At a debate on “The Arts and the Economy” last Thursday evening (15th April), hosted by Irish PEN, one of the speakers suggested that artists need to think about their audience. There was some bristling at this. A woman stood up to declare that an artist’s first engagement is with the self, and out of that comes an engagement with the world. An audience is by the by, she said.
This interested me. I think many writers shy away from considering an 'audience', as if such considerations lessen the artistic value of the writing. But bear with me for a minute: at workshops I always talk about reading, ask people to think about what reading is for, what they like to read themselves and why. A fundamental part of the workshop process is about learning how to read like a writer, but also how to write like a reader. By that I mean going right inside the world you’re making on the page, as far in as it’s possible to go. Drawing Virginia Woolf’s imaginary curtains; creating John Gardiner’s ‘vivid, continuous dream’. But the worlds we build with words – on the page, on a computer screen, to be spoken by actors on screen or stage – would be wasted if no one came along to share them. Why go to all that effort, only to create the literary equivalent of the ghost estates that now litter the country, thanks to the geniuses who ‘lead’ us?
Without writers, there’d be no readers. Without readers, there’d be no writers. Chicken, egg. Egg, chicken.
(For those of you who wonder why ‘Libran Writer’, there’s your answer.)
The debate was well-informed and thought-provoking. Can the arts rescue the economy? To what extent should artists engage with the economy? When will the Revolution begin? One speaker was keen for it to start immediately, with the audience departing en masse for the Dáil; but it was late and everyone was tired ...
The panellists were: Arthur Lappin (film & TV producer), Declan Kiberd (literary critic & Chair of Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama at UCD), Gerry Godley (musician & broadcaster, spokesperson for the National Campaign for the Arts), Claire Doody (Cultural Odyssey) and Aidan Burke (the Arts Council). Marita Conlon McKenna was the chair. Contributions from the floor came from writers, publishers, filmmakers, and representatives of the Arts Council.
Anyone who hasn’t been there yet, go to the National Campaign for the Arts website: http://www.ncfa.ie
Hi Lia, I got your blog details via a mutual friend, Helena.
ReplyDeleteInteresting discussion point, I, if I ever get a book finished, would lean towards writing for readers. At the same time, I agree with the point that writers need to write their own story as such, but like your analogy about the 'ghost estates'.
Have added you to my blogroll, visit me anytime at :
http://www.sortofwriting.blogspot.com/
Lucky you and your writing room, I wrote a little post about writing in domestic chaos which female writers liked, before I deleted all my comments accidentally.
Its at:
http://sortofwriting.blogspot.com/2010/01/im-going-to-write-10000-words-today-if.html
Michelle said:
ReplyDeleteI have been reading The Gift by Lewis Hyde (well, dipping in and out). I've just read a bit where he quotes Alan Ginsberg about the opposite kind of writing (to a blog). Writing 'which you will not publish and you won't show people. [...] It means abandoning... the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world... and just settling down in the muck of your own mind.[...] You really have to make a resolution to just write for yourself..., in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what yourself is saying.' This appeals to me (well maybe not so much the 'muck' bit), just now I have a new play gestating but I'd like to challenge myself to write without thought for myself or the imagined reader (which is the ego I suppose). I wonder if it's possible and then think what a ghastly drab weird read it might be. Hyde says this is Ginsberg setting aside evaluation and looking for the "gift" within his own creativity. Hm. Here's hoping my creativity has a parcel for me to pass on.
I think the 'muck' you're talking about is the same principle that Natalie Goldberg talks about in Writing Down the Bones. I’ve come across it in other places too - that whole Artist's Way movement, for example. Of course there'll always be things that you only write for yourself - all the stuff that you couldn't inflict on a reader - I suppose the trick is to know the difference. Or how to turn one into the other. It's a bit of a line drawn in the sand, don't you think? There's the writing people do for purposes of self-expression, or working things out in the primordial gloop of the mind - but it needs to be filtered, processed, and shaped before it goes out into the light of print. That's where conversations like this come in.
ReplyDeleteHi Brigid,
ReplyDeleteThe room is still only a gleam in the eye - actually more of a dust-mote, at this stage - but we'll get there, we'll get there.
Thanks for joining.
Hi Lia,
ReplyDeletegreat to read your blog. I agree about the 'gloop' of the mind. It's a great way to get a story onto paper but it then has to be cleaned up so a reader will like it and want to read more of your work. That's my opinion anyway. Being true to your artistic self shouldn't mean sacrificing readability.
Great to hear about your writing room. I read a blog post by a friend the other day about mindfulness. He described how a 'guru' he met many years ago said the first step to mindfulness was to mindfully clear out your closets. I liked that idea a lot.
Maya
this reminds me a bit of the question "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Making art, (or writing) can bring a pleasure to the artist in and of itself, but I think that the aim of most writers (and/or visual artists) is to change the way people think about something, or to impact them in some way. I'm not sure art can exist in a vacuum. I love the fact that artists are getting engaged in the debate as too often they seem to remove themselves from the world of filthy lucre and commerce. Books and art are often discretionary purchases - especially when times are tough. As objects of desire, not necessity, they get put to one side in tough economic times. This is a shame. In the height of the Celtic Tiger era, the arts felt irrelevant to a degree. Perhaps the audience can be newly engaged in these tough economic times.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought about just writing for oneself -surely it is about creating a relationship. In that relationship, you are psrtly giving yourself and being true to your ideas/inspiration but also considering how to meet the reader to inspire and interest them. Often this results in better writing as your creation is honed and improved. As you say, it is a mark in the sand - one one side is the writing that never seeks publication and on the other the writing solely to get published/earn ££. And surely writing is communication - and for that you need somebody to listen....
ReplyDeleteSusan
Mindful closet-clearing presents a challenge, although in conversational test runs it’s proved popular with some of the locals. Are we meant to be mindful of what we are doing, of the objects as they emerge – or of all the memories, associations, confusions that come with them? That’s the parlaysing part. Plus speculation about possible future use. This is hard-wired into my genetic make-up, I’m afraid. I have at least one chromosome exclusively deisgnated for hoarding and its evil cousin, an inability to let-go.
ReplyDeleteI know we tend to be shy of ‘filthy lucre’ connotations, but we have to live. That’s why Declan Kiberd’s statement is important – despite whole industries operating as a result of the work writers, artists, and musicians do, artists tend to be clustered towards the bottom of that heap, and are meant to exist on inspiration alone. That whole lillies-of-the-field spin did us a huge disservice. And we are citizens, we don’t live in a vacuum – if we did, what would we have to write about?
The last comment, about honing the work, is where craft comes in. I could go on about this for hours. Inspiration, ideas, the piece that ‘writes itself’, characters that run amok through the caverns of your mind, are all well and good but at some point you have to try to gather words for them; you have to try to make a working sentence, good enough to bring them to life, then improve it. It’s not as easy as it sounds. It can make a person moody, self-destructive, impossible to live with. It’s important not to panic, even when all your bells are clanging. To take it slowly. Remember to breathe. There’s a great EL Doctorow quote about drving across a continent at night. You can only see as far as the beam of your headlights, he says, but you can make the whole trip that way.
(Cheering words for life in the shadow of a cloud of volcanic ash?)