ART HISTORY
An infamous twentieth century political figure was once asked to comment on the effects of the Industrial Revolution. His reply was fast and revealing. Paraphrased, the leader of one of the largest countries in the world remarked that he couldn’t really say, because the world (circa 1950s) was still feeling the impacts of that seminal event.
So goes it with true tales and their relationship to art.
Well before I ever took to a keyboard, I was enthralled by the stories conveyed to me by the grandparents of my industry. Their eyewitness accounts of funeral service, stressing more a way of being than a means of doing business, focused on constant evolution in response to economic and socio political pressures. Neither dry dissertation nor heartfelt laments about a life gone by, these reminiscences were a direct commentary on a way of life that had not only changed, but was still changing, and will likely continue to do so as long as there’s life on planet E.
History called and I blinked.
“Time was when we didn’t leave the building without our stripes,” one elder statesman said. “Back then, we were held in higher esteem, but then, so was everybody else.”
“Some of us had been driving since our twelfth birthday. That’s why we never crashed the coach.”
“People actually smoked in the building back then. Can you believe that?”
FD’s don’t smoke in the building anymore, and the snappy black and gray livery of an era gone by appears less and less inside North American funeral establishments. But the way an FD sees to the directions of the living in order to honor the wishes of the dead remain constant. How directors got there and how they continue to achieve that balance is the stuff of my art.
Many times, fiction writers are asked if their scenes and characters are based on actual events. I can only hope that the answer will always be ‘yes,’ for what better way to shine a light on a subject than through plumbing it’s antecedents to draw a line right up to the present. The people and events we hear about or—even better—are lucky enough to witness with our own eyes beget the words that feed a continuum…history making news.
As the famous unattributed quote goes: “How can we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been.”
Such is the role of history in the creative process. Such is the role of great plots.
So goes it with true tales and their relationship to art.
Well before I ever took to a keyboard, I was enthralled by the stories conveyed to me by the grandparents of my industry. Their eyewitness accounts of funeral service, stressing more a way of being than a means of doing business, focused on constant evolution in response to economic and socio political pressures. Neither dry dissertation nor heartfelt laments about a life gone by, these reminiscences were a direct commentary on a way of life that had not only changed, but was still changing, and will likely continue to do so as long as there’s life on planet E.
History called and I blinked.
“Time was when we didn’t leave the building without our stripes,” one elder statesman said. “Back then, we were held in higher esteem, but then, so was everybody else.”
“Some of us had been driving since our twelfth birthday. That’s why we never crashed the coach.”
“People actually smoked in the building back then. Can you believe that?”
FD’s don’t smoke in the building anymore, and the snappy black and gray livery of an era gone by appears less and less inside North American funeral establishments. But the way an FD sees to the directions of the living in order to honor the wishes of the dead remain constant. How directors got there and how they continue to achieve that balance is the stuff of my art.
Many times, fiction writers are asked if their scenes and characters are based on actual events. I can only hope that the answer will always be ‘yes,’ for what better way to shine a light on a subject than through plumbing it’s antecedents to draw a line right up to the present. The people and events we hear about or—even better—are lucky enough to witness with our own eyes beget the words that feed a continuum…history making news.
As the famous unattributed quote goes: “How can we know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been.”
Such is the role of history in the creative process. Such is the role of great plots.
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