A lost art

When I think about some of the greatest writers, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, The Bronte Sisters, and even E.E Cummings, I can't help but wonder where the artistic beauty or writing went. I don't really know why, but I've always loved to read, to soak in each word and feel the author in everything they wrote.I guess it was kind of a way for me to escape the real world and dive into someone else's. The heart pounding, mysterious, soul wrenching story of Romeo and Juliet has always been a favourite of mine. Although I have been known to critique the famous play, I have always found myself wrapped up in the tragic love story.

I will walk along the shelves of a bookstore, or a library and the sound of that binding, being cracked open for the first and time, and the smell of freshly printed pages just brings out so much promise and hope for a new story. Each character, every twist of plot and even the most mundane of story lines manages to captivate me. I have no real preference of genre. Romance, Sci-fi, History, fiction and non-fiction. I find myself absorbed in every page and letter. They seem to embed themselves in my heart, in my soul. I can remember quotes from novels I've read years ago. And it is not uncommon for me to read one book more them once. This, of course, drives my friends insane, because I often find myself caught up in a new novel and a new story. It gets confusing to them, the stories get muddled.  My bookshelf is bombarded with all kinds of books. From photography (my passion) books, to novels to poetry books and even some magazines, they are all organised alphabetically. They're just about the only thing in my room that's organised. The mind of the artist is never well organised, in case you were wondering.  In retrospect, I have been reading a great deal lately, and have found myself a new favourite author: Malcom Gladwell. Thanks to my Coop Supervisor, Vanessa Dewson (amazing photographer) I have discovered his work.

Sometimes I wonder how lost we have become in our own world. After reading the book Blink by Malcom Gladwell, I've come to realise that most of the way we think is based in our subconscious. We gather information, countless databases in our brains and we store them, letting them open in snap judgements and life-or-death situations. This, however, has been shown to be a big mistake. In the book, Gladwell goes on to explain that we should put more thought on our small decisions and use our first instinct as a guide for our larger decisions. Quite an interesting read, this novel really makes you think. As a society, we've lost the art of intuition and bombard ourselves with information, thinking it'll help our decisions. This is what has confused us for a very long time, and still, ever since I was fairly young, I have believed that " ignorance is bliss"

On the other hand, writing has become more and more popular and it has become so much easier to get published nowadays. That art of it is dying. The elegance of Frost's use of nature is lost on a lot of people. To me, this is sad. I find countless novels that are poorly written, have bad plots or have almost copied another artist. It bothers me that the respect for this creative process had gone down.  I will admit to reading the Twilight series, and licking them when they first came out ( I was 13). I look back and honestly, I do not believe that Stephanie Meyer is a bad writer. Her novel for "adults" The Host is one of my favourite novels. I simply believe that she was targeting a simpler audience, and she managed to do so very well. The books are now too streamline to be any good. They are talked over too much and far too commercialised. In either case, I do believe that we need to start sifting through the work we buy and the work we leave behind. An artist's mind is very complex and we should never take it for granted. Take the time and read a novel. Get lost in the other world. Be enchanted by the words.