Thoughts

I’m feeling a little heartsick right now. I’ve been reading a "childen’s book series" with my wife that I decided I will not finish, though I looked up a summary of it online. I don’t want to protest the books. What good does protesting a book do, except increase it’s fame? Still, I feel I need to get some of thoughts out. The book series goal and purpose seems to be to destroy faith. I leave it there.

As artists, we have a tremendous responsibility. We create things. We assemble the materials around us to make new and interesting things that no one else has done or imagined before. We send these creations out into the world to be consumed by our fellow human beings. I say consumed, because once they have viewed, listened, felt, smelled or tasted our art work it becomes part of them and their life experience; something for them to draw on, grow on. The question is, do we wish to nourish or to poison our audience?

The tools of destruction cannot nourish a person. If our work is based on angst, hate, protest, fear then we will certainly be adding those things to the world, not subtracting from them. Art will only serve us by celebrating the things in life we feel we should be rejoicing in. I’m not saying that art shouldn’t contain any dissonance, there must be opposition in all things, but when the dissonance becomes the focus or center of a work, it will only serve to make the consumer of that art soul-sick.

Well, now I’ve said that I feel a bit better. It is hard not react to something that tears at and tries to debase things that you hold dear or even sacred. That is my point exactly. The effect of a book that fights against something will only galvanize people’s position on that issue, for or against it. The book will not change minds or hearts; it will not persuade. Had the book been a celebration of things the author held dear, rather than a fight against things he wanted to tear down, I would have read to the end and respected the author’s opinion, even if I wasn’t won over to his way of thinking.