A sculptor I know likes to say, "Art is a hammer knocking at your eyeballs." Architect Robert Venturi described one of his approaches as "contradiction juxtaposed."
Amy X Neuburg, here live at EXIT Theatre, juxtaposes fiery operatic vocals with electronic audio loops. (Photo by Rob Thomas)
Much successful art, it seems to me, takes concepts—or symbols of concepts—and squishes them together so our brains are provoked into making new connections. The art, or hammer-like impact, derives from the way those symbols are juxtaposed, the artist's skill in adjusting contrasts—dark vs. light, repetition vs. surprise, fast vs. slow, sharp vs. blurry, realistic vs. distorted. . . .
There's a whole chapter in my book called "Distortion is Art," inspired by sound designer Gary Rydstrom's advice to his staff while working on the tornado movie Twister. I was particularly intrigued by the tension between the computer's power to generate perfect copies with the artist's instinct to distort and juxtapose.
I was thinking about that after reading an artist's reaction to my latest podcast, "Seize the Rhythm," which was about hearing the rhythms all around us and blending them into songs. The sigh of tires on the pavement, the stuttering voice of a nervous caller on an answering machine...there are so many patterns out there to explore.
But what this artist said made me realize that a big part of art is the original vision:
Interesting subject for a podcast. . . . It's something I take so for granted that I sometimes forget that other people may not actually hear things rhythmically. Of course, this is the basis for most of my songs: the way the language itself suggests a tune.
Or, as producer Don Was told me in the book,
One night, I was working with Bob Dylan, and I wanted to ask the billion-dollar question: "What do you go through when you write a song like 'Gates of Eden?' How do you prepare for that? How do you do that? And why can't I do it?" And essentially what he said was, "You can believe me or not, but I didn't write that song. I remember moving the pencil over the paper, but I didn't write it. It came from without. It came from...sources beyond."
Keith Richards will tell you the same thing. In fact, during a session, instead of saying, "I've got an idea," he'll say, "Hold it! Hold it! Incoming." And he never deviates from that. He knows that it's not his. So if the best artists are simply conduits for lightning from the creative ether, does it really matter if you're rolling a computer or a Wollensak?
When you attach importance to the methodology, you're just distracting yourself. To carry forward Keith's metaphor about something incoming, I'd be more concerned with building a really great antenna.
Listen up. Look around. Touch, taste, and breathe your world. The more those impressions collide in your mind, the more art should flow.
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Design
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