Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

Art vs. art - A Glance into The Alchemy of Butterflies

by David Niall Wilson

You try and you try and you just can’t escape that old “art” vs. ART thing. There are a great number of forms of artistic expression. Some have been grouped into “The Fine Arts” – and among these, standing tall, is Literature. The problem is that every one of those different disciplines in the Fine Arts has its brethren in the upper, middle and lower classes, and even in the sewers and junkyards. Perception is among the chief determinants of placement, and perception without rules is subjective. How’s that for sounding like I’m about to bore you to tears? Fear not.

A book I read recently, Ayn Rand’s Manifesto on Romanticism, claims that man cannot live without art. Art, from the perspective of the book, has a single goal; to represent a concept in a concrete form. In other words, it’s not the artist’s job to teach you how to think about a thing, or how to perceive a thing, but only to represent a thing fully and in such a manner that the representation connects with the audience and delivers the desired concept into a form of reality. Truly great art imparts what the artist sees, or what he believes the viewer, reader, or audience needs to connect with the concept he is trying to bring to life. Each connection is unique, and I think great art of any sort will make that connection, even if the audience would normally not be intrigued by the medium employed. That might be the dividing line – great art crosses social and mental boundaries in ways that commercial and popular art usually cannot.

Now let’s reel in all the philosophical mumbo jumbo and see if we can’t relate it to writing – specifically to the project I’m currently working on. The protagonist of my novella/novel (the length is as of yet undetermined) is an artist. He is committed to the act of creation and to the perfection of his craft. The fact that he is less than sane by societal standards is not a hindrance to this.

He is a writer, and a painter, but the art that beckons to him is the creation of books. Don’t confuse this with writing a book. His are one-of-a-kind books that encompass the totality of his experience of their subject matter. They are hand crafted, sewn and bound one stitch and patch of glue at a time. His own epiphany likens his work to that of an alchemist. He boils a thing down to the purest possible essence and works with that essence to create something that is both a book, and its subject.

When he meets the secondary protagonist – he shows her The Butterfly. The cover is supple leather in the form of butterfly’s wings. The coloration is formed of preserved wings, cut using an X-acto™ knife to form a single new pattern from the dozens he began with. Wings that could have been a hybrid of all the insects he studied. The pages of the book are of hand-made paper, sprinkled with the colored scales from thousands of wings. The spine is carved and polished leather in the form of an insect’s body, the antennae silken bookmarks. The endpapers are preserved, pressed wildflowers from a tent he kept in his back yard, filled with butterflies. He chose only those blossoms most popular to his “flock” for the final production. The book is incredible.

He is, of course, as crazy as a loon, and yet – he is very real. I can’t fully understand his motivation, because it is too focused. He is committed to his art in ways that are symbolic in their intensity with no regard to the world around him, the opinions of society or his peers. I don’t share the intensity of his vision, but I understand what I want others to see in that vision. What I am creating is very similar to what he is creating.

Everything is not butterflies and flowers in his work. He has also created “The Rat,” “Grandfather,” and several other volumes. I’m not going to get into the plot, or the twists that make it special near the end, but I am going to say that I feel a connection with this story that I get only rarely. When I run in the morning, I think about it. I have started drawing again (see the thumbnail accompanying this post on the front page of Storytellers). I have bogged down on other projects several times now to open the file and stare at this one, and I have rewritten several passages obsessively. While I have about 7,000 words total, I’ve probably written 12,000. Alchemy.

I recently wrote about Ayn Rand in my blog, as well. She wrote a short story that was included at the end of the audio version of The Manifesto. In that story a writer, sits at his desk. He has written a book that he believes is great. It was published, and the critics were lukewarm. The public didn’t get it. He tries to blame himself, but he cannot, because, upon reading the book over and over he finds that it says exactly what he wants it to say. He is poor. He has sold nothing recently. His wife is in the next room languishing from neglect and hunger, fending off bill collectors.

In the story, he is trying to come up with one single commercial idea for a story; just one simple tale that doesn’t veer off into philosophy, or deep rooted plot. One that gives the public just what they want, and no more – so he can sell it – so he can make the money necessary to continue his career. In the course of that story he comes up with plot after plot, based in the mundane, and spiraling off into epic creative bursts. Ideas I would very much love to have read, but he never wrote them. Each time he stopped himself, cursed himself, and tried again.

At the end of the story, he shakes his head and reaches for the Help Wanted ads. He can’t do it. The character in my book is much the same way, though, he is willing to make books and teach others to make books that are NOT special. He isn’t starving, and so, his story is less tragic. No less crazy, but not tragic.

Writing is a business, like many others, but writing at the business level is to the fine art of literature what a really gorgeous picture of an orange for a juice advertisement is to Rembrandt. One is a technically competent creative output, and the other is the recreation of a vision. Sometimes I wonder if I don’t write the former out of fear of achieving the latter – or of ending up at that desk, with idea after idea that I can’t sell.

Of course, Rand’s explanation and my own are too simple. The gradations are Legion, and there can be just as much artistic vision in something that appeals commercially as there is in any other work. It’s the truth of the tale that matters – the connection you have with your characters and your subject. It’s the honesty with which you approach your work and the effort you expend on it. I think I’m writing that into this story. I hope it will be commercial, but at this point that has become, just this once, a back-seat silent partner to the hope that it will fulfill the need to create that it has drawn out of me.

I’m too old to be reaching for the Help Wanted ads…

DNW

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