Art on Art on Art

I don’t agree with Plato. I don’t agree that art is an imitation of life, and that art about art is an imitation of an imitation. I don’t think that all these things are mere shadows of shadows, but still I’ve been trying to figure out  what bothered me so much when I sat down in school to try to write a paper on a book or a poem and felt it futile.

I think an imitation entails that the mime (in this case, art) is a to-scale replica of the mimed (in this case, life). Who would want a to-scale replica of life? Isn’t one already big enough? Where would you put it, on the fridge, on a mantel, on your stacks of other lives in your bookshelves? No, art is a form of condensation–it lets you put life in your pocket.

That’s why we find it redeeming, inspiring, no matter how dark the content. How often are we told to appreciate the small things, to love the small things–small things are important. Art is a practice of making life small, while not stealing any of its grandness. What is in life years of aching and revelations and dogs barking and leaking roofs, becomes in art a sentence, a gesture.

When we read a book that moves us, it’s really a miniature of life as someone has seen it, all condensed into however many pages–the salt separated from the muck of the world. And when I start to study it, to write my 2am caffeine-fueled paper on it, I just throw all the water and muck back in. Have you ever read a poem so good it made your ears ring? So clearly that nothing could touch it? No more needs to be said. It makes my heart hurt to try to re-expand those few lines into something as messy as life itself again.

Some things need to be expanded. There are some good, concise equations that might do the work for us. But sometimes we need to factor them to see how they work, sometimes we need a piece of the equation that’s invisible without the expansion. Maybe something about art follows that rule. I don’t know, I haven’t figured it out. I’ve been working towards being a condenser, so much so that it’s hard to expand.

Who knows if I’ve ever succeeded, or ever will. Could I have said it in a sentence? Maybe. There is something between all the expanding and the condensing that feels like breathing. Somewhere in the equilibrium between all this art and all this analysis, this pushing in and out, is life, elusive life.