Yawning my Way Through Much of 21st Century Culture

Jay and I have been watching a series from PBS about art in the 21st century. Some of it has been fascinating to look at, particularly the work of a pair of graffiti artists who make interesting designs from found objects, among their other works.

All of the interviewees have tweaked our way of thinking, some a lot more than others. But I have to say that even while many of these artists' words have been interesting, their work is, to me, a great big yawn.

This photo was taken almost ten years ago on a trip to the Williamstown, Massachusetts area. We had tickets to a show (Madeline Peroux) at Tanglewood but decided to make a longer trip of it because that area of the Berkshires is just stuffed with so many cool things to do.

This sculpture, of which this is a small piece, was on the campus of Williams College. It's huge and fascinating, fun and a bit eerie. We spent some time with it, enjoying how it fit the rise of the ground on which it sat, how it enhanced its surroundings.

Definitely not a yawn.

There's a ton of great stuff being made by contemporary artists, interesting, thought-provoking stuff. So how, I wondered, did PBS choose their artists?

When I wrote about the arts regularly, I spent a lot of time in art galleries looking at stuff that someone thought was good enough to take up wall or floor space. And I became fascinated by the lengths to which art gallery visitors will go in order to justify the time they spend looking at stuff that's just a drag. It's as if no one wants to admit they "don't get it" or that the reason they "don't get it" is that what they're looking at is just not very good.

Or maybe they're just more polite than I am.

I find the same is true in much of what passes for modern poetry. I remember going to a poetry reading at a local bookstore in honor of National Poetry Month (April) a few years back. I usually avoid these things like the proverbial plague because most of what folks write really belongs in a therapist's office. But a friend whose writing I respect had been selected to read one of her works so a bunch of us went to support this woman because she's painfully shy.

There we were, seated while more folks filed in. I spotted a man with dark curly hair artistically long and swept back from his face, a beret on his head, a vivid plaid scarf around his neck. I nudged the friend on my right. "How much you want to bet he teaches poetry," I said.

My friend eyballed the specimen then said "No bet."

Our shy friend got up to read her short work, a funny yet sensuous ode to a John Deere tractor, if you can believe it. Really, I haven't looked at a tractor since then without recalling her work and chuckling anew.

After our friend, we had to sit through a parade of stuff that, as I said before, should have been shared only with a therapist.

And then the grand finale who was, you will not be surprised to discover, our friend with the swept-back hair.

By that time, I was nearly crying from boredom and had a hard time resisting pulling a book off the shelves by my left elbow in order to have something good to read. The teacher's stuff was bland and immediately forgettable. But I'm glad I stayed to hear him because he read it with such an earnest pompousness that I couldn't help but think he'd be perfect in a Monty Python sketch.

Yep, that bad.

Which brings me to the point of this rant—just cuz you call it art or poetry doesn't mean others have to.

And who gets to decide, anyway?