Why Cloud-walkers need parachutes

May 2013

nefelibata (n.) lit. ‘cloud-walker’- one who lives in the clouds of their own imagination or dreams; dreamer

Arts practitioners are sometimes reluctant to give explanations for their creative work.  The artistic nefelibata who sidesteps conventions of genre to dwell in a dream world, shuns a verbal articulation of meaning embedded in creative work.

Do artists need to be able to offer an apologetic for their work and their practice?

I believe we do!  How else will there be a conversation between artist and audience that enables each to be enriched in the understanding of creative processes?  How else do we learn from the discoveries of others?  I suggest this is because the performance outcome or exhibition of an art work is only part of the story of creative practice.  For there to be the wondrous ephemeral beauty of connectivity between artist and audience, we need as Flannery O’Connor has observed to find “a symbol and a way of lodging it” (Fitzgerald 1969:156) which enables us to communicate our insights with clarity.

Arguably, the more moving the work, the more intriguing the story of making the work and presumably, the more the creative artist wants the work to be understood.  If the artist can give a clear articulation of the creative processes that drove the practitioner to explore in the first place, the more revelatory the dialogue about the work.

Art has the potential to reveal and invite and challenge and gently, gently woo us to consider what lies beyond the choreography, the paint, or the pages of the novel.  Creative work invites engagement- and some might argue, understanding on multiple levels.  So is it perhaps just fear that if we talk about the work, the language will diminish the artistry, reducing it to less than what we think it is- or should be?

I think it’s important to tuck yourself away when you wander on the clouds of your own wonderful imagination.  Float and dream as you drift on the wispy heights of your dreamscape to make and explore and create.   However, at some point, strap on a parachute woven from the colour and light and substance of your making and bravely jump!  Soar on the currents of contemporary discourse about culture as you plummet towards the concrete world in which people live and move and have their being.

Let your ideas: the wonderful discovery of something that is uniquely yours, make sense to those of us who have not had the benefit of cloud-walking with you; of seeing what you could see from that vantage point.  Then as you hit the ground running, talk to me.  Let our shared dialogue be seasoned with both the faith and action of our deepest insights, so that we might learn together.

                                                                                                             Michael Leunig: http://www.leunig.com.au/

References

Fitzgerald, S., & Fitzgerald, R. (Eds.). (1969). Flannery O'Connor Mystery and Manners Occasional Prose. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.