My Weird Relationship With Big Works of Art

First of all, this article will be written as a prelude to my very next one, which will a kind of personal interpretation of The Caretaker's Everywhere at the End of Time. I say personal, and I might as well add vague, because I don't know anything about music, but having made memory a recurring theme in my writing, I had a bunch of random thoughts coming to me as I listened to the album, and since some of the ideas I had about it were tied in with its extensive length, as well as the inclination that it is more or less meant to be experienced in one go, I figured I might as well write this article, which I've been meaning to write for a while now.

I believe a work of art should be brief. Whenever I come across a long, extensive work of art I always have a kind of hesitation towards it, since as a general rule I believe it will inevitably contain bits that simply should have been cut. If you have two dinner scenes, shouldn't they be merged together? If you have two boat rides, shouldn't one be skipped? It's all a matter of revealing only what's really necessary, thus leaving a lot of the background stuff as subliminal or even headcanon. Because art isn't only about what is actually there, it's also about what was intentionally left out. I make that a general rule in my writing, but then again, a whole lot of my favorite works of art are actually quite colossal. So I'm oddly trapped because my general rule of thumb doesn't often match my actual preferences. The way I rationally think art should be stands at odds with some of the works I consider to my personal favorites, as well as my main sources of inspiration.

So why do I think art should be brief? I think the pragmatic reasoning would be that simply adding more stuff won't make the work any better because too much of a good thing becomes bad. And I also find that, in many ways, adding more content only creates another opportunity for you to stumble. It's as if creating a work of art is like throwing darts. If the work is flawless, that means every dart you threw hit the bullseye. But if you keep throwing more darts, you only increase your chances to miss. So in accordance with the analogy, the dart is every single detail. In a book, the dart is every plot point, every character, every description, but also every word, every letter, every comma. In music, it's every single word that makes up the lyrics, it's every note, every reverb, every whatever other musical term I don't really get. In painting, it's every color, every angle, every brush stroke. In essence then, the great works of art are ones in which it would appear that the artist managed to get a perfect score in every single detail, every word was the absolute best it can possibly be, every note rang beautifully, every brush stroke couldn't have been a millimeter off. And so, is art perfect? Rationally I don't think I can believe it is, but the greatest artists come so damn close to it that it might as well be, though it's perhaps always unfinished.

And if that principle isn't noticeable with specific long works of art, I think you'll find it's present if you look at the artist's complete work. For example, if you ask me I'd say there is no band greater band than Led Zeppelin, and as such I find every single one of their albums and songs to be amazing. But if I'm forced to listen to only Led Zeppelin for the rest of my life, I can automatically place Coda at the end of my preferences. And if I'm forced to choose only one album, which would be a tough decision, I might pick Houses of the Holy. But then if I'm forced to pick only one song I'd pick The Rain Song. So in essence it appears to be the case that all things can be forced to be hierarchized, even if they are all great they can still be better, the hierarchy just seems to build itself. I guess then, though I love Led Zeppelin, I don't wanna be “subjected” to their “bad” songs, because why should I? Then again, it's not like we can rip the work apart, for if we do, it will simply become incomplete. Perhaps we can do so only in the sense that we can, from time to time, listen to specific songs, more in a casual style of just feeling like it, not in an actual sense of art appreciation... But maybe I should shift to literature, where we might have a different story on our hands.

A book I mention quite a bit, and one that I intend to mention many more times in the future, is In Search of Lost Time. And of course I have to make mention of it in such an article because it's essentially the poster child for my confusion regarding this whole subject. Rationally, I shouldn't like Proust's book, I should, and believe I often can, determine the essence of it, read it, acknowledge it, and move on with my life with the comfort that skipping fifty random pages in a three thousand page book won't prevent me from understanding the main message. Indeed, it's almost as if Proust could have left us only with the first volume, not even counting Swann's chapter, and we'd be impressed already. The deep, intimate writing would be there, the constant recollections in that circular, rippling narrative style of his, and of course, the idea of involuntary memories awakened by the famous madeleine. So in many ways, you can skip most of the book, maybe you actually should skip it, and maybe more than that, maybe Proust should have had the common sense to hold himself back... How many soirées do we have to read in order to get the point? How many times do we need to see the protagonist going to different lunches and dinners? If the point is to criticize deceit in a social setting, isn't one deceitful character enough? If the point is to paint a picture of the protagonist's life, do we really need seven volumes for that? I tend to think not, and in many ways, I believe my writing reflects that. I have few important characters and, though I may have a lot of secondary ones, to whom I attribute a whole lot of importance, I often don't attribute a name. I leave them to their own devices because quite simply, it's not their story...

I might as well make mention of another long book I've recently come to have a love-hate relationship with, and that is The Brothers Karamazov. I guess the hate part for me with that one comes from the fact that Dostoyevsky was a bit crazy, but no surprise there. His writing is fast-paced and frenetic, with character lines sometimes being interrupted by a dash and other times by parenthesis and other times by a dash again, almost as if the author was so enthralled in the dialogue that he almost wrote dramatic text for a while. That's almost a nitpick, but one that I find somehow symbolize, and then, in a general kind of way, the text itself appears to not be all that taken care of, as alluded to by Vladimir Nabokov. Since I'm not fluent in russian I'm happy to the take the man on his word, more or less confirmed by my readings of portuguese translations. But the love part I have for The Brothers Karamazov is that it's a massive, sprawling universe, it's so blunt that it almost plays visually, and as soon as you read the first sentence you become a keen observer of those crazy people. And that's not including the existential questions which, for the sake of this article being more about art, I won't get into. But still, whenever I read the novel I find myself wanting to outright skip certain chapters, namely Dmitri's drunken escapades and his trial. The escapades I find they simply steal time from other more interesting characters, and we really don't need that many pages of it to begin with. Like Proust, I think Dostoyevsky was self-indulgent there too. The trial I dislike for a similar reason, but I specifically find it fascinating how in Crime and Punishment our author took a much simpler approach with the trial, giving us only the faint outline, and to a much greater effect.

I suppose in many ways, my thinking regarding art is precisely that. Often times I find less is more and I can't help but wonder how the more pages a book has, the more songs a band has, the more scenes a movie has, the more anything a work of art has, the higher the chances of some of it ending up badly. And if none of it is outright terrible, we still have to acknowledge it's just not as good as the rest. So I guess what we do, or at least some of us, is just skip ahead. When recommending long works of art I often hear people say precisely that, they say how some bits just aren't worth it. But does that still mean we're taking in the whole work as it was meant to be experienced? I don't think so, but then again, I'm a bit of a completionist, which is a trait I mostly see as a flaw. If I were Proust's or Dostoyevsky's editor I'd probably have them cut a sizable chunk of the book, but would that have then delivered the same book unto the world?

And what about me? Why is that I find it best to take a brief approach, in so many ways, with my own writing, and yet I can't let go of a chapter of a book, even if reading it will be quite a slog? Why can't I skip The Guermantes Way when I already know it kinda sucks? I wonder if at a certain point it's almost an OCD sort of reaction... But then again, I wonder differently, I wonder if imperfection is an inherent trait of a perfect work of art, I wonder if the struggle to get through it is a specific intention of the artist, an intention that, though it may sound arrogantly demanding of us, is the true price to pay to experience art. Because, all monetary concerns aside, it seems as if the true price artists pay when sharing their art with the world is that everyone should be free to criticize it vehemently, for good or for bad, but then again, the artist should be free to find whatever avenues he can to lodge himself in our heads and, while there, he should get to do whatever he wants with us... That reminds me of yet another little thing I perhaps want to talk about someday, namely this odd idea some people have that art should be comforting one way or another, this idea that people should feel good after having experienced it, and that art which makes us feel bad is automatically bad as well.

I dunno, maybe I think art appreciation should be a struggle. And that may be why I force myself to reread books I kinda hate, to rewatch movies I kinda hate, to relisten to songs I kinda hate, all in a big exercise in futility until something changes in me and some new detail in the work catches a glimpse of my understanding, giving me a sort of epiphany I can only experience by paying art it's true tribute – time.