Art & Mediocrity: A (VERY) Short Treatise On Crimes Against Art and Taste

We live in a time of impressive mediocrity. Not a time of David & Michelangelo:

(Photo credit: http://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-david/)

This applies to many areas of life, but, as an artist, I want to focus on the arts. Because it is bad.

I actually ended up on Steemit in large part because if I typed in #writer on other social media all that came up were choppy, shoddy journal entries pretending to be poetry with a little not-so-creative spacing on eye-rolling black backgrounds. I had so few people to authentically connect with that I was starting to shrivel.

And, of course--at the risk of sounding elitist, although that really is nowhere near the goal--people who think that a melodramatic journal entry with no real poetry is art are of course not going to be the kind of people I can hope to really dialogue and share my work with. These are not Dostoevsky or Raphael or Aristotle people, or even just people who appreciate excellent woodworking and field-picked flowers on the table with the sunlight streaming in. These are inspiration-quotes-without-any-bite-or-meaning-on-stock-images people.

In other words, rather than a community I can go to, they are the antithesis I must run from.

So you may see my predicament.

(Thank you, Steemit. Seriously. I am so hopeful today that I will uncover wonderful artists in the corners of this new platform. Pleeeeease come my way, serious writers and artists. I need you like I need water.)

Most singer-songwriter work is the same quality—terrible lyrics, and no concern for taste, beauty, aesthetic, or real value and meaning. The same goes for every other current artistic medium.

And don’t get me wrong—I'm not entertainment-opposed. Entertainment has a place. Truly entertaining work is no problem for me, provided it is actually entertaining and.. good.

It’s just the stuff that is bad in any category that I have a problem with.

And most of it is BAD. Especially most of what is trying to be “deep.” Like, puke-worthy bad. Like, causing-me-physical-pain bad. Like, wow-I-don’t-know-how-to-even-pretend-this-isn’t-torture-to-read/hear/observe-even-though-you’re-my-friend bad.

This is agony for an artist.

There is so little originality and actual artistry in the modern world that I feel soul-starved.

I walk down the street, and I am met by ugly billboards, screaming advertisements, utilitarian buildings, and an overabundance of concrete.

I go to church, and the hymns are bland and embarrassing to the point of nausea.

I go online and everyone--the artists worst of all--is posting this week’s cliché phrase and not bothering with grammar or spelling or real creativity at all.

Starving, I say.

But here’s the thing. It is very hard to be honest about the severe lack of taste in the world, because it is so rampant. It’s everywhere. Almost everyone you love has terrible taste, and for you to even call some of it into question makes you an insensitive ogre.

Again: enter Steemit. I cannot begin to tell you how freeing it is to feel free to finally write freely. I am not limited by the suffocating expectations of those I’ve known for years who, while often kind, wonderful, virtuous, truly better-than-me people, are steeped in dross and sentimentality and can’t distinguish between was is excellent and what is pure whale blubber.

We need to find the courage again to say what is good and what is not. We need to be able to offer authentic thoughts and criticism on written and artistic works. And we need to do it quickly.

I say this as someone who was destined for torturing the world with my painful melodrama had it not been for one good teacher. And I say it as an admitted work in progress. We don't need to be unnecessarily mean about it, but we must be honest.

If we don’t find that courage (and sanity, frankly), we have officially forfeited the milliennia of greatness that is our birthright and inheritance, right back through the Renaissance and Christendom through to the great ancients and beyond.

Please let us not bequeath only Miley and soap operas and adult finger-painting to the coming generations.

Thank you, Steemit, for being somewhere that I can actually, finally speak.