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ALOHA FRIDAY
Last week I wrote about Love. Wonderful topic. We all should experience love. But this week I'm writing about Art. Art that is never finished.
Everyone can experience Art when they look at a painting or a sculpture, or read a book or watch a movie. But, and this is to contradict what your mother and your kindergarten teacher said, not everyone can create a work of art. Those pictures hanging on your refrigerator when you were a kid? They were actually pretty horrible. They were only slightly worse than paint by numbers.
It takes a great deal of work, at least a soupcon of talent and much more inspiration to create a work of Art. Yet while creating a word of art is so difficult, ruining a work of art is so easy. And by ruining it, I am not referring to those misguided individuals who slash a Rembrandt or cover the naughty parts of a magnificent nude painting claiming it is obscene.
Firstly there are those who are constantly pushing artists to "finish it". Publishers/editors/museum curator/gallery owners/critics, they all want to see a finished product. I can just imagine Michelangelo stretched out on his back, high up in the Sistine Chapel as a voice drifts up from below. "Leonardo, it's Pope Julius II. Could you wrap it up? I've got a baptism scheduled here for two o'clock tomorrow."
Secondly, much of the time, a work of art is ruined because artists are insecure people. They are never satisfied with what they've painted/sculpted/written/filmed. To their minds it could always be better.
So, if the pressure from outside isn't enough, the pressure from the artist himself to just make that one last little change is enough to drive him/her crazy. I imagine da Vinci unveiling the Mona Lisa and as everyone tells him how wonderful she is, a little voice in the back of his mind keeps saying "I need to work on that smile, just a little touch-up and she'll be perfect, not so enigmatic maybe."
So Art is never finished. Every artist wants to go back, wants to revisit their work and make just a few small changes. Changes that will bring perfection. Unfortunately, with bills to be paid, and outsiders clamoring for a finished product, those works of art will never be perfect. Yet we will see them as perfection itself, but only because we do not look with the artist's eye.
And with that in mind, I'm off to work on the fourth, or is it the fifth, revision of my next book. It's gonna be great. I just need to tweak it a little more. Happy Aloha Friday!
Note, "It is customary for business people to dress down on "Aloha Friday's." Bankers, Lawyers, Doctors and professionals of all kinds dress down on fridays in Hawai'i. No ties, just Aloha shirts for men and mumus for the wahine(women).
I just finished reading Michael's second book," Primo's Numba-2" (Is Chicken-skin a local delicacy?)
Like the first book, this book is entertaining, fun and hard to put down with all the characters that frequent Primo's Bar on Kaua'i. To order books go to; http://www.michaelherr.com/ Tell Him Kimo Dakine sent you! Aloha, Kimo
