Just Turn Your Brain Off
So there I was, at the intermission of "The life and the love" - a play, adapted from a book of the same name - exchanging thoughts about it with my brother. We both deemed it to be bad. I explained it to be disrespectful to the audience by slapping them over the face with overblown acting and repeated sentences, as if the audience were of 5-year-olds and needed to be handed the meaning and all exposition on a silver platter. For goodness sake, just look at the title, what do you think it's about? The lack of subtlety, it's unbearable. It's so uninspired and directly states what the show is about, god forbid the audience might misunderstand it! My brother said he didn't quite understand why he didn't like it, but he was bored and said he understood where I was coming from.
Then we joined mum and pops, who had run into some old friends of theirs. We didn't quite join in their conversation, just stood in the same circle making fun of the play by ourselves. Until we were overheard and asked "So I gather you didn't like it?" So I explained myself. I said I found it trash, to be exact with my word choice, and explained my reasons and then quickly asked for their perspective. Instead I was met with "You might be too young," so I asked them to explain why that might be, what I might be missing, I was desperate to understand. Instead of getting an answer, we fell into a vicious cycle of me asking for their perspective and them just avoiding the answer and saying a variant of "Oh I didn't understand it either when I was your age," or "You just don't see it." I felt like a joke. Finally, after a while, I got my answer. Which was that they enjoyed getting a break from the mundane. Just dressing up, driving a hour to the theatre and enjoying a cup of coffee at the intermission was a pleasure in itself and it didn't matter how on-the-nose the piece was. The piece needn't be complicated or thought-provoking, that wasn't the point. They seemed a tad upset about the conversation, but I thanked them for their perspective and we went on to see the second half of the play.
Later mum brought out that I had come off as arrogant. She said that has known me long enough to "tolerate my rants about higher art and all that other weird stuff," but that others might misunderstand me and see me as aggressive. Pops cited Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and said that it would do me well to avoid strong emotions when discussing such things, as it might be seen as an attack against their emotions rather than a discussion about the play. That got me to take a step back and think. This is the third time this month. When did I get so emotional about discussing art? Have I finally become a full-blown cynic? Am I in the wrong?
The life and the art
It's not like I think of myself as the smartest in the room, so to say. I truly am willing to hear out every opinion and accept them when I don't agree with them. However, again and again I do find myself being the only one in the room that has any capacity to express themselves. I am stupid, but there rarely is anyone that is able to put it into words.
"You are stupid" Okay, that is all well and good, but would you please elaborate? "Uhh, I don't know, you just are, that's how I feel, it doesn't have to be complicated."
Just throwing around statements out of emotion with no explanation is no grounds for a meaningful discussion. How on earth is anyone to understand one if they are not able to explain the root of their emotion. If you feel that "Alita Battle Angel" was good then you need to find what gave rise to that feel. If you feel that "Thus spoke Zarathustra" was bad then you need to find the words to explain why you felt like it. Even the basics of argumentation theory would suffice:
"Typically an argument has an internal structure, comprising the following
- a set of assumptions or premises
- a method of reasoning or deduction and
- a conclusion or point."
No need for anything complicated. Just three sentences and that already can set one on the way to becoming understandable. So, what good is a genius that is only able to mutter a single sentence about how he feels about any one thing? The genius might as well be the dumbest in the room, because no-one may ever know what they're thinking. If they possess no capacity to express their geniosity then what worth does it have? Basking in their bubble of subconscious self-admiration has no value in my eyes.
So I guess the reason I've been so emotional about the art lately is because I've grown tired. I have grown tired of prefacing and ending all of my sentences with "that's just my opinion" when it should be obvious that anything that leaves my mouth is my opinion. I have grown tired of pouring my heart out and explaining my view points only to get responses like "I feel otherwise, I can't explain it though" "Don't overthink it" "Just turn your brain off" "I hate analysing, don't make it complicated" and so on and on and on and on... I think I have latently went on the offensive to force a response. Maybe if I choose the emotional attack vector they will be forced to express themselves with more than a single sentence. It might have become, without acknowledging it to myself, the new default. I know it's wrong, now I see it. I let my emotions get the best of me. I lived and learned.
"You are just different"
"Consider this: You're just different, you've always looked at things from a different light. You've always been ahead of your age. You are always meticulous and comprehensive, disciplined and analytical. You were born like this and you can't expect these things to be the norm. Everyone has their strengths and shortcomings. These qualities happen to be your strengths and you can't blame others for these qualities may be their weaknesses."
Me mum, in response to the discussion at the intermission.
Is this really it? Can we really attribute all the work I have put into becoming the best version of myself to some strands of DNA? Literally everyone around me has access to the collective knowledge of all humankind - internet, libraries, book stores, psychologists, anything. All the resources that I have went through to learn what I know, to be what I am, are available to everyone at no cost. I am nothing special, I have not invented my way of thinking, my way of life - I have copied the masters, borrowed pieces from them. Now I am like a mosaic, with pieces borrowed and synthesized from a myriad of artists, thinkers and idiots alike. What part of it was I born with? What is it about me that others can not have?
I would like to think that the ability to express oneself should be something universal. The skill that should be learned by every single thinking creature. And I am vehemently against saying that self-expression is something that only a few blessed are born with. Self-expression is a skill and as such it is acquirable by everyone. I was horrible at explaining things until I started putting in the work. I remember vividly setting a new goal for the school year when I stepped into 10th grade. I was 16 years old at the time and I was having a hard time in the Literature class. On the one hand I loved "the difficult books, classics or whatever," but on the other hand I was unable to clearly explain why I loved them. Analysing was hard too, I felt like I understood the books I read, but I was stumped by actually writing about it. It wasn't until I acknowledged that I had a shortcoming that could be overcome that I started improving. I started reading about it, learning about how others express themselves and then tried my best to write in a way that others could understand me. Over three years my Literature class essays have went from C-s and D-s to a stable A-s. I learned self-expression, I wasn't born with it.
So am I really "just different" for wanting everyone to articulate their feelings and thoughts?
