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Reinventing Relevance
May. 2nd, 2005 12:27 pmUsually, the best art is the art which is perfectly timely - paintings which reveal a new way of thinking about the world, music tied into revolutionary movements, and books which perfectly express or predict the emerging problems of modern society. For art to have a powerful effect, it must be tied to the world (to the real world, viewed with total clarity; not the illusion world encouraged by prevailing orthodoxies). It is my belief that the goal of art is multiple levels of truth: truth on a personal level, truth on an artistic level, truth on an emotional level, and truth on a philosophical level. (Thus the best poems contain several stories in the same few words, and can take on the nuance most needed by the reader.) If your art is not relevant, what is the point of bothering?
I recently reviewed Anywhere But Here for Reflection's Edge, and in the process read its precursor, The Getaway Special (also covered in the ABH review). It fucked me up pretty badly (as you may or may not be able to tell from the review); I'd be reading along through a bland passage about which bucket the spacefarers decided to use to carry water, and suddenly a word or phrase would pop out and remind me how drastically the world has changed in the past four years, and how dismal the future now looks. Not only dismal, but uncertain. This is hell for science fiction writers. It's very difficult for me to get story ideas these days. I'm tired of writing dystopias and not having a solution to give. Dystopias are only fun as a warning, not as a representation of how things already are.
I recently reviewed Anywhere But Here for Reflection's Edge, and in the process read its precursor, The Getaway Special (also covered in the ABH review). It fucked me up pretty badly (as you may or may not be able to tell from the review); I'd be reading along through a bland passage about which bucket the spacefarers decided to use to carry water, and suddenly a word or phrase would pop out and remind me how drastically the world has changed in the past four years, and how dismal the future now looks. Not only dismal, but uncertain. This is hell for science fiction writers. It's very difficult for me to get story ideas these days. I'm tired of writing dystopias and not having a solution to give. Dystopias are only fun as a warning, not as a representation of how things already are.
