Three Men and a Column

What is our purpose as artists if not to inspire awe?

Film can impress awe onto images, time and time within images. Kubrick was perhaps the best at this ‘-‘- or, maybe Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Leone, Scorsese, Kazan, Capra, Ford, or even Ozu. Each surely overwhelmed by the human experience, each sensitive to the fluid time, and expressed so to burn images onto the soul, to dislodge them from time. It’s incredible how long they spent in the vast quarry of time, mining, how many images they emancipated to eternity.

There are three constituents: artist, art and audience. Artist and audience are in a love triangle with the art, both receiving, both giving, neither possessing its total affection. Does a film exist without viewers? Are its truths as valid, its images as indelible, without the corroboration of its recipients? Film is spoken of as a collaborative medium, where artists in different fields combine their talent under the vision of one to create one piece of art. But is not the most important collaboration between art and viewer? What part of a film does its audience create? Is more awe generated by respecting the audience’s tastes or challenging them?

And what of those not willing to be challenged? There are two reactions, as I see it, to a society of people resistant to change. One is to make ridiculous all that is grave and make grave all that is ridiculous. The other is to locate, with all sincerity, the source of human stubbornness and to express and illumine its (lack of) worth. The latter is the more frustrating undertaking, and much less amusing in its immediate reactions. I practice ridiculousness in my life and sincerity in my art. I have begun to feel the consequences of this disconnect, this contradiction and am terrified at the prospect that they might be canceling each other out.

I am a product of the American psyche: I am what you think I think I am; an endless game of paranoia and show. I can’t deny that I wish to be important, and I know how importance seems. My greatest fear is that everything I do is an effort to affect a greater importance than I actually have.

What combinations of methods can I use to deny this fear? In my expression I can guarantee sincerity only by presenting these fears to an audience. The fear is the only thing I’m sure is real.

I’m a 21-year-old, self-proclaimed artist. Consider my mind. Daily I deconstruct all, feverishly trying to understand myself, to be sincere, though I use the mind to deconstruct the mind: things fall apart; the center cannot hold. What can one do but resort to poetry? When reason fails, only the illogical, alchemical associations of poetry can offer relief, truth, beauty, calm.

Film is the poetical linking of moments. ‘A mosaic of time,’ as Tarkovsky says, in which images are meaningless, but their interactions profound, and like my fears, the only things surely real. We have a lifetime of guess and check ahead of us. We will collect moments of deep wonder and pain, and combine and recombine them forever, looking for sparks where they touch.’

Remember: you have the right to be unapologetically poetic.