Bohemian?

What makes a person want to be bohemian? Is it the same thing that makes someone want to be a rock star? I personally feel like it's all about appearance. People don't actually want to live the lifestyle, they just want to appear as though they do. When bohemian culture became popular is when the disgusting act of sitting in a coffee shop talking about art instead of creating came about. It became "cool" to be poor. Or at least to say that you were while living off of daddy's money (not that that tradition died out, it still happens at Sweet Briar all the time). True bohemians did not want to be "bohemian". The first time I heard the word bohemian was in a Dandy Warhols song. It talked about vegan food and a car that always breaks down. It was an updated version of bohemian, since it is now trendy to be vegan, particularly if you're a "poor" college student who has to sleep on a couch. Still, it appealed to me. Partially because it sounded like my life, but also because the song glorified these things. No mention was made of creating art. Instead this girl waited tables. If this trend continues, the world will be full of nothing but people pretending to create art and the next generation will know NOTHING about this generation except that we were obviously lazy.

Art vs Science

From the September 10th class discussion:
Is Art vs Science really a battle? It certainly was in class, but I don't think that either side was clearly enough stated for an actual debate to occur. There are so many different ways of thinking that it cannot be classified as it was attempted in class today by "logic" and "creativity". The smartest thing that came out of the conversation was the statement that there is no right answer. It brought me to a constant argument that I have with myself about being a music snob. If country music is so terrible, why do so many people like it? They're the same people saying that my indie music is crap. And if ignorance is bliss, why is it so looked down upon when someone isn't well-read? There are many nights where I wish I could be less aware. Is the ultimate goal to be happy or to be intelligent? I have to say that I might give up my intelligence in order to feel content for one day. Even if it means that I'm content while listening to country music. There is no right or wrong in any of these situations. There are perks and disadvantages to every way of thinking.

Your Truth

From the reading for September 10th
"You must believe that your truth is every man's truth"

I thoroughly enjoy Emerson and most of his ideas, but this one really did not sit with me well, particularly since it is a constant argument that I have with my boyfriend. He is a firm believer that anything he says is automatically "fact", and I have on multiple occasions had to teach him that there is a such word as "opinion". I'm glad that he is confident in himself; that is something that I often wish for myself. However, political and religious conversations get old very quickly (they do in general, because those are things that you are not going to change for someone...why bother arguing) because he is completely unwilling to listen to anything else. I don't know why he is determined that what he learned is THE answer, because while I think that now I have finally found my own truth, it is certainly not being a left-wing Catholic (an oxymoron, at that). But with all the different religions and political views, how can we think that a personal truth can possibly be the truth of everyone?

Selling Out

From September 8th's class discussion:
What constitutes an artist selling out? It is more often talked about in the music industry, after a really good underground, fight the man band or artist goes public (ex Liz Phair. Seriously. WTF.) But as was brought up in class today, the visual artist can "sell out" by going into advertising. One controversial advertising technique that Carly briefly brought up was the new Graffiti advertising. She was promoting it, but I found a great article that highly disagrees. Taggers feel that this new scheme destroys the realness of their art. Activists used graffiti as advertisement for their cause in the 70's, but it was a completely different type of slogan, and still typically by youth culture. There is even the line between types of advertisement as to what people feel is and is not selling out. When we hear a classic Beatles or Led Zeppelin song used in a car commercial, we all scream obscenities. When a punk rocker starts selling real estate, we groan about the bullshit economy. It's becoming nearly impossible for one NOT to "sell out", so why is it so controversial and upsetting? And why does the term selling out still exist? We are all still searching for something real and it may never again be found.

Is it possible to truly understand anything that you have not experienced? This question was only briefly mentioned in the Plutarch excerpt, and its real purpose was to prove another point altogether, but it got me to thinking about art, particularly writing. Even an incredibly good writer with vivid description and extraneous detail can often not convey an event or an idea to someone who has not experienced it or has not been through something similar. Though Plato told men still in their youth of things, if they perceived the meaning at all, it was well into old age.
With artificial language and discourse, nothing is going to be properly received by the audience. However there are still very well written accounts of experience that will in no way be understood by anyone else. It's like an inside joke from the popular girls at the lunch table, where you just had to have been there. Unless you took the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, you won't know how it felt to be Further. What are the limits to what can be described in literature? How far can we take someone? It's not something I've figured out yet, but it's definitely something I'm going to test.