Art

Kevin Woster writing in the Rapid City Journal:

I’m a reporter, not an artist. It has been said on a number of occasions that my newspaper writing rises to a level of art. Of course, that hasn’t been said since 2004 — the year my mother died.

I tend to believe that most of the rest of the world would say my newspaper work is competent and at times even entertaining. But it’s not art.

I have dabbled in artistic endeavors. I can play a few chords on the guitar and sing along. Is it art? No, it’s just haphazard, mediocre strummin’ and singin’.

If I wanted to, I could pound out enough words and meandering plot lines to fill 300 or so pages with what the kind-hearted might refer to as fiction. I could even call it a novel. But, trust me, it wouldn’t be art.

And painting? Well, I’ve sloshed oil and watercolors on canvas just enough to know there was no art there for me — or anyone else who pondered the results.

Don’t get me wrong, I think I have a limited ability to produce art — in a very narrow writing style, on certain occasions. At its best, my poetry manages to climb to an artful level. I don’t often get there, however, or remain there for long.

It’s just too hard.

That’s why I’m not a poet. That’s why Ted Kooser is. He has a gift, a type of genius that I don’t have. And he has the strength and skill and commitment to maintain it over a lifetime of hard work, and fine art.

Vomiting into a commode isn’t art. Neither is flashing your genitals. Neither is smashing a bunch of props on stage and showering the audience with chewed-up potato chips and fake feces. It’s simply reckless expression without any genius.

Real artists have done goofy things in conjunction with their artistic performances. Pete Townshend and Jeff Beck demolished some pretty nice guitars. Jimi Hendrix set a few on fire.

But those excessive antics were simply odd forms of entertainment. The genius was in the music. So was the art.

I imagine I could break or burn or jackhammer a guitar just as well as Townshend or Hendrix. But play them? Hardly. That takes a gift that most of us don’t possess.

And there’s the artistic divide.

I suppose some people are heads above the crowd at vomiting into a commode, spitting potato chips and exposing their genitals. Maybe that’s their gift.

It just isn’t art.

This story has also caught the attention of big-league blogs like Power Line and Michelle Malkin.