Today, I would just like to add a short reflection on the relationship between reasoning and storytelling, and while I don’t think that you can really put them against each other like that, I think it is still a useful way to frame a discussion about the relationship between them.
Let’s kick it off with a quote that I read on twitter today (Writing Routines – awesome profile). I have no clue who the guy is, but I found the quote genious:
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. —Vladimir Nabokov
At first glance, you might think “Hey, that sounds reversed! Poets are supposed to be the creative folks who are imagining stuff, aren’t they? And scientists are the ones who are about precision, proving causality and whatever.” (at least, I did). However, what I realized was that I find it twisted that we look to the artists of society for our imagination. I personally think a lot of art is crap, kind of self-important, pretentious, know-it-all-but-quite-ignorant stuff that people with ‘weltschmerz’ put out there because they need to express their opinions. Fair enough, please do speak your mind. I think it is much better to say out loud what you think, rather than keeping it inside, building up a bubble that can explode at any time. It just often seems like this opinionated art is so shallow…
To me, art is expression. Expression of thoughts, ideas, feelings. I find it extremely important, and to me, great art is able to get a point across, to invoke emotion in the recipient. To startle, to provoke, to marvel, to terrify – art has many faces. That is why art is present everywhere. It is the deliberate construction by man that touches your soul. It can be the traditional associations with art like paintings, sculptures, literature etc., but it can also be the art of speaking, of marketing, of entrepreneurship. It simply must impact the meaning-making of the recipient. It is storytelling.
Now why are scientist then relevant for art? Well, there is another element that divides crap from great art. That is the profoundness of the idea behind the art. My hypothesis on why a lot of art is shit is that it comes from a shallow, narrow-minded place. It does not come from a deep truth about our world. That is what science can provide.
Let me be clear. A lot of science is fucking boring. I very strongly dislike reading scientific articles. That may also be somewhat due to pretentiousness in the language, but it is also because it is so difficult to read because the vocabulary of a scientist is just mind-boggling. It’s great to have precise language, but it is also hella tough if you need to spend seconds reflecting upon every other word in a text. Great science, though, is able to uncover those deep truths about our world, those things that create awe and wonder.
When there are major breakthroughs in science, they often (at least how I see it) derive from the mind of scientists who are able to and have dared to imagine how the world really works. They dare to imagine things that have never been imagined before.
It is clear that we need both art and science. Now, tying the two things together (which can be done in several ways that I might explore sometime in the future) when I am so fascinated by the initial quote, it is because we need the deep truths, but we also need them to touch our hearts, make us think and feel, help us make sense of the world and generate insight. The artists who are able to translate science into these very deliberately crafted, origami-like arts, whether its poems, movies or paintings, they get the message across. They remind us of what we know deep down, and they inspire us to imagine, to care for each other, to take action or effortlessly take us to an elevated state of mind. That is what art is about.
When I start out by talking about reasoning and storytelling, to me they are quite similar to art and science, and I think that there is an element of sequentiality to the relationship. I believe reasoning comes before storytelling. In order to storytell, you should know what you want to say. Write the business plan and create the name afterwards, write the book and create the title afterwards, know the purpose of your business and market that afterwards. Too often, we get caught up in trying to do things that do not yet make sense to do, which is both frustrating and a waste of effort.
That is not to say that it is always like that. I believe the actual process is way more fluid, but I think a lot of people could benefit and go beyond shallow ideas by exploring what they want to express and why they want to express before mindlessly jumping into the great pool of crap that is bad art. At least, I try to live by that.
I want to end this post with my favorite quote on what art is:
Art is the sensuous presentation of ideas.