2AM Traffic

Yesterday I messed around with Reason and watched Full Metal Jacket for the first time, which is amazing based on Lee Ermey's performance alone. Beyond that it looks great.

And now, a rant about integrity.

I'm going to try to start getting back into some reading again. Life gets to feeling like a constant battle to not let laziness overtake my interest in art. Lately, though, I've been feeling better about the course I'm on. Since the beginning of the year I've been trying to "correct" my artistic side. The bottom line is that I need to be an artist if I want to keep living. Certain kinds of interference have caused me to stray from expressing myself. First of all, I worry about being authentic and sincere. I don't want to look at art as a series of decisions I make based on the politics of a community. It compromises my integrity.

I look at that word "integrity" and even I want to roll my eyes at it. Something about it sounds pretentious and unbearable. There's a deep part of me that thinks that true artists, those who express themselves honestly, are humble about what they do. They don't view themselves as having integrity, they simply create because they have to. It comes as naturally as breathing, and they don't even recognize it as talent. They don't write blog entries analyzing their status as artists to death. It downright bothers me sometimes that I can't be a person like that. But maybe it's okay that I'm not. Maybe integrity is a positive thing to keep tabs on.

Let's look at the word integrity: "adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty." Morality, ethics, honesty. Principles. What are my principles? Here's a brief manifesto: Art should cause chills in the spine. Art should offer something life-changing. Art should be fascinated by the concept of love. Art should come out of humanism yet have an affection for the ethereal. Art should be identifiable yet always unique. Art should change. Art should not look like shit thrown at a wall to see what sticks. Are these moral or ethical ideas? I think they're honest, anyway. I think believing in these principles will help me re-establish my integrity, if I had any to begin with.

I really do think I've solved why it's been so hard for me to create over the last year or so. At first I thought it was due to school, being busy, being away from a community, etc. But I think it's because I haven't been honest with myself. I'm getting better, though. I'm a bigger fan of music than I have been in years because I no longer concern myself with the reasons why I listen or don't listen to an artist. I won't listen to a song or buy a CD or go to a show because it will lend me some bullshit credit. Nor will I not listen to a song simply because I didn't discover it before anyone else. I'll listen to it because a part of me identifies with it on an important level, no matter how it enters my life. What's neat is that this point of view is helping me get back into writing music, slowly but surely. A year ago I wouldn't have been able to sit down and learn Reason (and I had the opportunity). I'm a bigger fan of music, and it's allowing me to create it.

The same goes with books. As I said, I'm trying to get back into reading. I spent a lot of the early part of the year reading for school and established a rhythm that I lost once I moved back to Ottawa. I tried reading Sartre's The Age of Reason, got halfway through and stopped because it's boring, and it doesn't bother me to admit that because I've proven to myself by now that I'm a stalwart reader. I'm also not used to reading books outside of the context of a classroom, so I don't have a guaranteed point of reference waiting for me on the other side of a text. I can't let experiences like this detract me from reading. I enjoy reading. Books have completely changed my outlook before and I want to read texts that will continue to do so. But that requires reading, and if I get bogged down the best thing to do is simply move on. Again, I have to encounter art from a more honest perspective and be prepared to abandon texts that I don't care for. Once I straighten this out I'm hoping I might find myself more inclined to write. We'll see.

Just some thoughts on art that I feel better for articulating. I'm still pondering the whole art show thing, but lately I've had no real interest in kick-starting the shows again, nor in going to any other shows for that matter. Right now I'm kind of tired of communities. I need to process my role in all that. The most important thing, though, is that I don't stop allowing art to change me as a person. The text, song, movie, painting, and photo is the thing. The rest is no longer something I'm concerned with.