gotcha. XD
Sep. 13th, 2010 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
levitySide by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and the inert slag they breed a song that contaminates. I see this other race of individuals ransacking the universe, turning everything upside down, their feet always moving in blood and tears, their hands always empty, always clutching and grasping for the beyond, for the god out of reach: slaying everything within reach in order to quiet the monster that gnaws at their vitals. I see that when they tear their hair with the effort to comprehend, to seize this forever unattainable, I see that when they bellow like crazed beasts and rip and gore, I see that this is right, that there is no other path to pursue. A man who belongs to this race must stand up on the high place with gibberish in his mouth and rip out his entrails. It is right and just, because he must! And anything that falls short of this frightening spectacle, anything less shuddering, less terrifying, less mad, less intoxicated, less contaminating is not art. The rest is counterfeit. The rest is human. The rest belongs to life and lifelessness.
- Henry Miller
Grotesque will always get stronger reactions than beautiful, and either is better than mediocre, yes?
I was going to say that just because it garners a visceral reaction doesn't mean that it's good, and then. What garners visceral reactions changes over time and over place, and yeah, shock value isn't quality, but if it garners a visceral reaction that means it does something.
To shock is to change, and change isn't always good, but it's better than stagnancy. Change means that you learn something, and now I remember Morpheus, to change or to die, and that one panel in Destiny's chapter of Endless Nights and how beauty can be grotesque, or the other way around.
All art is quite useless and Festivals are like lightning and Cosmos in chaos and I have a thing for the visceral (gods, I'm making a Bio joke in my mind) and the metaphysical and all the banality people have to offer, because if there is no collapse there is no redemption, and I really have to get my Histo thing done. Nihilism and insanity and idealism go hand in hand, and I wish people would find a different word for humanity.
- Henry Miller
Grotesque will always get stronger reactions than beautiful, and either is better than mediocre, yes?
I was going to say that just because it garners a visceral reaction doesn't mean that it's good, and then. What garners visceral reactions changes over time and over place, and yeah, shock value isn't quality, but if it garners a visceral reaction that means it does something.
To shock is to change, and change isn't always good, but it's better than stagnancy. Change means that you learn something, and now I remember Morpheus, to change or to die, and that one panel in Destiny's chapter of Endless Nights and how beauty can be grotesque, or the other way around.
All art is quite useless and Festivals are like lightning and Cosmos in chaos and I have a thing for the visceral (gods, I'm making a Bio joke in my mind) and the metaphysical and all the banality people have to offer, because if there is no collapse there is no redemption, and I really have to get my Histo thing done. Nihilism and insanity and idealism go hand in hand, and I wish people would find a different word for humanity.
