47/52 - Great-ish Expectations

“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.”
― Charles Dickens

Dear Internauts,

In general, I find happy people to be the most disappointing.

They can be disagreeable, even absurd to the point of disgust. However, the root of this perceived vulgarity is not the inherent wrongness of their mood but the gap in perspective between that of the happy person and those of us upon whom they inflict themselves. This irreconcilable dysfunction is, sadly, not their fault. Nor is it necessarily ours either.

At fault for this whole mess is the performative nature of existence.

This nature leads to one of the most compelling aspects of artistry—the utter meaningless of intention in the face of an audience. Perhaps there’s enough of a schism between creation and interpretation that it is impossible for anyone to experience the original truth of a work. Or rather the original truth of any work is how far removed it is in every instance and every step from the design of its creator.

If a story exists at all outside the telling (or the hearing/viewing, for that matter), it exists incompletely. The incomplete does not always necessitate completion, except of course when it comes to social pressure. And who better to provide that pressure than the audience, the very mechanism of its completion. But who knows what they might think or feel or yawn about this put-together puzzle in their putting together of it?

We think our experience of art is to receive it and then, as separate beings, construct some outside response as if to form an uniquely divisible creation. Of course that makes plenty of sense on the surface, but one scarce look at our responses shows that we are in the tumultuous throws of our own unbroken sequence of influences. Every symptom is a side-effect.






So I disagree with my previous absurd accusation that intention is meaningless. It's not that it's meaningless but rather that it's meaning is not found in its independence. Intentions declare meaning through what they reveal of influence, which continues the cycle through the effect the intended work has on those across the divide from the intention, who are under their own weight of influences. In sharing their response to the created work, the audience does not become the creator but rather reveals the public face of a creation already in the work from the moment of their exposure to the original work (which itself is of course not the original). Everything is a response to everything else.


Like the brilliant post I saw on tumblr earlier this week about how everyone in my generation had a Twilight phase. You either had a pro-Twilight or an anti-Twilight phase, but in either case you most certainly had a Twilight phase.

I think this can be true of any movement, genre, form, or expression that gathers any substantial following. Then again, you don't even need two people to have a disagreement; one will usually suffice.



I mean all this twisting illogic to say this: a big issue with any pretense of purity in critique that I rarely see brought up in online discourse is how big a role our expectations play in our experience of a work. I'm not talking about how closely a film stuck to the supposed "promises" of its trailer, because if we're honest, the trailer is simply a far more expensive (though oft a bit more informative) cover by which we should not judge the proverbial book. This runs far deeper. In the veins of any audience member or reader or listener or passerby runs the blood of an ecosystem in action. The memories, emotions, and all the drippy bits of homeostasis with which one enters into a relationship with a created work not only serve as goggles through which we view it but an entire suit of moist and jiggly armor in between it and our sense of self-awareness.


I love going to the movies by myself and being the only person in the cinema. Despite my severe introverted nature, I also find myself enjoying—on occasion—the wondrous wave of serendipity which occurs when a crowded cinema and I can join in the experience of a movie together. It can be funnier when everyone else is laughing and more breathtaking when my breath isn't the only one being taken. I don't like it because it feels icky and social, but there truly is a transformative aspect to the communal experience of art.

Of course, don't you dare talk in the theater or you ruin everything and should be made to pay for everyone else's ticket if you do.




In the parking lot, on the drive home, the next day, or later online, there is, however, the discourse. Not only is my own mind racing with a billion thoughts a second about what I've just experienced, but now it contends with the weight of everyone else's opinion. How often is it that said opinion isn't even their own anyway but just the sort of common jelly mold ball of meh that forms from the collective dilutions of so many brains only wanting to think as hard about something as they need to so that it stays enjoyable? Easy. Fun. Or fun to destroy.


Deep in that mire, we find the chameleonic shell of expectations—

When I hear Doctor Who, I picture David Tennant.

When I see the words The Joker, I hear Mark Hamill's uproarious laughter.

When someone mentions the president, I have to check myself for a moment before I break down in tears because Jed Bartlett is a fictional character, and I very much doubt the conversations in the hallways of the west wing of the white house these days sound much anything at all like something written by Aaron Sorkin.

When I think of the beach, my feet brace for running on knife-sharp rock piles and the hair on my arms stands out straight from the chilled-to-the-bone cold water.

To some, the crowded calamity of a city is a nightmare most dreadful. To me it will always be a dream of home.

And there is not a single work of art, film, book, or song that has brushed by my self-symptomatic shell of existence which has not been absurdly thrown into a strange perspective by it.

AND THIS IS ART!?!!!

Yup, this is the stuff we make and share which we think of as the most poignant, the most transformative, the most persuasive, the most piercing, the most affecting.

So...

How much more are our experiences with the mysterious, complex, fuzzy, weird-o wonders known colloquially as "other people" affected by our shell of experience-based expectations, moods, and manners?

I'm not even sure what I want, so why am I so continuously disappointed when I don't get it?

Thanks for reading,
Odist