UNPOP ARTISTRY
As an artist, especially an artist who almost (almost) earned a BA in Writing, there are many rules I love to break. Certain rules should not be broken, such as the rule where you need to throw out all the rules. Sometimes, you break them. Other times, you bend them. And, even still, there are times where you need to pay key attention to them in order to create the arts you wish to create.
As an artist, every rule has a reason. Now, you can completely disrespect their purposes, or you can disrespect them altogether. Ever since I was unable to finish my last semester (read: literally, my last semester) of college, and unable to receive that BA, I’ve gone over each and every rule my school ever had, and realized that no, rules don’t make ‘good art’.
In fact, throwing out the rulebook altogether, and starting from scratch, creating your own rules, makes for much, much better art. Sometimes, you need to gather all of the things your teachers taught you, find what works for you, and run with it.
As an artist, it’s important to understand what works for you, only you, and how you can look around to gain inspiration from others. Everyone has different ways to approach the same, or different, subjects.
The following articles are full of knowledge I’ve learned, that I believe in, not only from schooling, but also as someone who started telling stories as soon as I learned how to speak. Not all of these tidbits are about reading and writing. Some of them are about the arts overall. Each of them is debatable, just as each one is likely going to rub you the wrong way.
I like to call this segment of the website, ‘UnPop Artistry’, because each article under this heading will be on an unpopular opinion, and, I have many of them. Each unpopular opinion will surround the arts, and different ways to think about each medium. Sometimes, it’s mediums overall. Other times, articles will be specific to a type of art.
As someone whose been an artist my entire life, and whose goal is to be able to create what I love because I love it, discussing or sharing those unpopular opinions will help me to share the reasons behind why I create certain things a certain way. All I’ve ever wanted to do was make art, even as a starving artist.
The act of creation has no rules against creating. However, the act of creation does have rules on how to create. No matter what you do, people will try to police what is created. Many people believe that as long as you do create, they should be able to police how you create because it will control what is created. Those rules must be tossed.
That’s against people’s voices, and it’s against allowing us to hear what we want to hear and need to hear, no matter if we don’t want to hear it. Creating a space where we can create whatever we want, whenever we want, will allow us to understand humanity better, and understand where humanity is going. Fighting for everyone’s voices will allow us to have our own voices, rather than telling people they, ‘Can’t… because it’s wrong.’
If we erase certain pieces of art from existence, then how are we supposed to learn from what has been erased?
This is why I’m creating the segment, ‘UnPop Artistry’. We must discuss those parts of the arts that people are most afraid of, why they’re afraid of them, and why, also, we must continue to fight for each other’s voices, even if we don’t agree with them.
Not only do the rules need to be broken in order to create, but we must also allow each other to be heard… at least giving each other a chance so we can understand where they’re coming from.
We don’t need to agree with everything that’s said. That’s not human. We only need to learn how to agree to disagree, even if we’re still fighting for what we believe and against what we don’t believe. Each and every person has different beliefs. Respecting them doesn’t mean agreeing with them, or not creating an argument around your belief system. Respecting them means allowing someone to disagree, whether you challenge them or not.
A lot of this might sound contradictory, but learning how to hear people, whether we agree with them or not, doesn’t have to be.
I hope that these articles in this segment spark thoughts about what is being said, and allow you to think deeper into the topics at hand. It’s not that I want to teach you how to think… or even what to think. It’s more that I want to teach you to think, and to open your mind into the idea that there is more than one way, and allow you to come to your own conclusions about what I have to say.
