How do you get people to think the way you do?  How do you get people to understand what you understand? 

I was introduced a long time ago to the power of story.  I did have a significant advantage in learning this:  listening to my mother preach every sunday for 18+ years.  After a  time, I stopped listening to the words she was saying and listened to how she was saying them and the way people reacted to those words.   I’ve found that the hidden power of communcation is not within the message, or the meaning, but the vehicle.  Not to say that what you say doesn’t make a difference, but defining factor will always be how you go about saying that.

This sort of thought process consumes me.  Especially with the work that I do.  Being an artist, my work is built around how it will be received by the one experiencing it.  If I don’t consider that as my primary focus when constructing my ideas, then the final product will completely lack in direction and power to change people’s perceptions.  Often times I don’t even need to consider the meaning of the things that I create so long as I take care to craft the effect of the outcome.  Many of my ideas are, on the surface, absolutely ridiculous and outlandish when taken to be understood in the realm of “reality.”

The thesis which I wrote and created at Reed was one of those challenges.  It attempted to explore the perceptual space between the image being presented and the viewer through action/reaction.  I also attempted to present and argue that art is stronger if its created for purposes other than its own (that is a very simplified explanation) – needless to say, I discovered that it is very difficult to convince people set in their opinions, knowledge, and beliefs.  I had to present, argue and defend my work against four professors who had, for four years, helped shape the path which I chose: people who, due to the nature of my mental development, can easily be viewed as just short of intellectual immortals – so highly placed upon the pedastal of acedemia that I felt like I was trying to move the clouds with my mind.

So that brings us back to the question…how do you get people to share your understanding?  Most people in this world are set in their ways – solid about their beliefs, opinions, ideas etc.  Resistant to change – a common trait in this world.  I’ve found that, if you attempt to directly affect their beliefs, they will simply increase their resistance to that change.  Bring them in – entice them with subtley rich imagery and create a mental space that they can relate to.  I think you will find that the most powerful lessons are those which pluck at your hearstrings and ring true with your own experiences.  Think about all the lectures, sermons and lessons you have experienced.  Which have had the greatest impact on the way you felt about something?

I’ve been contemplating how to bring more people to the same understanding that I have in regards to new orleans.  It is baffling to see that after so much time, the people of the city seem to have been forgotten.  Ive talked to a number of artists who attempt to make their work in regards to the disaster.  There are actually quite a lot of people out there doing what they can…but nothing seems to have a lasting effect.  It’s like trying to marr the face of a glacier with a rock – for a time, your impression will remain, but eventually the glacier will just form over it and there will be nothing.  I suppose thats how I see society…always temporarily accepting the fad and then reverting to the groves it has so mercilessly laid in the roads of time.  

To metaphorical?  too bad.

So how do we entice people into our story without them realizing it?

-JR