This is untitled, and I’m too tired to think of something at the moment

We stand on cliffs, exposed
Watching the skies, frightened
For birds of prey, deadly
Looking for strength, alone

As we face outwards over open oceans
We slowly begin to know
Formulaic solutions to convoluted problems.
Conclusions should have been more forthcoming
But we were stunned by monotonous humming,
We were lulled to sleep by sweet nothings
Brushing us with something that seemed to be loving,
But despite being sweet, it was nothing.

We stand on cliffs, exposed
Watching the skies, frightened
For birds of prey, deadly
Looking for strength, alone

As we stand, freezing in stiff breezes
We begin to believe we know
Where the source of the heat is,
And as the fevers lead us ever forward
To real freedom, we dig deeper
To anchor a feeling we need to not leave us,
With speeches to feed the heat
And a wreath of peace to mark our dreams.

We stand on cliffs, exposed
Watching the skies, frightened
For birds of prey, deadly
Looking for strength, alone

As we wait for scavengers
To ravage the last of the passion we have
We begin to understand that its hand fighting hand.
As we run from our own footsteps
Left in the ever shifting sand of the past
We eat apples given by the living product of man
Cowering from our own lashes but blaming the land

We stand on cliffs, exposed
Watching the skies, frightened
For birds of prey, deadly
Looking for strength, alone

As we face oceans, frozen, fearing for life
We find the answers, the passion and the questions inside
As we face oceans, frozen, fearing for life
We find the answers, the passion and the questions
inside

Here we go again. Today I’m once again making claims about art. Maybe I’ll have to change them at some later point, but hopefully the gratuitous use of “in general”,”in my opinion” and other phrases meant to soften an argument will make my argument immune to exceptions.

In my opinion, one of the things that generally sets good art apart from other art is that good art can be described simply. No, don’t worry, this is not my argument for the legitimacy of southern hip-hop. The best art grabs your attention and keeps it. Art that initially comes across as rambling or convoluted doesn’t do that. If I’m listening to a poem and halfway through, I’m wondering what the hell the writer is talking about, that’s a strike against it. If I look at a painting and my first thought is that the artist is trying to pass off some random scribbles as art, that’s a strike against it. These first impressions are not always the ones I keep – sometimes after a second listen, the poem comes together and after learning the context, the painting makes sense – but in the best art, that second or educated look is not needed to grab attention. In my experience, the best art gets better with second looks and knowledge of context, but it can also grab your attention on your first uneducated look.

If a piece can only sustain interest during that first look, I’d hardly consider it among the best. I love complexity in art. I love to listen again and find connections that I didn’t even imagine existed the first time. I love to learn the context of art I already appreciate and see new hidden meanings I hadn’t glimpsed before. Good art is like wine. If you let it sit on your tongue, you will begin to experience its complexity. My point here is that no matter how good a wine tastes over time, if when it first touches your tongue it doesn’t stand out, it is not the best wine. When the first glimpse of a work of art reveals a large amount of complexity, the art can be overwhelming and seem unfocused. Good art is vertically digested rather than horizontally – as you grasp one layer, a slightly deeper layer is revealed. When we are forced to digest everything on one layer at the same time, it can be a little hard to swallow.

So where does this leave the would-be artist? I started off by saying that good art can be described simply. Think of it as a far away view of the earth. It can be correctly described as a ball. The closer you get, the more you come to realize that what lies before you is far more than just a ball, yet, “ball” was not an inaccurate description. When an artist is working on a piece, there are questions that should be kept in mind that should be answered in the artwork. There are many questions, but the one I’m concerned with here is “what is this about?” Even if it is about 7 continents and 4 oceans populated by a wide variety of life-forms that experience complicated interactions with each other and their environments, there should also be an applicable answer that is analogous to “ball” in its simplicity.

I’m gonna start paying attention to random unrelated details when people try to draw my attention to their achievements.

For example, I observed somebody looking at someone else’s wedding pictures today. As she went through them, the lady looking through the pictures kept commenting on the weather on the day of the wedding. At one point she stopped on one, completely ignored the people in it and said “Look how blue the sky is. That’s amazing.” I didn’t hear her make any comments about the bride, groom or wedding party. Nobody else seemed to notice her blatant disregard of the wedding that was occurring in the pictures, but at that moment I was thinking “I want to be just like her.”