A thought occurred to me the other day (as happens occassionally) that there are some writers/artists who are deemed to have drained the well of inspiration dry because they have not published anything recently. Some artists will claim that this is true – that they have run out of steam and ideas and need a break or a complete change. Stephen King is an example of a writer who has claimed that he had run out of ideas and that From A Buick 8 would be his last book – the recent publication of Cell would seem to challenge this however.

 

Anyhow – I find it difficult to believe that an artist/writer ever stops being what they are. My position is that a writer always writes – if not on paper – they are constantly creating vignettes in their head as they move through life. The stage is always being set, the characters are always being fleshed out and little plots are always being indulged to one degree or another.

 

It seems to me the idea of an artist drying up is a trap laid by either culture, the artist or both. The trap is that culture and/or the artist begin to define art by how it is consumed. If it is liked by a certain number of people or a certain kind of person than it is art. When people stop enjoying my creations I am no longer successful and have been deemed or deem myself to have "dried up" – the muse has fled.

 

I believe that art, first and foremost is a very personal thing ultimately created by the artist for the artist. That others would connect with it is something of a bonus to the artist. There are certain universal themes that artists tap into but this is not what determines the attractiveness of the art to the outsider. Rather it is how well the artist connects with their culture’s understanding of the universal theme at that moment in time.

 

Inevitably then, if the above is true, an artist who desires to make a living from their art must inevitably compromise the art to ensure its "marketability" to someone. Of course the artist does not live in a vacuum but in culture and is informed by culture so their art will be as well – this means that periodically the popularity of the average artist’s art will wax and wan as culture’s influence on their lives waxes and wans.

 

It seems to me the most lasting and critically acclaimed (ironically) art has been that art which in some sense eschews the culture it was born in and seeks out and speaks directly of the universal theme. Still – I am not aware of any art that has completely shed the cloak of culture – such art would be completely incomprehensible and would be the universal itself.

 

In that sense than God is the only pure art. Everything else is a good or bad attempt to explain God. This might explain the attractiveness of Christ over the past 2,000 years. He being the only perfect (God) representation of God in a culturally relevant form (human).

 

Christ is God, the perfect poem dedicated to Humanity.

 

P.S. Now I understand why I like the first line of The Gospel According to John: