This piece of art you’re reading is really good. If you don’t like it, you just don’t understand it. It’s quite brilliant, in fact, and all your smart friends like it, so if you don’t, you clearly just don’t have the cognitive capacity to see its awesome brilliance.
A lot of people think this essay is not brilliant. But that just goes to show how brilliant it really is. See, when I wrote it, I anticipated a lot of dumb people thinking it was unbrilliant, and since I anticipated their reactions, I must be brilliant. That’s how art works. It’s not about talent or inspiring people or changing someone’s perceptions, it’s all just about staying one step ahead of what people currently think.
Art is just about doing unexpected things. I, as an artist, don’t have time to worry about whether I’m doing these unexpected things well. That they’re unexpected is enough to make me and my art brilliant. When you’re on the vanguard of your field, you can’t stop to make sure your methods are traditionally good. It’s a waste of time.
Shmoopyville. No one could’ve predicted that, and therefore it’s brilliant. “Shmoopyville” is the height of brilliance, in fact. Unless it’s ever done again in any form ever. Then it is lame.
All art that follows any sort of convention is really terrible. You have to think so. If you don’t, you are being a fool. And if you keep saying stupid stuff like that all your smart friends will hate you. And without smart friends who think you are smart, then you aren’t really smart.
A great comment to make, after watching a movie or hearing a band or reading a book or seeing a play, is to say, “Well, of course, it’s terrible because it’s just like _blank_.” You see, if any work of art is remotely similar to any other work of art that has ever existed, the newer work of art is “derivative” and lame. In fact, there have only really ever been three interesting paintings, three interesting songs, and three interesting plays in all of recorded history. (There are no interesting movies because they are all based on plays or books.)
A stupid comment to make is, “Yes, I understand this piece of art isn’t breaking new ground in the sense of its form, but it’s an extremely good and moving piece of art and uses its form’s conventions to their full extent.”
What a dumbass comment. If you ever hear someone say something like that, you should just pick up your dog-eared McSweeney’s book and move to another table in the coffeeshop/used record store.
I like all my art to be constantly new, and I don’t really care how well it is executed. I like my rock songs to have no melody or repeated verses or choruses. I like rock songs with long slow incoherent guitar noodling and nonsensical lyrics. In other words, I like anything by Radiohead that most people don’t like. I like my paintings to have no sense of composition or color or any adherence to the basic “rules” of art. I like paintings that aren’t even paintings. This essay, in fact, is a great painting. It’s a terrible essay though because it uses words and paragraphs and that is so done.
You might think I would’ve ended the essay right at the end of that last paragraph, but no way. This essay has no traditional “punchy ending”. But that just makes it even better. And the fact that I am self-aware enough to talk about the fact that it has no end makes the non-ending even more brilliant. Self-awarneness in art can’t be used too liberally and is basically a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. It’s a great way to use conventions but then backtrack and make clear that you hate all conventions. You’ll notice this painting has tons of the stuff.
So go ahead. Forward this to all your smart friends. They’ll love it. If they don’t, they are not smart. Unless they are purposely being not smart, in which case they are brilliant. But they aren’t brilliant friends, they are brilliant songs. They are terrible friends and brilliant songs, but they are not at all Shmoopyville.
That was a terrible callback. But I knew it was terrible, so it was brilliant.
Anyway, here comes the ending of the “essay” (which isn’t an essay but rather a painting). If you didn’t like it, you’re wrong, and I don’t really care what you think anyway because screw the audience, this is art.
Brilliant art.
