I have written very little of it yet - actually, nothing but scrambled thoughts about the short story, and a snippet of text intended as a trial, a test run of the ideas and characters(see "dialogue" as of 7th Nov).
However, it's starting to very much take shape in my head.
It revolves around death. Alike Raison d'Être, it's like a philosophical discussion, nigh a monologue, disguised as the trials and tribulations of an unnamed character.
It's a good platform, I think. Obviously, writing a clear-headed philosophical article is not by far as interesting. Partly, writing is still, in my eyes, an art. Properly picking your sentences, your ideas, your characters, and shaping a text out of them - it's like drawing a picture, shuffling through the elements in your head to see which piece fits the puzzle. And at the same time, if I were to do nothing but express my own thoughts in an article, it would leave little to your own imagination. This delicate balance of telling you my mind, and using your mind, is what constitutes the art of writing.
Art, in my eyes, is the craft of provoking thought. Whenever you provoke thought, whenever you awake that dormant beast of imagination and idealization that slumbers within every one of us, that is art. (Part of this is why I consider certain pieces of rap, hip hop, and popular music to be art, rather than music - they provoke thought, in a sense, but lack all kinds of rhythm that constitute a piece of music)
When you read this entry in my log, do you reflect upon it as your own? Do you apply my principles, my ideas, my experiences, as I describe them, onto yourselves? I would not. In fact, when I read an article, or a blog entry, or any piece of non-fictional text, I add that to my little bank of knowledge, as another reference to cite in my brain, another aid for my train of thought. However, when I read a poetic lyric, or a philosophical short story - that applies to my own behaviour. That goes to the heart rather than the mind. Just as a painting can strike fear, or a sculpture inspire honour, all art aims, or should aim, for the heart.
Do not get me wrong. As I refer casually to the heart, I mean not your primal centre of emotion and instinct, I mean those thoughts that strike you, as a person, rather than you as a member of the community. A work of art strives to embetter you, as a work of nonfiction strives to embetter mankind. Wherein lies the difference between you as a communal being, and you as a person? Well, take this blog for instance. I do not wash my emotions - and the teenage hail of emotion is quite overwhelming at times, I'll tell you - but I write of my thoughts. My thoughts of emotion is stored in a wholly separate document, which I keep to myself and myself only. They are for my own personal reflection. This, however, I intend as a reflection upon anyone who reads; this is a text shaped by the communal self. (I'm sorry, that section became really strange. I can't properly entertain this notion, but neither will it make sense to omit it. I hope your imagination and common sense will fill in the rest. Otherwise, we should have a chat sometime, just to see if we can clear this thing out)
Of course, works of longer fiction are harder. They tend to have a less obvious moral, yet they tend to mean something in the long run. While certain works are for nothing but distraught entertainment - not a bad thing, as such, in fact I am an avid reader of books that really are quite meaningless - others strike out for the heart, once again.
Only sometimes they puncture a lung.
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