Columbia Application Essay
It is taboo in my ways to address the essay-or the prompt when writing papers on the undergraduate level. In fact it is expected that it should be written in specific format and in such a way but I am going do exactly what I am not supposed to. When sitting down to look at the transfer application for Columbia I was asked to respond to two different questions. Naturally, one would pick the one that they can answer easily but I suppose it’s in my nature to pick the one that I disagree with the most. I suppose I have a bit of righteous quality to me, something the perpetual moralist cannot shake off no matter how unattractive it is. Option 2 which asks how would I as an artist would make myself stand out in this world of overwhelming technology where billions of photos are taking each day and people write and blog constantly to the potential of a millions of readers and viewers-where there is Youtube or Myspace or any other type of media oriented website. What makes me special? That’s the question. Well to be frank, I’m not concerned with being special. I am concerned with being honest. I am impelled to create art because that is when I feel closest to my most honest sense of being and I am seeking the knowledge and guidance of other artists who teach at Columbia College to help me not only explore myself as an artist.
I want the skill set, the know-how, the wisdom of those that have been doing it for so long and have had the help of other experienced people along the way. It is much like the infamous Isaac Newton quote “If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” It’s a bit trite but I think it illustrates that any successes that we want to achieve whether it be in science, in art or even within ourselves, we take from a long tradition of those before us; we use the knowledge of our teachers and our peers. In film in particular, the subject I would like to study, there are so many things that one learns from their teachers. I have not the slightest technical knowledge whatsoever. I want to be able to take the stories and ideas that are in my head and make them real. I should at least learn how to set up a camera first or even know even the most basic techniques. And of course, there is more to it than just that. With the professors, the other students, the general environment of an art school like Columbia makes the college a fertile environment for the flow of ideas and creative expression. And as a person, I simply want to be around those kinds of people and learn from them, from the most experienced professors to the youngest freshman.
But I suppose this doesn’t answer the primary heart of the question: what is the reason you do art? In one way, it would be a cliché or a bit much to say that the goal of my art is to depict the human experience. But the more I think about it, the more I try to get to the core of what my art is about, it seems that it revolves around this idea: “the human experience,” or “what is means to be human.” To put down in a set of words the goal of my art would be in a way to contradict its purpose altogether. It is in some ways simple but at the same time, each work is infinitely different. I may at one point say that my art is to say X but I think what attracts artists to make art, what keeps us hungry, what keeps us creating is the fact that we find out new things constantly about ourselves, about others, about life, about the world while we make the art. There is an interesting quote by the novelist Haruki Murakami in which he states that he isn’t a thinker but a writer, he can think when he writes. By doing the art, he is able to discover ideas and in that sense, it seems almost impossible to say what exactly it is that you are trying to convey. That isn’t to say than there isn’t a goal in mind when one sets out to make art-not at all, but when one begins to create, the thing itself becomes a part of you and creates itself and begins to change the person who is making it. I think that says a lot about the power of art the way in which it can recreate the creator.
But what is it that attracts me to it? Why art? Why film? Why this medium? The more I think about it, the more I am lured back to a specific memory in which I am rocked to my core by a film I watched or a poem I read or perhaps a play I’ve seen. And it’s the feeling that more than anything compels me to create art. I think that powerful feeling that one gets, something akin to an almost religious feeling is what it means to be closest to the spiritual, to the thing that at the heart makes us fundamentally human-or alive for that matter since I cannot speak of the reality of other animals. I have seen many films, read many books that have affected me this way; that have changed the way I view the world, that have revived me, that had made me feel alive.
You ask about technology and how it has in many ways destroyed the way that we believe we ought to live. There is no time for anything, everyone is busy, no one just stops to enjoy things, we are always in a rush-planning for the future, competing, always thinking of the next moment, that ironically, we seem to never live in the present. Like others, I have this fault too. But I’ve noticed that in the grip of great art-the kind that shakes you to your core, suddenly the world seems to slow down. I recall the first time I saw the film Poetry (2010), it had such a profound effect on me, the subtlety, the gentleness, the purity and honesty of each frame was able to somehow make objects more real for me. The tips of my fingers seemed to be able to sense more. For several days, I felt an ever present sense of being where I was and being a person with sensation, with feeling. I know that that is an abstract and almost strange thing to say but that I believe is the power of great art. And I think more than anything, I want to feel that all the time. When I am creating, I feel that way. I feel alive. I feel real.
And that leads to the next idea that as artists we should be concerned with the amount of art that is created-how everyone is able to do it and in turn, there is a lot of bad art out there. Personally, I believe that at the heart of this there is something fundamentally wrong. As artists, we should never feel threatened by the democratization of art. For one, the real enemy of art is gate-keeping and the monopolization of who can make art and what is considered art. There certainly has been many ages and eras in which the “who” and “what” was defined by some other third party. The last thing we need in art is another level of elitism that tries to snuff out the creations of other people or prevent them from creating. What is the point of that? To answer my own question: the desire to be “noticed,” the desire to court a reputation. I have no issues with this. I myself would like to be recognized for my efforts but definitely not at the expense of others’ right to create. There is an interesting comment Tony Kushner writes in his afternotes to his play Angels in America, that there is this pressing desire to be recognized as an “artist” and that a work-especially in regards to literature is the product of “one” person (Kushner 283-9). Certainly this idea has stemmed from the western concept of the “individual” and is nurtured especially in America where since the beginning we have always believed that one must create themselves. I can’t but help to feel that this egoism isn’t good for art.
I feel I have been the victim to this idea myself. For many years, having attached the role of “artist” onto my identity, I began to interpret art as “what is it that I want to say?” and aligning my art with how I myself wanted to be or how I wanted others to see me and at the same time, comparing myself to other artists who I admired or what was considered qualities of “good” art by those whose opinions I respected. This sort of obsession with creating my own identity via art actually handicapped my ability to create. I wasn’t honest anymore. I wasn’t compelled by the raw and honest feeling inside me that had originally made me believe that art was powerful and worth making. Some of the best works I’ve seen whether it be a photograph or a story were made by people who did not even consider themselves artists. At first, I was extremely jealous of what I perceived to be their “talent” until I realized that it wasn’t really talent-I don’t even believe such a thing exists, but a sort of honesty that we who consider ourselves artists abandon when we get so caught up in the title of “artist” and “what it is supposed to convey” that the connection and that awe and wonder that comes with powerful art is lost because that isn’t what is compelling us to create.
At the beginning of Carl Sandburg’s introduction to his complete collection of poetry he placed a quote by the famous print maker Hiroshige where he begins as a small child talking about how he had a mania for drawing things, he goes on and on-older and older saying how he was able to learn one thing but nevertheless it was still useless. “In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress,” he writes “at ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things, at a hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive” (Sandburg quoting from The Hundred Views of Fuji xxiii). At the heart of those words is an inexplicable desire to be able to finally bring life to what it is that we as artist make. It isn’t the artist who matters even if they are they themselves are the thing in which the art is based upon, it is about the art.
To me, simply put, I want to be able to create the power of the inexplicable, the human existence. I am not even sure what it is. I know I feel it when I am alive, when I am making art, when I am in the presence of great art. I am not concerned about what makes me special or unique. I want to learn for myself but more importantly for the art. Perhaps what Hiroshige is looking for is what all artists are looking for. Like W. Somerset Maugham’s depiction of Gauguin in The Moon and Sixpence (1919) painting his masterpieces on the walls of a shack in Tahiti only to die the next day and ask for all of it to be burned down, never to reach the eyes of the outside world because in the end, he finally succeeded and it didn’t matter anymore. Of course, I would like others to experience my art just as I experience others’ but it isn’t about the reputation or the label of being an artist or about being special. For me, it’s about being honest and truthful.