For my mother, on mother’s day ; )
That’s how this post began at least, but that was a long time ago and I never could get down on paper how my mother is a Monolith (it’s not that she isn’t a monolith to me, it’s just that I can’t articulate it at this point in my life, I think I’m still too young). I like the word monolith though and the idea of a monolith creating new boundaries for civilised and uncivilized societies alike was awesome to see in 2001 a Space Odyssey, so I’ll leave it as is.
This post will instead be about pessimism, optimism, realism, and art. All forms of art. It’s something that really troubles me sort of deeply. You see I always have the notion that even with my most creative work it is too much influenced by other artists and is thus not even really original. If art is unoriginal, then why create it? If it has been done before there is no point. I guess what I’m getting around to is this: Eventually will there come a time when there can really be no further original art created since it has all been done before?
The optimist will say no and embrace the small details that make the artistic work different from it’s influences. Or will state that this work of art is actually a culmination of many different influences into one new style. I can agree with that.
The pessimist will say yes but I can’t think of any reasons why he would say that, it is just a gut feeling. I have this gut feeling too.
The realist view is not even worth discussing on a generalized level since it’s so deeply personal, sort of like an artistic spirituality. Sort of like arguing about politics. It is of course there though, so it’s worth just a mention.
To me, this writing is new and not a copied work, it came from my mind and not from reading anything else that I can recall. But my mind is an amalgamation of all previous influences so maybe it’s not so original after all. It seems science and technology are the easiest routes to follow for creating original artistic work since they are ever shifting, but even those will be overdone eventually.
Now that I’ve written all of this I don’t even really completely believe it anymore and have a hard time framing my original argument. Same thing happened with my previous post. I completely thought it was all true when I wrote it while I was stoned, but when I woke up the next morning and looked at some physics it just didn’t seem like very much fun anymore. That’s a good reason not to smoke, everything seems pale in comparison to the high-state. Or maybe the high-state colorizes life and real sober life is dull?
To give an example of what I mean with all of this talk of unoriginality: take a look at the Novel WIP down below, it is superficially very original (at least I fucking hope so, haha). The characters are not copied from anything I can recall, very weird things happen in the story, and so on. However, it is still made up completely of outside influences. Reading Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America made me realize it’s okay to have really short paragraphs. I love fantasy and sci-fi so I created a new world to the weirdest extent imaginable, but my imagination has been influenced by all of the sci-fi I’ve read. Even though I haven’t directly “copied” anyone, it just isn’t new territory. Fictional worlds with dreams have been done before, this weirdness has been done before and way better than mine. Check out Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar for instance. Does anyone else stumble over these issues?
Anyway, in closing, I guess I think my realistic view of art is: only the best create new genres and they change the world as we know it, reader by reader, listener by listener, observer by observer. I am not one of the best and so can only try and imagine (however meekly) who or what will be the next major influence in art, and just because I am not creative or insightful enough to make or predict this next genre does not mean it will not exist someday.
I guess this could be looked at as relating to artistic monoliths. Who would you say some of your favorites are?
16th Street 
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