done" and "something is lost" but I think something is gained--namely freedom.  The ease connects you more to the ART of it all because you don't have to worry about anything else.  Why shouldn't it be that way?  And there's an 'argument' of sorts that it maybe makes 'artists' out of people who wouldn't otherwise be but (a) what's wrong with that? and (b) I think, as with all things, the truth will come out anyway.  The people that are real photographic artists will rise to the top anyway.  And the gadgets and toys are just that to the rest of them.  We've all seen people NOT USE the amazing tools they have.  How many people have dusty video cameras?  Even the lamest 21st century video camera is a fucking MARVEL in the context of what has been possible in the short history of technological image capturing--instantaneous, hi-quality image reproduction and no one uses it.  Well, only the people who actually make something out of it.

And one is reminded finally of Jack White's music and his comments in It Might Get Loud about how much time can be spent and wasted on getting everything 'just right' when usually you're 99% of the way there from the get go and you should just move on.  Foo Fighters new record as the prime example.  Recorded in a garage because it sounded better that way.