Comment by d-lisp
3 months ago
But is there a real connection between being wrong and not being read or are you yourself wrong ?
Furthermore, I doubt there are any chances "right/wrong" applies to aesthetical types of philosophical discussions.
3 months ago
But is there a real connection between being wrong and not being read or are you yourself wrong ?
Furthermore, I doubt there are any chances "right/wrong" applies to aesthetical types of philosophical discussions.
> But is there a real connection between being wrong and not being read or are you yourself wrong ?
You don’t need to be a standup comedian yourself to spot bad comedy.
> Furthermore, I doubt there are any chances "right/wrong" applies to aesthetical types of philosophical discussions.
It’s hard to figure out what readers want because you don’t get direct feedback. But if you spend any amount of time in front of an audience, it becomes incredibly clear that some things work on stage better than others. I truly believe charisma is a learnable skill. By treating it as talent we deprive people who aren’t charismatic the chance to improve. Writing is just the same. Claiming that there’s no “right/wrong” here implies that it’s impossible to learn to write in a more engaging way. And that’s obviously false.
I did a clowning course a few years ago. In one silly exercise we all partnered up. Each couple were given a tennis ball, and we had to squish the ball between our foreheads so it wouldn’t fall. And like that, move around the room. Afterwards the teacher got half the class on stage and do it again, while everyone else watched. Then the audience got to vote on which couple we liked the most. It was surreal - almost everyone voted on the same pair. Those two in particular were somehow more interesting than everyone else. In that room there was a right and a wrong way to wordlessly hold a tennis ball between two people’s faces. And we all agreed on what it was.
> You don't need to be a standup comedian yourself to spot bad comedy.
I am not a native english speaker, I don't know anything about humourous form of language in that tongue.
Charisma depends on your audience, and audiences can differ quite a lot. There is no "right/wrong" because what please you as an audience may be considered wrong by another one. "Writing in a more engaging way" aka changing your conceptions of what is right/wrong in order to conform to the current cultural supremacia that is built up everyday by pushing some kind of fast-food culture or idk.
Your story is interesting, and I don't understand how you could be surprised : people that go to clowning classes can share the same taste about what is good/bad ? That's not a very surprising fact ! If you had told me that they were people from different cultures ...
Do you think Baudelaire cared about engagement ? You talked like there were no way taste could dramatically change to the point "ugly" is becoming "good" or vice-versa. Some of the writers and artists I like the most braved the taste™ of the different hegemonic culture of their time, and just trusted their own intuition of what they did want to express, say, create.
Marcel Duchamp is a great example of how a mid level joke can change the art world suddenly (and people's taste with it).
> Charisma depends on your audience, and audiences can differ quite a lot. There is no "right/wrong" because what please you as an audience may be considered wrong by another one.
Yes; one of the most aspects of charisma is being sensitive to your audience. Charismatic people watch how their performance is received, and adjust it on the fly. Not too much, but enough to make the audience feel cared for. This is one reason why there's a sort of magic in live performances.
I also think we're talking about two extreme ideas here that are both wrong:
1. Performances are on an objective spectrum from "right" to "wrong"
2. Nothing is good or bad. Everything is subjective.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. There's no such thing as "the objectively best pieces of music (/art / writing / etc)". But some music, art and writing is enjoyed by many people. And some is junk. There is no objective measure of music. But also, nobody would consider my amateur piano playing to be as good as The Beetles or Mozart.
> "Writing in a more engaging way" aka changing your conceptions of what is right/wrong in order to conform to the current cultural supremacia that is built up everyday by pushing some kind of fast-food culture or idk.
I don't know where to start with this.
Again, there's two extremes that are both wrong: a) As a writer / performer, you should conform exactly to whatever the audience wants. And b) Forget the audience. Write however you want without any regard for them.
Both of these extreme positions will result in bad work. The answer is somewhere in the middle. We don't want a performer to be our slave or our master. We want you to be our friend. Our leader. Our teacher.
In other terms, write however you want. But if you don't care about your audience, don't be surprised if your audience doesn't care about you.
> people that go to clowning classes can share the same taste about what is good/bad ? That's not a very surprising fact ! If you had told me that they were people from different cultures ...
I'm Australian. The class was in France, taught by a French clown. There were students from the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, South Africa, NZ, Finland, Germany and more.
Not all art works across different cultures, but clowning does. I think if you showed our performances to a group of monkeys, even they would also find it funny and if they could, they would pick out the same favorites.
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