Difficult Art
On the surface, there isn't much similarity between Amir "Questlove" Thompson's new memoir, Mo' Meta Blues and Dodie Smith's 1948 novel, I Capture the Castle. If you look a little more closely, you'll see that they both illuminate a fundamental truth about the nature of art though: Any piece of art that is truly groundbreaking will typically be initially resisted and maybe even criticized.
You might not even like it at all. But if you have that reaction, it might be worth taking a second look. A comedian once said that jazz music "defies you to like it". That's because it's not "easy"...you can't just sit down and listen to it with your brain turned off. You have to give it some thought. All truly transformative art might defy you to like it, but if you put the time in, you might be surprised.
Questlove talks about how his positive reaction to new records typically comes through in one of two ways. 1) He loves it right away and is immediately into it... or 2) He resists it and isn't quite sure that he likes it. It's challenging for him. He says that he finds the records that fall into the second category always end up being the ones that really last for him and become something truly memorable and possibly even influential on his music.
I had that same experience with PJ Harvey's 2000 album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. I initially resisted it and disliked it so much that I even returned it to the store. Something made me give it another chance though and I bought it a second time and couldn't get enough of it. It has gone on to become one of my favorite albums.
There have been a number of films that have had this effect on me as well (to name a couple: Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes). I didn't like these movies at all (I could even sit through The Red Shoes) the first time that I saw them. On second look, they amazed me. I would much rather watch a shitty, conventionally "weird" movie than a good, mainstream film any day of the week. For my money, the weirder, the better.
Dodie Smith expressed a sentiment similar to Questlove's in I Capture the Castle. Her characters, Simon and Cassandra, discuss how true beauty in nature can't really be put into words, in the same way that you can't really "explain" something artistic to someone. Cassandra doesn't really understand her father's novel that he is working on and she wants Simon to explain it to her. He says that in the same way that she can't put the beauty of the English countryside or the brilliant effect that her antiquated home has on her into words, he can't really describe what the brilliance of her father's novel is all about. She must discover it and feel it for herself. Not to sound like a Luddite, but in the age of instant gratification and constant electronic presence, I think we're losing a bit of that DIY appreciation of art. We need someone to tell us if something is good and then immediately make up our mind about whether we want to experience it or not versus finding out for ourselves.
Something truly meaningful shouldn't be able to be expressed and understood so easily, whether it's art or any of the other beautiful, yet inexplicable things in life.
You might not even like it at all. But if you have that reaction, it might be worth taking a second look. A comedian once said that jazz music "defies you to like it". That's because it's not "easy"...you can't just sit down and listen to it with your brain turned off. You have to give it some thought. All truly transformative art might defy you to like it, but if you put the time in, you might be surprised.
Questlove talks about how his positive reaction to new records typically comes through in one of two ways. 1) He loves it right away and is immediately into it... or 2) He resists it and isn't quite sure that he likes it. It's challenging for him. He says that he finds the records that fall into the second category always end up being the ones that really last for him and become something truly memorable and possibly even influential on his music.
I had that same experience with PJ Harvey's 2000 album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. I initially resisted it and disliked it so much that I even returned it to the store. Something made me give it another chance though and I bought it a second time and couldn't get enough of it. It has gone on to become one of my favorite albums.
There have been a number of films that have had this effect on me as well (to name a couple: Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes). I didn't like these movies at all (I could even sit through The Red Shoes) the first time that I saw them. On second look, they amazed me. I would much rather watch a shitty, conventionally "weird" movie than a good, mainstream film any day of the week. For my money, the weirder, the better.
Dodie Smith expressed a sentiment similar to Questlove's in I Capture the Castle. Her characters, Simon and Cassandra, discuss how true beauty in nature can't really be put into words, in the same way that you can't really "explain" something artistic to someone. Cassandra doesn't really understand her father's novel that he is working on and she wants Simon to explain it to her. He says that in the same way that she can't put the beauty of the English countryside or the brilliant effect that her antiquated home has on her into words, he can't really describe what the brilliance of her father's novel is all about. She must discover it and feel it for herself. Not to sound like a Luddite, but in the age of instant gratification and constant electronic presence, I think we're losing a bit of that DIY appreciation of art. We need someone to tell us if something is good and then immediately make up our mind about whether we want to experience it or not versus finding out for ourselves.
Something truly meaningful shouldn't be able to be expressed and understood so easily, whether it's art or any of the other beautiful, yet inexplicable things in life.
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