Neil Greenberg gave us a lovely Joseph Campbell quote, which reminded me
of a Lawrence Durrell quote, which reminded me of...
Writers have often discussed their frustration with words as a medium.
As every songwriter eventually must deal with 'boy meets girl', most
writers seem to have to express (in words) the inferiority of words. It
may be a case of greener grasses -- the idealizing of some other medium
in which one has little skill. Thus the writer might say, "If only I
could paint!" and the painter might say, "If only I could write!"
Mark Defrates, who is primarily a jeweller, has this to say about words:
"The best we can hope for with languange is to circle
the meaning, continously pointing at the heart of that
which we wish to communicate, in the hope that the meaning
will somehow emerge."
I can only imagine that artists who try to convey specific meaning in
other mediums might express parallel sentiments. It's all about trying
to get what's in our brains out in some physical form, and I know very
few creative people who are completely satisfied with the results of
their work. Perhaps the artist never can completely convey an idea, but
merely point at it.
Peg.
-- M. S. AtKisson Department of Neuroscience Tufts University School of Medicine Boston, MA 02111 USA =================================================================== WEB SITE: http://pks.bu.edu/awbim POST MESSAGE: Send a message to artwithbraininmind-l@pks.bu.edu (UN)SUBSCRIBE: Send message to majordomo@pks.bu.edu with 'subscribe artwithbraininmind-l' in body to subscribe, or 'unsubscribe artwithbraininmind-l' in body to unsubscribe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Sep 06 2008 - 04:03:07 EDT