"You're So Cultured"

This is what my family now says about me. "Cultured" is everything I've never wanted to be. It's that child who can chat you up about Stravinsky but doesn't know when to stop.

The there's the stereotype; that art has survived because it is soft and pretty. And that the artist has a low emotional threshold. Don't touch them; don't show them anything ugly. They may cry. I was not draw to writing because it was pretty. The first play I ever loved was Julius Caesar. I had grown up on Japanese Anime, swords, and martial arts. I was the product of being raised around boys. I had a brother and most of my best friends when I were little were boys.

Julius Caesar appealed to be because it was violent. And it wasn't just the idea of seeing someone stabbed in the back; it was all the subtle plotting-that idea of revenge-on which I latched. And from there, I went to Greek tragedy. Then Hemingway taught me that desperation doesn't need to be physically violent. Anime was always about the "undoing" of a character, beneath all of the gore. My goal as a writer was, ultimately, to make the character vulnerable. And any character can be deconstructed.

But this is besides the point. Literature and music are not just violent; they're dirty. Shakespeare, Joyce, and even Mozart had their appeal, primarily, because they appealed to humans in their animalistic sense. Be it through subtle sexual innuendos, or the not-so-subtle phalanx symbol in Don Giovanni, plays and operas appeal to the "groundlings". Because these are the traits that transcend custom and generational bounds. Take that away from literature, and you get a book that is written flawlessly, but has no substance. Take that away from music, and you get an Offenbach symphony.

The artist does not get by on noise alone. He or she is violent, primal, on sexual. But he or she also has the ability to disguise it as pretty noise. And that's what people see first.

On that note, I'm going to listen to ballet.