Art is meaningful if it has something to say. It is assumed a political message is most important, but that is untrue. We are most effected by what makes us think about our own lives.
Grandiosity is not what you are about. The Big Picture is not your portrait. It is the common things that define you. The most important things in your life are the least important in the world.
You are lost in the crowd. Your friends and family are lost in the crowd. When the world needs slaves, you are enslaved. When the world is at war, you are its cannon-fodder.
The people in your life are special to you, not to the world. You are special to them, not to the world. STOP fretting the world!
I write books and illustrate the covers. The stories and pictures are always about the unimportance of people. It is usually in the context of heroes killing nameless baddies. It is often about antiheroes or villains committing the recreational murder of strangers.
The heroes and villains are the main characters. Unlike us, they are important. We are their easy victims. Losing ourselves in the crowd is our only way to survive them.
LOVE and FRIENDSHIP are what make YOUR life meaningful.
They are the meaningful themes of art and fiction accordingly. None of the
others matter without them. They distinguish pornography from romance, for
example. They make violence heroic and death tragic. They can sublimate anger
and hatred into morally satisfying drama.
Exactly, people forget that the least is the greatest. Grandiose ideas and trying to save the world are nothing compared to Love and Friendship. In fiction as it is in our lives, it is Love and Friendship that make things meaningful.
ReplyDeleteThe world is not even worth saving unless loved ones live in it. The world is just a giant ant farm otherwise.
DeleteThe world is going to pass away anyhow. Focus on the things that matter while you have the time.
ReplyDeleteWe have plenty of time... but not much. God arrange things so it costs us everything to waste time but we gain everything if we don't.
DeleteWhat most people deem as important tends not to be. Much of what we see is there to distract us. This world will pass away, but that which is spiritual shall continue.
ReplyDeleteThe "important" things fade away in their lifetimes! Remember Winn-Dixie? Well, wasn't so important after all, was it? Just one of countless examples.
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