An artist called Alex Venezia painted this and I mistook it for a photograph. A simple error, likely encouraged by the dim light of my phone and the inexorable exhaustion of midnight. It took me several days (and a quick Google search) to realize my mistake, and by that time I had begun to think about where the line is drawn between art and real life—if they are, in fact, different enough to require a separation. The discovery that the two had already blurred for me was opportune, to say the least. This is what I want to discuss in this issue: the place where art and life start to become each other.
Any heartbroken person can tell you that art is so often about personal experience, even when they didn’t create it. You hear a song on the radio and it’s the same one that was playing in the car when you kissed her for the first time. You read a passage in a book and you think of him, pulling out your phone to send a picture before you realize you can’t do that now. You discover a poem and claim the author must have pulled it out of your diary. Joan Didion said that we tell ourselves stories in order to live—constructing the world so it revolves around us, a mirror of our own foibles, pulling from that universal bank of experience.
Artists are, after all, inspired by what’s happened to them. The line of confessional singer-songwriters that includes giants like Joni Mitchell and Taylor Swift can attest to that. You’re bitter and you write a poem about it. You’re in love again and you sing about it, even if only the rain hears you. Others pen novels as homages to their grief, put on plays that reflect personal tragedies, or write a string of jokes inspired by an awkward encounter at the pharmacy. But all this art contains some element of fiction, some space where we take creative liberty because it makes a better story. The line between art and reality begins to blur, because this is a poem about my life and this is a poem about Anna Karenina and it is a poem about nothing at all, just pretty words sitting on a windowsill.
(The Anna Karenina allusion is apt: art might be a collection of what you love from others, taking their work and weaving it into yours. Are you writing about life if it’s not your own? Is it reality if you borrowed it from someone else, especially if it wasn’t their reality to begin with? Does fiction become a part of reality when we are changed by it? Is this a photograph or a painting?)
I am a firm believer in the power of literature to elevate our lives. We are introduced to new perspectives, permitted an appropriate vantage point at which to watch another life. Does it matter if that life is real or not? Does that life become real by virtue of affecting our own? Fran Lebowitz said: “A book is not supposed to be a mirror. It's supposed to be a door.” I would argue that it’s both. We walk into books expecting them to be mirrors, remembering the parts that are closest to our own experiences. When I think of Madame Bovary, it’s not the digressions on the French countryside that come to mind first. It’s the inescapable depression that haunts Emma throughout the book, her inability to content herself with any fulfilled wish. So I argue: for me, Flaubert created a mirror. Then again, the tribulations Emma faces to personal satisfaction are different from mine, the ideas she contends herself with dissimilar from mine. The plot of the book does not resemble my life, but suggests a new context for my experience. So I argue: for me, Flaubert created a door. A mirror is art. A door is real life. Can you have it both ways?
This is true for other kinds of art, whatever they may be. The question is not so much in the what as in the how—how do we find so much of ourselves in art that it becomes equivalent to our real life? Imagine an immersive dream. You exist in some other world that isn’t here; converse and behave as if it were real, albeit following different rules than the ones you are accustomed to. These rules may involve oddities, such as floating off the ground or marrying a stranger, but these events seem natural within the dream state, nothing of particular notice. The same might be true of a film or novel that stands out to you. While you are engaged within the world, you suspend juvenile disbelief. If the story is strong, you will accept the magic of it, thereby allowing it to exist with you.
When you awaken from a dream, there is a moment where it remains in your memory and you are startled to realize it was a fantasy. For a split second, you may doubt whether this is, in fact, the real world. Last week I dreamt that I was the tsarina of Russia only to wake to the irritating disappointment of online school. Emerging from art is the same thing—a rush of cold water as you return to what you knew before. The line between art and life becomes painful and harsh, no longer a soothing blur. But you are changed by the strongest dreams in the same way you are changed by the best art. Yes, your life is real, but you think about it differently than you did before. Allowing the dream to change you is what makes it real.
GOSH!!!!! There is no other way to put this other than: it speaks to me! (may I also add how this article does indeed represent a mirror and a door, so that's an amusing, perfectly crafted outcome) There is a lot of talk and there has always been about mimesis and re-presentation of life and how art came to be and what it is, but I think the greatest truth about it is that it isn't definite. What it is though is life's eternal companion, no matter which one inspires the other. I do believe it's a symbiotic relationship, the one between life and art, and what you captured here beautifully supports that viewpoint. I love how you speak of reality and fiction which is a topic I can never get enough of. Funny thing about the brain is: whatever it tells us is real, we consider to be real. And maybe that leans into solipsism a little, but there IS that particular portion of time and space where fiction and reality objectively exist as one for everyone. (your waking up after a dream example!) Aside from your brilliant writing skills, it feels so nice to have someone share my thoughts on literature as a whole. It is meant to exist in correlation to the lives that we lead, at least that is how I interpret it. To read is to learn, no matter the material. Any book, even (or especially?) the ones that you don't like alter our reality and they alter it for the better if we allow them to. Incredibly thankful for having discovered your space here. <3
the way you put across a point that has been told and retold in such a fresh manner... this was a great read :)