Artistry

During a conversation I had with a “…burn, burn, burn…” reader, I was struck with something I hadn’t thought about when it came to my writing. We had been talking about Kerouac, The Beatles, and various other artists with different mediums. He embedded the thought that an artist, any artist, has a message deep within them, a vision of the world that the rest of humanity hasn’t seen quite the way they have — and they’ve got to get it out.

It took over a month for me to really think about that concept, and what it meant to my art. I started with my inspiration, Jack Kerouac. I was watching a fascinating in-class recording from New York University discussing various works of 20th Century literature, and one of the pieces the professor had her class read was On the Road, by Kerouac. She went into detail about how the Beat Generation was trying to tell a story differently. They were so constricted by the English language, they felt their new voice needed a reinvented language. This was evident in their literary voice, which has a definitive ebb and flow, and a previously unknown pace and energy behind it. Kerouac particularly disregarded the generally accepted rules, such as punctuation, run-on sentences, and diction. He would even create words when he couldn’t find the right one in his vocabulary, or combine words that hadn’t been butted together. Unfortunately, according to the professor, the Beats felt defeated in that they could not fully attain their vision of a new language.

I had another flash of understanding when I thought of my favorite paintings, by Vincent van Gogh. Mr. van Gogh painted it in 1889, one hundred years before I was born, from his memories of what he saw when he looked out the window of an insane asylum. He committed himself to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole sanatorium in Saint-Rémy, outside Arles, France. He was given two rooms, the usual room separated from the other patients, and another devoted adjacent room he used as his studio during his stay. He would stare through the barred windows at night, through the olives and the reeds, and see the church bell towers and little cottages of Saint-Rémy, and Arles in the distance. Both were small, sad little towns, shrouded in fog, but van Gogh saw something different. He went into his makeshift studio, and painted what many consider his magnum opus, “The Starry Night”.

I had many other examples flow through my mind, and I shared them with Austin in the dark one night before bed. We shared that our own art can greatly benefit from inspiration and determination. Austin’s paintings and drawings are fantastic, inspired, and something I’ve never seen before. It’s all perspective, it’s all imagination, and each has their own. I’m inspired by adventures, seeing the water, seeing the land, seeing what nature has made and what man has made. I haven’t exactly found my message, found what I need to get out, but I can see the beauty of a different perspective. I can also relate to Kerouac’s frustration with not having the right words, and the tweaking of the language to get that message out. I can say that I have felt more inspiration with more frequency, and I feel I’m getting closer to understanding that message.