Watching a dance from the sidelines.
Every now and then, being an observer is inspirational. Watching something epic unfold means more than just being marked “present” on some cosmic roll call — in a way, you become a part of the event as it transpires.
But does it inspire you to be the agent of creativity yourself, next time around? Harder to say.
Take the NCAA tournament. People in our home state of North Carolina are absolutely crazy about college basketball. It’s more than just something you watch, it’s something you DO. It inspires people to paint their bodies, camp out for months in tents, hold high-stakes bracket competitions, and hate people who wear the wrong shade of blue. Some would even call it a lifestyle.
But at the end of the day, they’re still on the sidelines, watching the game. Making an awesome bracket isn’t going to make you an awesome basketball player. No matter what the experience you’ve created around it, you’re still a spectator to the game itself.
This is fine (and in fact ideal!) for most people, who have neither the ambition nor the ability to step onto the basketball court. They don’t aspire to be a part of it personally, so being an active observer is enough to aspire to.
But for a high school kid who grew up loving the game, and dreaming of a spot on one of those teams, the month of March takes on a whole different significance. To him, it’s personal.
I’m that high school kid, but for art.
Come on. Adjust them. You know you want to.
And Art (capital A) often feels like a spectator sport. You go to museums, you see a play, you go to a concert. You are expected to take it in without interacting.
Maybe, for most people, that is enough. Maybe they find it inspirational. But as an artist, I am partly inspired and more often agonized. I experience a strange restlessness when I go to a play. I enter and the ushers direct me to my seat, as they do with everyone, and I have to fight the urge to stand up and be say “Guys, it’s cool. I do theater too, I’m IN THE KNOW. Why am I sitting with the plebes?”
And what kind of interaction can I have with it, from my comfy plush chair? I can comment on it, either to the date I am surely trying to impress, or to the internet via a blog or twitter, and if the gallery or theater is trendy it might have some events or talks regarding the work. And I can think about it, turn it over in my mind and bookmark it for some future use — but these are all forms of sideline interaction. I don’t feel like I’m more of an artist for having seen it.
There is an odd voicelessness that comes with standing in the same room as a famous work of art. I stand transfixed, perhaps in awe, or perhaps in distaste, but either way I can do nothing but make sideline commentary to the main event. My own voice is irrelevant here, overwhelmed by the enormity of the work at hand.
It doesn’t matter how hard you stare at it, Picasso, tragically, is not contagious. You will actually have to figure out how to make something this cool on your own.
And separate from my observations about the work itself are the direct comparisons to my own artistic experiences. Do I feel depressed about my own abilities? Hopeful? Exhausted? Do I wonder why the artist did it that way, and then realize that it sort of works, but that I would have done it differently, and then second guess myself because his work is hanging in a gallery and mine isn’t? Do I wonder if the endless meditations and comparisons to the works of others are pointless and in fact detrimental to my own creative process?
Because it has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my compulsion to create art, which probably comes from someplace deeply personal that existed long before I could even articulate the word “art”. That urge to create is innate, not external.
This picture came from my own imagination. As well as Washington DC.
Understanding the work of others and feeding off the cultural environment are vitally important — but sometimes you need to just shut yourself up in your room and do whatever the hell you want to. Paint a really hideous mural in honor of Duke basketball on your bathroom wall, or whatever. Outsider art is the shit.
And this is what we hope to encourage with Wall People. Even as we scour the internets for the latest experimental art movies, and articles on the work of Rauschenberg and outer space, what we really want to do is inspire you (and ourselves) to create something in your own words.
So check out for a bit. Get lost in the hypnotic rhythm of this cool thing Alyx posted about, or maybe the meaningless buzz of the next NCAA game broadcast (now that all ACC teams are out of the running), and tune out the discordant sounds of the world around you. Cease to observe, and try to figure out what you have to say for yourself.
“My early films come from my very deepest commitment to what I was doing, what I felt I had no choice but to do, and as such they are totally unconnected to what was going on at the film schools — and cinemas — of the time. It is my strong autodidactic streak and my faith in my own work that have kept me going for more than forty years.” — Werner Herzog
The Wall People 