Why should anyone read my poetry, when there is so much excellent poetry out there already? Why should anyone buy my painting, when there are so many brilliant paintings in the world already? Why should anyone listen to my music, etc. etc.
That's the wrong way to look at it.
True, some people are professional artists, and they continue to produce art because that's their profession, and, in some cases, they even make a living that way.
But most people, if they are artists at all, are aspiring, apprentice, or amateur, and, if they are professional, don't make their living from their art.
The only reason to produce art, to be engaged in art work, is because it's of vital importance to us, whether or not anyone else likes it, or whether or not we like it ourselves.
Recently I decided to publish a novel that I began writing in the 1980s: "Site Report," an Israeli novel: http://www.amazon.com/Site-Report-Jeffrey-M-Green/dp/1502300621.
The manuscript I produced back then was huge and ungainly, and I saw I had no chance of getting it published, so I shelved it. Then a few years later, I reread it and cut about 1/3 of it, but I still didn't have the heart to send it out to agents and face disappointment after Today I am lessdisappointment. A few years after that, I put the whole thing onto my hard disk (I began writing it before I had a computer, and then, when I had a computer, it was an Osborne, one of the first home computers marketed, which ran on CP/M, so I couldn't copy the diskettes over to a PC).
Years went by, and I kept fiddling with the MS, cutting it, revising it, and then forgetting about it. When I heard of the possibility of publishing it for free and having it available on Amazon, I decided to reread it and see whether it was worth publishing.
By that time, I barely remembered writing it, and I was very surprised at how decent it was, so I did publish it. But I didn't have the sense of necessity about it, the drive that had enabled me to write it in the first place. I let too much time go by. And I have changed too much.
The novel is, as I see it now, about a person (an American Jewish woman) whose life is more or less stalled. She is divorced and can't meet any man worth marrying. She has a good job, but not exactly one she is committed to. So she decides to take a Sabbatical year in Israel and study biblical archaeology. In Israel she meets all kinds of people who are committed to their paths in life (though all the paths are different), and most of these people try to recruit her: stay in Israel and be what I am.
When I wrote it, but to a lesser degree now, I saw living in Israel as a kind of mission that transcended personal ambition and self-interest. It's hard for me to see life in Israel that way today. The novel conveys what attracted me to Israel thirty years ago. I could never write a novel in a similar spirit today.
That's the wrong way to look at it.
True, some people are professional artists, and they continue to produce art because that's their profession, and, in some cases, they even make a living that way.
But most people, if they are artists at all, are aspiring, apprentice, or amateur, and, if they are professional, don't make their living from their art.
The only reason to produce art, to be engaged in art work, is because it's of vital importance to us, whether or not anyone else likes it, or whether or not we like it ourselves.
Recently I decided to publish a novel that I began writing in the 1980s: "Site Report," an Israeli novel: http://www.amazon.com/Site-Report-Jeffrey-M-Green/dp/1502300621.
The manuscript I produced back then was huge and ungainly, and I saw I had no chance of getting it published, so I shelved it. Then a few years later, I reread it and cut about 1/3 of it, but I still didn't have the heart to send it out to agents and face disappointment after Today I am lessdisappointment. A few years after that, I put the whole thing onto my hard disk (I began writing it before I had a computer, and then, when I had a computer, it was an Osborne, one of the first home computers marketed, which ran on CP/M, so I couldn't copy the diskettes over to a PC).
Years went by, and I kept fiddling with the MS, cutting it, revising it, and then forgetting about it. When I heard of the possibility of publishing it for free and having it available on Amazon, I decided to reread it and see whether it was worth publishing.
By that time, I barely remembered writing it, and I was very surprised at how decent it was, so I did publish it. But I didn't have the sense of necessity about it, the drive that had enabled me to write it in the first place. I let too much time go by. And I have changed too much.
The novel is, as I see it now, about a person (an American Jewish woman) whose life is more or less stalled. She is divorced and can't meet any man worth marrying. She has a good job, but not exactly one she is committed to. So she decides to take a Sabbatical year in Israel and study biblical archaeology. In Israel she meets all kinds of people who are committed to their paths in life (though all the paths are different), and most of these people try to recruit her: stay in Israel and be what I am.
When I wrote it, but to a lesser degree now, I saw living in Israel as a kind of mission that transcended personal ambition and self-interest. It's hard for me to see life in Israel that way today. The novel conveys what attracted me to Israel thirty years ago. I could never write a novel in a similar spirit today.
1 comment:
We have changed. Israel has changed. Perhaps that's true everywhere. We just never got old somewhere else, so I guess we can't know for sure.
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