ART IS A CONVERSATION

an informal essay by danny

if you’ve talked to me for more than ten minutes then you’ve almost certainly heard me say the phrase “art is a conversation” which i think might qualify as a tagline at this point with how often i repeat it. i first heard it in a video essay i watched 4 years ago that i’ve never been able to track down again (if you know a video essay that goes in depth with the relationship between the creator’s intent and the audience’s interpretation of their work that makes a lot of use of the above phrase, please link me)

to me, it means a lot of different things. it means that the viewer is just as much a part of the art as the creator. it means that an audience has a responsibility to listen to what the art is trying to tell them, and to bring up their own feelings after they hear it. it means that all art, no matter what it is, is inherently interactive because the act of engaging with it generates some kind of feeling on the matter, and following the thread of that feeling back to the art keeps that discussion going. it means that you can approach the art in bad faith or it can approach you in bad faith, but there's no "wrong" way to experience or create it (just like there's not a "wrong" way to have a conversation, but sometimes the conversation goes badly)

and it means that i really really like it when people get something out of my work that i didn’t plan to put in there. nothing makes me happier than when people tell me something along the lines of “i know you didn’t mean it like this but…” because i never do mean it like that and i always want to know everything about why they got that anyway.

when i make something and i show it to another person, it’s ours now. when i make something and post it on the internet, it’s ours now. you are just as much a part of what i made as i am. i created a seed—full of everything i wanted and everything i felt—and i planted the seed in a rich plot of soil that i picked especially for it and i lugged a huge jug of fresh water to sprinkle over my lovely little seed and i cheered when a budding plant started sprouting from it and then…someone came and examined its new leaves and left a 3-star yelp review of my garden. the next day someone came and picked one of its petals and talked to me for an hour about the majestic colors sprouting from it before pressing the petal into a book and leaving. the next day, my brother showed me a plant he’d started growing and i gave him some of my fresh water and my rich soil.

that’s what art is to me.

and i know i talk a big game about "ours", but i do believe that the creator is still the biggest piece of the pie of what makes the art and so they’re allowd to feel a sense of ownership over it. my art belongs to me a little bit more than it belongs to the people i share it with. i just also believe that the art wouldn’t be the same without those people, that it does belong to them in some sense.

don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean someone can read a poem i wrote, say “actually, this is about being a bigot” and ignore my craft completely. deliberate and willfully ignorant misinterpretations exist and are frustrating to deal with. a different interpretation is one thing, but a baseless claim about my own intentions or the goal of a work that didn’t come straight from my mouth is another. i’m interested in the ways people relate their own experiences or their own feelings to poems i write about my specific experiences and feelings. i’m not interested in anyone saying they know what i wanted it to be about and act superior to my work because of it.

but even as i say that, i understand that drawing that line can be difficult and almost impossible at times. the thing about conversations is that they can be rife with miscommunication, arguing, or just plain irritation. the way we talk about art will always be a little flawed because the way we talk about anything will always be a little flawed because humans can’t read each other’s minds and language is an imperfect tool. i say i don’t want my work to be misconstrued for bigotry but if an unintentional theme in something i write is promoting bullshit like that then i want to know and talk about it. and i would welcome someone starting that conversation.

art is a conversation, which means that there isn't a perfect way to begin it and there isn't a perfect way to end it, much like this essay. i hope that even if you walk away from this shaking your head and thinking "that silly danny...", my tagline will at least play in your mind on occassion when you watch a video essay or read a poetry collection.

art is a conversation. it takes more than one person to engage in it.