I have nothing for you today.
I thought about artist’s statements and the Arty Bollocks Generator, but couldn’t flesh anything out of that.
I thought about the phrase “creative professional” and “creative” as a noun, and couldn’t do anything with that either. (“Creative” as a noun annoys me. I couldn’t tell you why, though.)
It’s like I’m grasping towards some sort of commentary about identification of oneself and one’s work, and the heavy layer of bullshit coating everything by necessity in case anyone realises we have no idea what we’re doing. I’m reminded of Claire Fisher in Six Feet Under – a character who was extremely important and influential for me as a teenager – who left all of her work at her first exhibition untitled. It was interpreted as an artistic statement. When asked, she pulled a reason for it out of her arse, only to confess to her friends, laughing, that it was because she couldn’t think of titles for them.
English classes are like that. “This symbolises the writer’s blah blah blah”, while we all sit secretly thinking that the author intended no such thing. I use a lot of alliteration. Why? Because I find alliteration entertaining. I enjoy it. I like the sound of it. That, in itself, is its own deeper meaning. But as I’ve grown as a writer, I have found little aspects of my writing accruing meaning. Often without my intending it. Symbols creep in only to be noticed later on; symbols appear with ineffable meaning. When they do, I like to leave them where they are, and not name them to myself. I feel like to say “this symbolises suchandsuch”, even in my head, would be to take away from it somehow, to reduce it. I’ve become a lot more open to the idea of readers taking their own meaning from my work.
But isn’t it funny, all the same? Everyone reciting their little artistic statements, building up the echo chamber of bollocks. “What starts out as vision soon becomes debased into a tragedy of temptation, leaving only a sense of nihilism and the possibility of a new order.” Yes… sure. (Although I do like “tragedy of temptation”. Alliteration my old friend.)