Respect the Art

I had the bloody strangest little exchange with a new poster on my online community Tuesday night. We were talking about that postcard site with the confessions that I linked below, and she ventured a rather categorical opinion that they were actually all professionally done. (Implying that it was all Fake and that we were Internet Rubes being taken in by a Scam). I offered the thought that actually, they probably only post the best ones, but that I knew a lot of people who would be able to produce those kinds of tiny perfect narratives. This poster did the online equivalent of snorting and huffed, "Easy to say--hard to do. Respect the art."

Well, this simultaneously pinched me and made me guffaw. I mean, respect the art? It's not like I said I knew how to make an oil painting of a fucking CLOWN or some other ambitious claim. We're talking about postcards with a sentence on them.

This exchange rifled into a ruffle, as they tend to, with Katie clamping down on the new poster and everyone getting all rustly for a bit, but then it all simmered down, with a request for her to be less categorical, less judge-y in her opinions.

But I'm still giggling over "respect the art." I think it'll be my new motto. It came at the right time, too, when I was in a little state of agonizing too much over my own doubts about MY "art" -- my research, my work, my thinking -- remembering the Garp line about building fucking bookcases instead of writing books. It's true. It's absurd. Respect the art. Make a postcard with a sentence on it that speaks volumes about being human. One after another. Put them into the world, collaboratively and openly. Call it a dissertation, joining the conversation. And that's all I have to do.