Monday, 16 October 2017

A Change of Lighting

The next few entries will be inspired by the following excerpt from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus:

"We might laugh, but there was no amusement in the virtuous roar that went up from a stunned world at this execution of a cut-and-dried plan of campaign, knowledge of which had long been public property. However, I saw that our host liked this line much better and was glad of the chance to laugh, so I willingly joined in, not without recalling what Plato had said of comedy and tragedy: how they grow on the same tree and a change of lighting suffices to make one into the other" (Chapter 30, 295)

I am going to try to change the lighting for some works of art to see what happens. "What happens" means "assessment or analysis," and I know that my assessment will differ from other people's.

1. Change of "Lighting" on a photograph from shade-busting to shade-enhancing.

2. Transposition from a major key to a minor key.

3. Diction Switch up from positive connotations of a word to a negative connotation.

4. Translucent sculpture into an opaque sculpture.

5. Recoloration of a film snippet from high key to low key.

6. Recasting of a short play so good guys are bad guys (but with the same dialogue)

Friday, 6 October 2017

Follow Virginia Woolf's Advice

I am re-reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and I found a few things relevant to this blog's mission. Woolf is a writer, and her long essay is, understandably, about writing, but her advice can be transposed to other creative endeavours.

1. A creative person requires solitude and a modicum of financial independence.

"[A] woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (Chapter One). 

2. Don't bow down to critics.


3. If good art is important, then someone must create it. That someone is you.

"[G]ood books are desirable and . . . good writers, even if they show every variety of human depravity, are still good human beings. Thus when I ask you to write more books I am urging you to do what will be for your good and for the good of the world at large" (Chapter Six).

4.  "Greatness" is not inherent in individual people. Greatness is a potential that exists in society. Only when people exercise this potential can it ever become reality.

 "[G[reat poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh" (Chapter Six).