" There is no science without fancy and no art without facts", Vladimir Nabokov
Someone said in class the other day that art was emotional and science was rational. Clearly, that is way to simplistic. Nothing is just about one thing. There is no way my art, or anyone else's I know, is only emotional. I don't even know what that word means. All I know is that it is most commonly used in a pejorative sense, as in "you are being emotional", as if that were some crime against humanity. What I deal with as an artist are facts and ideas diverted through a temperament, mine (Emile Zola's said that first). It is a translation, as it were, of a pre-verbal stage. It is about things that don't have a language yet either in my head or in the head of society as a whole. Paintings are like dreams, are dreams emotional? I dreamed last night I sat next to VP Cheney at a cocktail party in Jackson Hole and had a rational conversation with him about playing a game called Doom. I was quite calm in my dream and not at all emotional. So where do we put these "things" that are not rational per se, nor are they emotional? We need a word for the wordless. That is why we have dreams and art and we should just live with it and quit trying to pigeonhole it into something that it is not or something that limits it. Trying to define the totally abstract is a bad idea. It is like trying to define "God". Once you define it, it can no longer be God. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle works here too. That is why I like the theoretical physicists the best as they have a view of the world similar to mine. Ideas like Aristotle's "Everything either is or is not", just doesn't work for me. I also have problem with Descartes" Cognito ergo sum. To me it should be" I am, therefore I think".
Someone said in class the other day that art was emotional and science was rational. Clearly, that is way to simplistic. Nothing is just about one thing. There is no way my art, or anyone else's I know, is only emotional. I don't even know what that word means. All I know is that it is most commonly used in a pejorative sense, as in "you are being emotional", as if that were some crime against humanity. What I deal with as an artist are facts and ideas diverted through a temperament, mine (Emile Zola's said that first). It is a translation, as it were, of a pre-verbal stage. It is about things that don't have a language yet either in my head or in the head of society as a whole. Paintings are like dreams, are dreams emotional? I dreamed last night I sat next to VP Cheney at a cocktail party in Jackson Hole and had a rational conversation with him about playing a game called Doom. I was quite calm in my dream and not at all emotional. So where do we put these "things" that are not rational per se, nor are they emotional? We need a word for the wordless. That is why we have dreams and art and we should just live with it and quit trying to pigeonhole it into something that it is not or something that limits it. Trying to define the totally abstract is a bad idea. It is like trying to define "God". Once you define it, it can no longer be God. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle works here too. That is why I like the theoretical physicists the best as they have a view of the world similar to mine. Ideas like Aristotle's "Everything either is or is not", just doesn't work for me. I also have problem with Descartes" Cognito ergo sum. To me it should be" I am, therefore I think".
posted by Anne Coe | 6:19 AM
6 Comments:
I don't suppose that I should use quotes without being able to credit their origin, but I will anyway: "The reason truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to be believable".
One interpretation of the origin and necessity of dreams is the transfer of information from the buffer area of the brain to the more permanent memory storage, and the establishment of all the connections and references to information that is already stored there. The old experiences get retrieved and referenced to the new information and then go back into storage. If you relate an old experience to something new during the day, the new information has to get stored somewhere that night.
It helps to explain the creative aspect of dreams. Thinking about something during the day will stimulate, through dreams, access to earlier experience and knowledge. I understand that's where the inspiration for the explanation of DNA came from - a dream about snakes intertwining into a helix.
Artists seem to operate closer to their dreams, maybe even have access during their waking hours by relaxing some "Rational barrier" that other people have. As a result, artists can generate insights into accumulated knowledge that put it together in ways that science can use. Clearly, the process goes the other way. That is, artists love to make images of their interpretation of scientific theory.
When did you think about Cheney? Yikes!
Just to be complete:
Mark Twain said that truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to be believable but truth does not
While he said, "I think therefore I am," someone this weekend was telling me about an African leader who said, "I am because we are." we being us, plus the ancestors.
Art can move without definitions, science cannot.
I like that, "I am because we are". We owe everything to the ancestors and pay them so little honor in our culture relative to others. I suppose it has to do with leaving them all behind when we came the America. I would think that would make them more valuable. I think Christianity may have furthered the loss of ancestor worship in its claim that we are all brothers. Jesus even said that to follow him one must leave ones family. Implicit in that is the idea of "the new family" among Christians. Face it ancestors are important. Every single one of yours were sucessful in at least one way evidenced by the fact that you are here.
I like Ananymous' thoughts on dreams. Some how I had to sort through VP Cheney. I used to go to parties in Jackson Hole Wy when I lived there and Cheney was often there too along with James Watt, the anti-Christ of the department of the interior. Ah to have the 80's again.
I see Christianity as a form of ancestor worship, with the first ancestor being god--we are all his descendants--his children, brothers and sisters to one another. As far as I know, all prophets create new kinship groups around a real (or more likely) metaphorical ancestor.
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