Writer's Block: An Artist Is...

Do you consider yourself an artist? View other answers

An artist is someone who makes art. But what does it mean to be "someone who makes art"?

I can draw a picture from life. I can play the piano from sheet music. I can write, given a topic. In any of these cases, I may or may not be making 'art'.

On the other hand, I rarely feel the impulse to make art. I often feel the impulse to communicate - hence the blog - but communication, though it be creation of a sort, is not necessarily art, and I am certainly nothing like ursulav, cadhla, or kevinpease, whose muses will grab them by the metaphorical lapels and yell "create, create, create!" Or even like Seth, someone who just ... goes to work, automatically. Most of the time, if I produce art, I only produce art as a tool for other purposes.

So, I make art incidentally, not habitually. Does that make me an artist, or not?

Five from MaggieBloome

The Five-Question one again - this time inherited (with modification) from maggiebloome, who got it from backinblack:

1. Leave me a comment. You may take one of two tacks, here: (a) complete insignificance - for example, song lyrics, sandwich recipes, videogame reviews ... anything, really, as long as it's completely meaningless in context, or (b) a specific request for participation, with the specifics up to you. (But not completely up to you - I do still get to choose the questions.)
   
   (Okay, somebody needs to take out a restraining order against me on use of the word "completely". I mean, d-mn.)


2. Receive five questions, chosen so as to allow me to know you better, in a reply to your comment. They will likely not be excessively personal, so as to Avoid Internet Drama™.


3. Update your LJ - or, if the thought of contaminating it with mere Internet memes gives you fits, reply to my comment - with the answers to the questions.


4. If you chose the former: Append (or prepend) this (or a substantially similar) explanation to your answers. When others respond with desultory comments, ask them five questions. (Each, that is.)


5. If you chose the latter: Write an appropriately brilliant and witty diatribe about the pointlessness of copying these idiotic things across the Web as if they're somehow valuable, then throw it away as being nearly as annoying as the things themselves.

Anyway, the five questions, courtesy maggiebloome:

1. What's your favourite extinct reptile?

Mmm - I don't know nearly enough extinct reptiles, let me think.

...

Y'know, I think I'm going to go for the obvious and vote tail-spikes. Stegosaurus, I choose you!

2. If you could pick an Era to live in apart from our own, which would it be?

Well, being as I'm obviously of (mixed, but including) African descent, it would seem of questionable wisdom for me to dwell in the near past. Further, I am quite ignorant of any language other than my own and quite enamored of modern medicine - thereby eliminating the far past (and the near past, really). On top of that, environmental degradation and the expenditure of Earth's natural resources (not to mention the ever-present hazard of warfare involving weapons of mass destruction, or even garden-variety epidemics) would seem to discourage proceeding into the future.

So, recognizing that I have no good choices, I expect I would either choose the latter half of the nineteenth century in London or the latter part of the reign of Caesar Augustus in Rome. My ignorance of history is mighty, but neither of those places and times seem too offensively intolerant, and both are associated with a great deal of magnificent literature.

3. Deserted island. You are Tom Hanks. Volleyball, basketball or ping pong ball?

I think I'll have to go with the canonical answer, here - volleyball seems like the most durable.

4. How would you prefer to die?

Heart attack might be nice. A stroke, perhaps. Quick and clean is the way to go, I say - none of this long painful decline into death, and a minimum of gross bodily harm. Basically worst, in my opinion, would probably be a car accident followed by long, unsuccessful medical intervention. (Not that I'd refuse treatment - I'm just saying: pain? Seriously uncool.)

5. Which work of literature has changed you the most?

Slaughterhouse 5 was pretty sweet. The Gate to Women's Country made me think a lot. The Dispossessed was fascinating. I'm not sure that any book changed me radically, though.

Wait. Gentleman's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson. Despite being black (by American standards), my visceral conception of racism was, to a large degree, unformed until it was informed by that book. It was a good movie as well, but I feel that the book was more subtle about it, and so more satisfying. (However, I am also obliged to mention - although this is my mother's observation, not my own - that the beginning of the book is somewhat slow. Take it as you will.)


...Okay, how are you supposed to wrap these things up again?