Familiars, Hipsterism, Artists' Motivations (Again!) and Elaborate Heist Metaphors (the Metaphors are Elaborate, not the Heists)

The Antlers have had a new album out for a full month now* and I'm only learning about this today, like what the heck...

It's alright, it's fine. I think I might be... I don't know, was gonna say "hipster" but here I have to define that again... I think I might know why, what it means, I mean. McKenna and Devon knowing the lyrics to top 40s I've never even heard of, which I could never do; I mean I don't bother learning the top 40s, music is so great because there's always something awesome you've never heard of out there, and you don't stop looking, and, that's what I do, always look, and dig. That, and, I'm not very good with lyrics. May also be why I can't sing along.

Brother's post about his own taste in music, ranking every single t.ø.p. song so far, got me thinking about this a bit, and then there's this (nobody spoil "Heathens" for me, all right, don't want any spoilers for Suicide Squad at all...)

Okay, so. Last class of a couple of classes today; I do have a final at 7:00 in the morning so I don't want to stay up too late, although with this last Ancient Temples and Temple Texts class it's revealed that the papers which had been due on Wednesday can actually be turned in, just, whenever, during the week, which leaves me once again with a lot more time than I'd thought.

Still, test at 7:00; don't want to take up too much time. Getting to bed, getting good sleep and all that.

Fortunately I've already got word count to post, have been writing already today, on the subject of artists' motivations. How to serve the world with artistic talent, how to stay moral as an artist and how to litmus test the morality of the inspiration of the content of a piece of art you want to create. That's seriously, what, the final (lesson) was, in my composition class (love it here.)

It's kind of a topic I guess I think about a lot, or at least write about a lot apparently, but I don't think I've ever figured it out so lucidly as I did here. So I'm posting it.

An artist doesn’t become an artist because she hates art. A professional doesn’t become professional because they’re bad at it and don’t practice. The world is full of amateur artists, who genuinely love what they do and can even be pretty good. Everyone dreams of making a living of what they do, but this can introduce conflicts of interest. Creation of art is a celebration of the Spirit of Christ in us, but what if we make art to pay the bills? This is why we’re wary of those who “sell themselves out,” as though abandoning the most personal (amateur) parts of the artists within us sucks the rest of our souls out right past along with them, leaving the sellout a husk, not a true artist.

Having external motivation for art can be a bad thing- immoral thing. The content of the art uninspired by the Holy Ghost, left to be inspired by Satan or man- and artwork inspired by man is itself only inspired by either of the other two as it is.

We can also experience a shift in art motivations unrelated to content- art created not to uplift, but to impress other artists. Creation as an act of love (amateur) unshared is selfish, shared with others is a service. Creation as an act of immodesty-designed solely to impress- is shared with others as an act of selfishness.

How then do we improve our art, make it worth spreading and sharing and make it better and more capable of uplifting others, while maintaining our modesty? Pray for our talents, pray for humility, see our talents for what they are: gifts from God.

Also, hate to spoil the mood, but- while I'm posting stuff up, here's an analogy I wrote for that class, at the beginning of the semester, where the assignment was to create a metaphor for the elements and principles of design.

I would liken the elements and principles of design to a team of cons working together to pull off a heist. The elements are the individual criminals, all working together to pull off the larger heist, handling different tasks which would be principles. Each element has its own strengths as part of the team in achieving a principle, like how line (the distraction) is especially good at leading the eye to a focal point, but shape (the grifter) can also easily complete this task should it need to. The designer himself, the secretive mastermind of the team, can assemble different teams together using different elements, to pull different heists, needing a whole team to achieve what he wants- like how it takes more than one element to create a lost-and-found effect, and a whole team of individual elements such as color in order to create a pattern of repetition and even more for that and variation. (Or use more complex elements like texture for repetition and variation.) Sometimes you want to rob a casino, and sometimes you want to rob a bank? I don’t know, there’s probably a better analogy for that one. 

Assignment today (alongside the morality of art thing) was to come up with a better analogy than the one we came up with at the start of the semester, now that we know a semester's worth of knowledge more about design, but, it's, a better analogy to be sure (orchestra!**) but, being more apt, isn't as interesting.




*EDIT: and it's worse than I thought... I read that "Familiars" came out June 17, but I didn't read the year. It came out June 17th, all right... two years ago. Great album, though, now that I've gotten the chance to listen to it. All the best tracks have cusses in, but it's pretty solid overall.
**"Line, shape, value, texture, color. There are five basic (2D, still image) elements of design, but the principles can be listed countlessly, and the effects that those principles produce infinite. Keeping this in mind, my new metaphor is an orchestra- different instruments can perform the same basic tune, but they each have their own voices and ranges in doing so. Working together the instruments can achieve contrast and harmony, working in tandem to emphasize passages, or have solos taking forefront the way an artist can use primarily/solely color or shape contrast to establish variation. And it wouldn’t sound very good if they all played at once- there needs to be at least some thought to application of which elements to use at any given time." I got an A on this one, 'twixt the, mortality thing and this analogy. So it can't be all that bad.