Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, part 1
Aug. 1st, 2008 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupI guess I should say more about why I see feeling deeply and artistic creativity as more or less the same thing. I mean, there's modernism, too, all cool detachment and terrible honesty. If you're good, you can write or create something with icy detachment and precision and that's legitimately art, I understand that. So why think about it in terms of being an emotional basket-case? It's not necessarily so.
I'd start out by talking about how much being emotional has to do with how we present ourselves to the world, and how culture is so closely related to that, a kind of litmus test to see if people "get" us or not. We define who we are through our mass-distributed, consumed tastes, and pretend that we're unique in the tastes we choose. The interests list on LiveJournal feels very, very personal to me -- I put a lot of effort into making it -- as a Rohrshach test of whether you are like me, will understand me.
Who is the me that these interests reveal? My interests look a little detached -- smart, cool, and modern. To me they say that I like clever, artsy, politically engaged, ironic takes on life. A bit of a snob, but not too much so. More emotional than Ernest Hemingway, less aloof than T.S. Eliot, less pretentious than some art thing you've never heard of, but something Cultivated all the same. Meat Loaf is not on my list, and neither are the seventies bands I listened to in high school. What is on the list, for example, is Luna -- not some boutique thing no one's ever heard of, but still possessed of a very, very cool and ironic voice.
So I know how to put on a front, and I'm not saying that those things aren't me, or more precisely, who I aspire to. But what S_ E_ discovered (previous post), with my graphomaniac emotionality, is that the real me on another level isn't like that at all. I kind of like self-pity and depression. To me, it feels more honest than putting up a front. I like The Catcher in the Rye, something that baffles straightforward people. And I like The Graduate a lot.
In fact, I think that how you respond to The Graduate says a lot about you and what you might think of me. So if I ever get more than five uninterrupted minutes to plunk it out, let's use it that as a case study, because, as it happens, one of the first conversations that S_ E_ and I ever had was about The Graduate, which had recently been at the university film club.
I'd start out by talking about how much being emotional has to do with how we present ourselves to the world, and how culture is so closely related to that, a kind of litmus test to see if people "get" us or not. We define who we are through our mass-distributed, consumed tastes, and pretend that we're unique in the tastes we choose. The interests list on LiveJournal feels very, very personal to me -- I put a lot of effort into making it -- as a Rohrshach test of whether you are like me, will understand me.
Who is the me that these interests reveal? My interests look a little detached -- smart, cool, and modern. To me they say that I like clever, artsy, politically engaged, ironic takes on life. A bit of a snob, but not too much so. More emotional than Ernest Hemingway, less aloof than T.S. Eliot, less pretentious than some art thing you've never heard of, but something Cultivated all the same. Meat Loaf is not on my list, and neither are the seventies bands I listened to in high school. What is on the list, for example, is Luna -- not some boutique thing no one's ever heard of, but still possessed of a very, very cool and ironic voice.
So I know how to put on a front, and I'm not saying that those things aren't me, or more precisely, who I aspire to. But what S_ E_ discovered (previous post), with my graphomaniac emotionality, is that the real me on another level isn't like that at all. I kind of like self-pity and depression. To me, it feels more honest than putting up a front. I like The Catcher in the Rye, something that baffles straightforward people. And I like The Graduate a lot.
In fact, I think that how you respond to The Graduate says a lot about you and what you might think of me. So if I ever get more than five uninterrupted minutes to plunk it out, let's use it that as a case study, because, as it happens, one of the first conversations that S_ E_ and I ever had was about The Graduate, which had recently been at the university film club.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 10:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-01 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 11:31 am (UTC)But, another implication of what you're saying is that you might get the alienation part of me but not the overheated-romantic part of me, which seems possible given our LJs. Well, let me bang out the thing today and you can tell me what you think.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-02 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-03 11:33 am (UTC)You throw shit out when it gets painful to look at, man, as you know well.