Art(ful) dodger

I think there is something wrong with me.

Actually, I know there is something wrong with me.

I don't get "Art." And I don't just mean "that which hangs upon a wall or stands on a pedestal in a museum." I don't get much of it at all. Or perhaps the right way to say it is, "Most art doesn't move me in the same ways as it appears to affect other humans, and that art which does get through to me then almost moves me too much, to the point where I avoid it completely, to avoid having those levers pulled and knobs twisted."

About 20 years ago I started withdrawing from reading fiction. I just couldn't stand having my emotions played with in that way. It isn't a hard and fast rule (and there is certainly some non-fiction that has gotten to me), and every once in a while (like every two to three years), I may still pull a favorite novel out and re-read it, but it is always something I've already read - known territory, known feelings.

Similarly, in the past decade I've really ramped down on watching movies, especially new movies, where modern fast-cut techniques mean the director can plant an image (and hence an emotion) in your head faster than you can close your eyes. And once it's in there, you can't get it out. So now I tend to only watch movies I've already seen (again, known territory, known feelings), or if it is a new movie I approach it very carefully and will turn it off halfway through if it is going somewhere I don't like (Fargo, Barton Fink, High Fidelity, Swimming With Sharks are examples of films I've never watched all the way through). And more and more I am tending to watch "new to me" old movies instead - film noirs, classic dramas and such - where the old-style directing and cutting techniques combined with the pre-Method character acting, while still quite capable of making a powerful film, don't seem to attack my emotions in quite the same way (just watched Grand Hotel this weekend for the first time - great flick!)

I have never "gotten" poetry. Other than Billy Collins, there are few poems, let alone poets, who "speak to me." I've tried to sit and read poetry, but I always get bored quickly, and my mind drifts. At least that isn't the same as the other arts, where I hold it apart because I fear the emotional damage it brings.

And then there is "real art." Hanging-on-the-walls, standing-on-a-pedestal art. I've been to museums in various cities. I've seen true masterpieces hanging on the walls both here and in Europe. I like ("like" with a small letter "l") the Impressionists, but mostly because I enjoy how their work looks in real life, up close - how their palpable, physical textures and techniques seen up close resolve into something quite lifelike and "alive" as you back away from the painting. Although I can't say they move me per se, more that they are interesting almost like an optical illusion is interesting.

I spent quite a bit of time in museums in London and other parts of England when I was over there doing project work and needed something to do on the weekends. I've been to the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam twice. I go and trudge through the corridors, dutifully reading the placards, looking at the exhibits, trying to feel...what? I don't know. Whatever it is others are feeling when they look at art, I guess. And always in the back of my mind wondering, "Can I go yet? Have I spent enough time here for it to count as 'going to the museum?' What's for lunch?"

Music is the one art form that I do let through my defense shields, and always have, and hopefully always will. It can make me cry, and laugh, and shout, and even (want to) dance. For some reason music is allowed to toy with my emotions while all other forms of art are not. More weirdly, music comes in via the audio channel only, and that is my worst channel for taking in information, but apparently my best for emotions.

Dunno. I'm just weird. But you knew that already.