Notes on Sensibility
Sensibility means having a response; it's an aesthetic, intellectual and also emotional reaction, determined or at least influenced by many variables: time, place, memory. It is about discrimination, which can feel and sound like judgment but in its best form transcends cheap shots at what's merely good and bad. Although cheap shots can be part of a certain type of sensibility too, if done right.
One definition of creativity is divergent thinking. A way of thinking that diverges from the norm. Divergent thinking is unexpected. It delights, it surprises, it amuses.
The Right is woefully unimaginative. It is all about convergent thinking. Anything that is different is dangerous and wrong. Diverge and be damned. That's why the Right has a hard time being funny.
In the old days we talked about camp, but camp is reportedly dead. Susan Sontag is dead, and now they say camp is dead because of assimilation. Camp worked because of difference; it diverged from the usual and expected interpretation, from the commonly accepted understanding, and in so doing it could offend and in offending be funny. But mainstream society has a way of cherry-picking what it likes from the divergent populations. Being good at sports, for example, is a good thing. Or possessing rhythmn. Or having an eye for detail and a wonderful fashion sense and great abs. But the rest? Not so much.
Sensibility has a context. An orientation to the world. It is influenced by the time before, and the time present. "My advent into this world," wrote Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980) in The Glass of Fashion (1954) "coincided with horseless carriages and electric lights. Queen Victoria had died only three years previously, and Oscar Wilde was but recently buried in the cemetery at Pere Lachaise... The women who leaned over my crib had not yet forgone the lines of the hourglass and were laced into corsets..."
Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980)
In love with, had affair with
Greta Garbo (1905 - 1990),
dressed by
Adrian (1903 - 1959)
in Camille 1936
reinterpreted by
Charles Ludlum (1943 - 1987).
Bill Vehr and Charles Ludlum, Camille, 1973
Margueritte: I'm cold. Nanine, put another faggot on the fire.
Nanine: There are no more faggots in the house.
Margueritte: No faggots in the house? Open the window, Nanine. See if there are any in the street."
Camille by Charles Ludlum, Opening Act III
To be Continued
darling
ahem.
with all those strange new couplings in the sight of god and man together with a charge card or two to Barneys and a surrogate on the way with twins, over here at teamgloria we think CAMP is due for a resurgence
at least we think so.
wink.
and a blush.
bring back polari (http://chris-d.net/polari/)
adore you.
teamgloria x
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Oh my darling, you throw a Barneys card and a surrogate into the mix and ANYTHING is possible.
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Stuck on....or rather pleased with your pairing of "Sensibilty has a context. An orientation to the world..."
Unexpected and delightful indeed. More thought will be needed on this. Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Yes yes. Have been thinking much about my compass lately. About making my own North instead of asking for someone else's directions. I'll look to the west for you then.
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Just out of curiosity, I was wondering how you would define sensibility as defined by Jane Austen in her novel, "Sense and Sensibility?"
I also think, as far as camp goes, it has suffered under the need of many gay men and women to assimilite, and not be perceived as outsiders. So much is given up in the effort to fit in.
Even when it comes to writing, so many follow the path that has already been tread. The challenge as to how my work is unique, daring, and different seems to be the challenge to all artists.
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Austen is talking about love, of course, like all good novelists. Are you sensible about love, or do you let yourself get emotional? What's it going to be, your head or your heart?
Yes, assimilation makes being different harder to pull off. Camp is the stance of an outsider. Camp thinks divergently. Hard to be divergent if you're fighting to fit in.
I'm going to go out on a limb though, on your last point, and say that the challenge an artist faces is not to be different or daring or unique, but to simply be. Everything has a model, from a novel to a sonnet to a screenplay. But even if you slavishly copy your model, you will end up with something unique, because it's yours. Trust that. Don't try to be unique or daring or different, but practice being brave enough to allow what you already are to come forth and reveal itself. The old masters had students practice copying their work, because they knew imitation was a great teaching tool. You start with a model and then you move past it, sometimes consciously, but I think more often in spite of yourself. That's what I believe anyway. How can you do the unexpected if you don't know what's expected to begin with?
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