This is not a story

This!!!

Ursula LeGuin, Says what I've always believed... all art is dangerous, has fangs and carries a gun. When you encounter it, your reality changes, and you cannot go back. Well, you can, just get a large hammer and bang yourself in the head with it until you feel better...

"art �" it unsettles us awake, disrupts our deadening routines, enlarges our reservoir of hope by enlarging our perspective, our grasp of truth, our capacity for beauty.

The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in �" or out �" and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out."

Ursula K. Le Guin on Art, Storytelling, and the Power of Language to Transform and Redeem �" The Marginalian

And Poetry most of all

Reviews

[Lorry]

Vol? Never mind all that, show me where the like button is or else it means none of us really matter, not without the kudos of people who only like these things in the hope you'll like whatever make baliece is really their life.
And I agree with the Blake mention too. He cleared my mind first time without even trying. It was a hardback of something incredibly thick that bounced off my head clearing my vision after my ex tripped up over it and lobbed it at my head! 😊
And I unlearn every day now too.
Only today I had breakfast when I was hungry and felt like eating breakfast, not when the clock told me too.
I unlearn loads. Unfortunately, since the Blake bounce, as I call it, I have forgotten what why and who.
Tonight I think I'll go to the library for a fish n chip dinner! And yes I know. It seems to be a strange place to serve fish and chips, but if you ask for them, they will say something like "Sir, this is a library. Now here's where the secret code comes in. Once they reply in a Whisper" Sir, this is a library", just say sorry and then Whisper fish n chips please instead! 😊
Hey, why can't I open the gate? Lemme in! What do you mean I'm out of touch? 😊

[Vol]

Lorry,
Holy S**t! It is way to early to delve so deep into the fog inside my windows... as it happens this morning, outside them, too. Therre is no "Chariot of fire" to bring me, and it cannot be near as comfortable as the Ford in the driveway. Oh, hell... what was I talking about? I have no idea, but it sounded important at the time. As I have mentioned before, my short-term memory took a disappeared way back in the sixties... I think it's hiding with my stash in that blue cowboy boot under Debby's bed...
Vol

[John Sullivan]

The echo chamber is real. We live in isolation, cut off from our fellow man. We don't expose ourselves to other ideas. Cheers to art, and this non-story!

[Ookpik]

Haha! Ken's comment below got me - love Vonnegut and I don't disagree on the subject of semicolons.

I like LeGuin too, lovely quote, though I have to admit I might've skipped that week of classes - off drinking, maybe, trying to get laid or inadvertently pissing someone off that I didn't necessarily mean to.

Always loved Blake though, his art more so than his writing - my Father's paintings always felt inspired by what Blake had been doing, and I've long admired the notion that he ground and mixed the colors himself - the old way, where an understanding of the tools informs an understanding of the art.

As for your passage, I remember Flannery O'Connor had a similar saying, and I think she'd gotten it from Aquinas - something about the nature of art concerning truth. Though I hadn't been skipping those classes, I'd certainly been drinking and I admit the memory's a bit fuzzy.

Anyways, pleasant read here - be nice to see somewhat of a forum sprout up. Hehe

Cheers,

-Ook

[Vol]

Ook
Real art functions the same as a beautiful jewel... its beauty stands without any support, the artist is irrelevant, the times and context are irrelevant... nothing matters except the observer who must expend something of their thought and energy to deal with it.
Vol

[Ookpik]

Hmmm is that so? Hadn't realized. :)

Appreciate the clarification.

-Ook

[Vol]

Ook,
Aw, man, I was not trying to clarify, just give my point of view...
Vol

[Ookpik]

It's a good one Vol - in the vein of New Criticism, post-Goethe. :)

I've been suffering from a recent malaise called: once bitten twice shy. Apologies if I seem defensive (one of the common symptoms).

Think nothing of it Vol. :) Well met

-Ook

[Vol]

No sweat... F**k, it's only poetry... the third most important thing in the universe...

[Ookpik]

Word have weight though eh? and people can be sensitive - ask Poe, I have a feeling his last words might've sounded a lot like the ones you've just wrote.

None the less man, it's minor - apologies there, when reading each other in text there can be a lack of tonality and I'd mistaken what you were trying to share. LOL

Glad everyone's still friendly

[Vol]

Ook,
Please understand, blunt speaking does not have to be emotional speaking, just a conservation of words... no rancor here, of course better said face to face with all the necessary clues and body language so no offence is given or taken... Sorry if I offended you.
Vol

[Ookpik]

I hear you, really, not offended, and I hope the same. :)

The Poe comment was intended to lighten the mood (my bad lol). Nobody's at risk of anything, it's all good.

Minor, brother - just a poetry site. :)

lol let's not lose any sleep eh?

[Vol]

I'm cool... you cool. We all cool!

[Ookpik]

We all cool!

[Ken Simm.]

Well just a couple of my favourite quotes which might or might not help.
“Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... now you tell me what you know.”
― Groucho Marx
“Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut,

[Vol]

Ken,
If art does not fundamentally change you, it isn't art. aAnd of all art, poetry is the easiest and most meaningful at the same time...
Vol

[Ken Simm.]

Ars longa Vita Brevis.
I would tend to disagree about poetry being always the most accessable and that is talking as a visual artist.

[Vol]

Ken,
Interesting... Is any one genre more accessible than the others? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Vol

[Ken Simm.]

For an artist and it took me a long time to learn this the definition is finding the best medium for what you want to say in the way you want to say it. Nothing to do with talent or skill or what you do best. It is what puts over the information in the best, most honest and most beautiful way. What the painter R.B. Kitaj called an artists Plural Energies. Of cours to pecieve these you have to develop a full sense of sensory perception. Which is impossible. You can only aim for it.
In other words what you want to say depends on the medium.

[Ken Simm.]

Pardon my bad spilling.

[Vol]

Hahahaha! "The medium is the message?"