Re: CHAT: Steg's wonderful .sig (and a question)

On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Sally Caves wrote:

> Grandsire, C.A. wrote:
>
> >         My boyfriend knows that I do conlanging, but he seems to be unable to
> > understand the interest of it. He is an artist too (his painting is very
> > beautiful) but he thinks that art must be shared, that's to say that to
> > call something art, someone who is not acquainted in its technique must
> > be able to enjoy it. He accepts that I have another definition of art
> > (fulfillement of the artist himself) and understand that under this
> > definition, conlanging is art, but he doesn't share it.
>
> Then it's this very listserv and everything related to it that makes it
> a *shared* artform.  A crucial point!
>
Not only that, but I don't think that paintings can be understood very
well by someone who isn't into the artform itself. I realize that one
can understand all the hidden meaning in a Jan Steen painting without
knowing one whit of the painting technique, but it will help a lot.
Enjoying music also demands some work from the audience.

Anyway, some artforms ask more involvmement from the recipient than
others. Conlangs demands a lot, even though lots and lots of people
who don't know a lot of languages or making languages seem to have been
able to enjoy Tolkiens languages.

Watered down paintings exist, paintings that are easy for the spectator
to look at and feel good with, muzak exists, too (even though it gives
me the creeps, it must be intended for easy listening). The porcelain
dogs some people are fond of are easy-looking sculpture. However, I
don't think it's necessary to invent an easy variant of constructed
languages!

Irina and I have about 1800 visitors every month to our website, of
whom 1200 come for the conlangs and concultures. So we make something
for which there's an audience, which lets us create according to our
need - and that wouldn't be useful enough? I think this is sharing,
indeed.

Writing for money would be nice and all-right for me, except that
I am finding it difficult to write creative fiction in Dutch - I
have written too much English and don't read enough Dutch, while I'm
concious that my written English is not good enough for publication -
even if there would be publishers willing to publish a foreigner's
book.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org/~bsarempt