DAY FIFTY SIX

Do you prefer to open the door and let people make their own mind up about entering, or do you grab them by the hand take them through and show them around each piece of furntiture?

 

Not sure one should ever start a post with a metaphor, especially one for which the inferences haven't been properly thought through yet. But I shall live dangerously. 

 

I've been lurking around a small corner of social media of late, one occupied mainly by creative types working in a wide range of media. Ninety percent of the postings are people showing pictures of their work, or simply pictures which are their work. I've noticed that some - I would say a majority - like to give chapter and verse about their making: size, materials, what it's about, when it was made, why it was made, struggles they had with it, lessons learned from it, what they would do differently next time, and so forth.

Is it wrong of me to say I really don't care to know all that and prefer to just enjoy and make up my own mind about the work? I find it much more interesting to be able to apply my own imagination, to project something into or onto the displayed work, rather than have it all laid out for me. Sometimes I come up empty, have no particular thoughts, but that's better than being told what to think, I think. It's the same reason I stopped watching TED talks after the first few, and don't read work by bad writers - too much explication. (Says he, explicating daily in a blog). 

 

A common piece of advice to writers is 'show don't tell', meaning for example, to demonstrate a character's emotions by what they do and say, not by simply writing, 'She was angry'. I think that is good advice generally - it allows the viewer, reader, audience some agency in the interaction between them and the maker or work; they react to the work, rather than what the maker says about the work. 

One big exception I make is when it comes to photographs. I don't want to know it was shot with a Tamron 35-125 zoom, with a 2ND filter at 3pm on a fall Saturday Eastern Standard Time using a Nikon D3000. But I do want to know what the subject is and where it was taken. It's frustrating to be left wondering, but only in the case of photos where I'm concerned.

 

Generally I prefer to open the door and let people enter or just walk on by. My work is done when the work is done. What about you?

 

Onwards...taciturnly.

 

 

ps: I noticed just before publishing this post I'd unconsciously typed 'explanating' instead of 'explaining' for the label on this post. It's a good word. Sits right alongside 'bloviating'.

 

 

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