What Makes Good Art

Disclaimer: this posting is long for several reasons.
1) because it answers a question you did not ask and may never care to ask;
2) because it is way too long for the attention span of a web surfer; and
3) because I have not gotten around to making the color/font scheme less taxing on the eyes, all of which are very inconsiderate to you, the maybe reader.

If you'd like, you can scroll down to the previous posting where there are more pictures and less words. There are even pictures of a puppy!


So what is good art? Good art is so good, you don’t want to leave it. You resist letting it go, maybe because it expresses a piece of you that you can never express yourself, and you feel incomplete without it. What book do you read over and over? What movie have you watched so many fucking times you know it by heart? I know there are songs. Maybe even paintings, or photographs. Polaroids you took? Even if it was just a snapshot at some event with some people, your best friend or random acquaintances, the moment you put it down on paper, on some medium, recording it, it becomes art. So if there is a picture in your shoebox of photos that you can never throw away, one that you pull out when you are nostalgic or lonely and want to remember or make up memories, that is art that is good to you. And it is good because you hate to part with it. You don’t want it to end.

I had three errands to run today. Get my hair cut, pick up a library book that I had reserved, return a video that someone else had rented but let me borrow, and buy water and bananas. Ok, that’s more than three but I have a point, focus. My wife suggested I go to the beauty school place where they dress hip, are all twenty something with tight asses and stylish looks, they wash your hair with cherry almond vanilla someshit, and they massage your head. Fuck that. My barber is an artist. He learned to cut hair in the Soviet Army, has cut so many men’s hair that he has to watch movies while he does it otherwise the boredom might cause him to stab himself in the neck with his scissors. He is often grumpy, doesn’t bullshit me and would call my bullshit if I let him smell it, and I am pretty sure he would stab me in my own neck if he knew I was telling you that his Turkmenistani wife, whose eyes are art that you would try to avoid if you are smart because they could talk you into just about anything and you are sure he is watching you through some billiards combination of the three walls of mirrors, and he learned to cut hair in the Soviet Army. Aside from all of that priceless context, he cuts my hair with the attention of someone who owns his business, and that’s how he does business. I will not part from art like that. Even if I move to the suburbs and water my grass so I can mow it, I will drive to his shop every three weeks, cause any ritzy salon or national chain, with supermodels or rotating clock punchers, would leave me feeling empty with the taste of styrofoam. I can massage my own head, just give me the truth before I get on with my errands. I am taking a really good book back to the library.

The drive to the library was quiet. This book and I had spent the last month or so, a very confusing month, having a very deep and important conversation. The book (Soul of Nowhere by Craig Childs) shared the passenger seat with the borrowed DVD. The car ride was quiet like one taking an old friend or flame to the airport, one who is leaving with no return ticket purchased. I felt the same way the night before, when I finished it. It was late and I just couldn’t go to bed. I stayed up, lingering, like I would have with that old friend or flame, saying nothing important, but just not wanting the night to end because I knew the next day's memory would be distorted and less fresh, when I could not quite taste the imagery of the book, my very thoughts no longer flowing in the rhythm of the book’s prose. And when I dropped this book in the drop-box, it was a different feeling than other book returns. It was not goodbye, or even farewell, it was good seeing you, call me, we must visit again soon, I’ll be thinking about you, and then one day when I have forgotten what you are like, but remember you were great, I will look you up again.

On to Blockbuster to return I (heart) Huckabees. Talk about a movie I did not want to say goodbye to. Watched the movie. Loved it. Laughed out loud, which for me is the equivalent of a normal person peeing there pants. Watched it again, this time with the director's and two of the main actors’ running commentaries. Loved it more. Watched it again, this time with just the director’s running commentary. If there had been a special feature with the janitor telling me who had the messiest trailer, I would have watched that next. I even wanted to watch it again so I could point out to myself all of the inside baseball that the actors and directors had showed me. “It starts and ends out of focus, giving a blurry symbol of the big picture perspective. There is red in that scene because there are existential happenings, and that is intentional, trust me. Lilly Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman are improvising here and they are brilliant.” But instead, before falling asleep in my clothes, I decided that I wanted to be a screenwriter or director and at the same time resolved that I could never be a screenwriter or director because if I had something to say, it would be a futile attempt at what they had already said perfectly, not to mention that they used up every good technique, line, and scene that could ever exist. That’s how I felt when I started reading the previously mentioned book. “I want to be a writer, but this guy already took every good word, simile, and metaphor out there. The rest will only be crap.” But my point is that I had trouble turning that DVD off, because I knew I did not exist completely without it.

Later tonight, I went to a screening of a new Sundance Channel documentary series called Iconoclasts, in which one Iconoclast (Samuel L. Jackson) hangs out with and chats up another from a different field (Bill Russell). The thing I got from both of these guys is that they had no insecurity about who they were (truth) and about being who they were. No regard for outside opinions of themselves. Granted, they had reached a level of success where they could afford to, but I really believe that their confidence in what is true to them and maintaining integrity to it was what took them to such heights. I want to watch it again because I cannot remember all of the wisdom they just poured in my lap. Sure, I can access it because it is true, but I want to articulate in my mind like they did. That’s why I want to watch it again with a pen and paper and capture it, so I can call them up sometime when I have forgotten the sound of their laughter.

After that, I went back to Blockbuster and watched High Fidelity. I know and knew I should have seen this movie a long time ago, and again, it was obviously good art to me because I watched it, then watched every extra feature, becoming irritated when I had to select each feature individually. “Just play them all, I’m not going anywhere!” I went through the same emotions again. “I want to write a novel, write a screenplay, direct a film, but I can’t because these guys took all the water, all the soil, and all the sunshine, and what kind of art can I produce stirring a coffee cup full of gravel, sitting in the spare closet with a burnt out lightbulb anyway.”

It is that attitude that stops many would-be artists, I think. “I have come to know what I think good art is, and I am not capable of that. My art would be so flawed, so cliché ridden and utterly imperfect that it would be painful to put my name on it.” One writer I met warned me of this. “Don’t not submit something because it isn’t perfect.” That is how we learn anything, trial and error. There is just something so risky about sharing one's art, be it drawn or written, a sketch or a poem, especially a poem, because what you are really sharing is yourself, your version of the truth. And we all know how open that leads us to disagreement, read criticism. It opens the door to the stairs of vulnerability and knee-jerk defensiveness. “Who asked you anyway you fucking critic. Create something yourself you fucking bastard.” And because art is sharing of the truth of one’s self, if you critique someones art, you are critiquing them, and noone likes being punched in the nose, especially when punching back won’t make your nose feel any better. All you can do is say “fuck ‘em,” and thank the God of words for words like fuck.

But the point is, or was, that I wanted to express what good art is to me. Good art is like good people: you don’t want them to leave, you linger as you say goodbye, and you look them up when you realize you have forgotten them. And if it is very good art, you might even gain the courage to go make your own damn art, regardless of how imperfect it may be.