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Oskar Thomsen
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Going back to Merritt: his detractors want emotion expressed directly in the song. They're offended by his brilliant artifice; they don't want irony mixed with angst.

I think Merritt is clearly about songwriting as an act of art. After the initial direct impression of his songs' words, what follows is the image of him smoking a cigarette in a book-littered room as he writes.

That's what I meant by "great art evokes much more than itself". It can be a microculture around the artist's personality (e.g. Warhol) or his work alone (I was amused by this from the discussion: "I have very fond memories of working on a large, physical project with a couple of other people who also knew 69LS inside and out, and singing the songs in order, from memory, with my friends.") Sonic Youth conjures the images of people at a show as aware of each other as they are of the band: "we like this, it's our music".

Or it can powerfully evoke an entire era and culture, like great classic paintings.

Or something else, a very specific emotion. Rothko for me is something like stained glass, carrying a holy feeling.

So while I also steer clear of a crisp cleavage of thinking and doing, I think it's much harder to create a "scene", one that stays with you in its emotional richness, through written words alone than it is directly in the presence of other people. While I'll recall the greatness of Faulkner's Sound and the Fury, I more fondly remember the book group where we discussed it.

Edited by author 09-25-2002 12:55 PM
...this idea that it's more authentic or more emotional to watch people do than it is to watch them think -- a concept that's largely alien to me, because my primary joy in art and words comes from the fact that they alone can serve as a conduit of people's thoughts.

I guess I'm not convinced that it's possible to make such a distinction between 'doing' and 'thinking'. Or, for that matter, doing and art. If I take a walk in order to create a space, both physical and mental, in which I can think, is it reasonable for me to work at separating the two activities or is my thinking wholly bound up in my doing?

I often feel that watching someone 'do' is watching them think--to watch their intentions, their processes of interpretation as they are enacted and engaged. That's why I'm sometimes more fascinated by the process of art than the product. The work of Jackson Pollock, for instance, doesn't exist without process--though I'm sure many, many people would disagree with me about that!

Edit: Maybe, then, the insufficiency of language has to do with an inability to capture the interplay between thought and action. Returning to my example of walking, how do I 'write' the specific rhythms of walking which are essential to a full understanding of the experience of 'creating' the thoughts that come to me on my walk?