Status Updates From Envisioning Howard Finster:...

"From [the] pov [of dramatic realization in per formative ritual], meaning is never simply uncovered/discovered as already or essent. present in artwork/narrative artifact. Rather it is a dynamic interp. process involv. artist, artwork itself & reception. Vital: that is found engaging, existentially signif. emot. resonant. Myth should call 4 intellectual/emot. reaction [as] good story or sign, or effective ad does.

"What was often ignored by urban sophisticates in the film [Junebug 2005] & more generally...was the Southern evangelical reverence for the acute contradictions of human nature, the universality of revivalist need for a periodic re-creation/recreation of mind & body, and strangeness of some inner spirit lodged in all external forms of flesh & matter."

"Quoting the historian of art and insanity John MacGregor, Bottoms notes that an 'artist is a man who creates a parallel universe, who doesn't want an imposed universe inflicted on him.' And that is the very 'definition of insanity.' "