There's more material to consume than ever before. Short-form, long-form, video, text, image, audio... but how much of it is art?
In the author community--especially the indie author community--there's always a tug-and-pull between "writing to market" and what I call "writing to the soul." Put more bluntly, there's a tug-and-pull between writing for money and writing for passion. It's easy to think that the two are mutually exclusive, but they're really not. I think the commercial success of series like Wheel of Time and The Malazan Book of the Fallen--or, if you prefer more indie examples, The Bound and the Broken or A Time of Dragons--proves that you can write a series that is both soulfully done and provides lucrative rewards for the creators.
But too often, I see authors pulled toward money. On the one hand, I get it--I am not as morally opposed to capitalism as some (it has its flaws, but I do believe in the idea that "capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others” which did not actually come from Churchill), and we cannot live without money. If you can combine your calling with revenue, then that's the best of both worlds. Hell, one of my first blog posts was "The State of Stephen" in which I broke down the business side of my writing career.
But on the other, I think this can--and does--lead otherwise talented authors to waste their time writing half-hearted books that only had superficial editing, don't dive deep into harder questions, and are measured purely by their revenue. I love books that make me feel like The Spear Cuts Through Water, but frankly, outside of a select few fantasy authors (including the ones named above), almost no indie book has done this. (Very few trad books have, either, but as a member of the indie community, this is the space I know well.) But for all of this, there's a reason authors do this.
Readers consume this content.
So here's my question to you.
Are you consuming art, or are you consuming content?
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There's a few key differences between the two that I believe merit discussion.
Content is forgotten shortly after it is consumed, often within the day. I can't tell you what the most memorable moment from a sports podcast last week was; I can't tell you the moment that resonated most emotionally with me watching The Mandalorian and Grogu. This isn't always a bad thing--sometimes, it's good to let the mind rest, though not rot--but when it becomes the primary source of consumption, it makes us all dumber, less thoughtful, and therefore a little less empathic and engaged.
Art is remembered for a long, long time after, if not forever. As I'm typing this, I'm still listening to the soundtrack to Clair Obscur, months after I long played it, because the game is so emotional, soulful, and well done. I still think about how Where the Red Fern Grows affected me (if you know, you know) even though I haven't read the book in nearly a decade. I still get chills thinking about Samwise carrying Frodo up Mt. Doom, even though I first experienced those chills two decades ago. Not all work that people call art will stick with you, but if nothing you've consumed in the last year has stuck in your mind, I would argue you're not searching for art enough.
Part of this, to me, has to do with how we consume it. Content, to me, is largely passive. It's played in the background, on car rides, making meals, etc. When reading it, pages fly by, but we have no idea how we got to the chapter we're on. When I realize I have no idea how two characters found themselves together in a book and I know I've been giving it an earnest read, that's a bad sign.
Art, meanwhile, engages you. It forces you to think. After witnessing a haunting conversation, you're pondering it for hours on end, thinking of similar situations in your life. While listening to a melancholic song, you can't help but sway (as I am right now to Dechire la Toile from Clair Obscur--a song that is hopelessly stuck in my head.) When you read a book that somehow seems to perfectly capture life (as the book in the photo of this post does), you forever reference it in conversation. Art, really, forces you to be a better person, because by the act of thinking, you're forced to deliberate a heavy question.
Finally, I think art rises above content--but it takes a very, very long time. Although I read indie authors to stay engaged with the fantasy community, in truth, I much prefer to read books published before 2000 (or at least series started before then). I think effective marketing and "being the hot thing" can make otherwise mediocre content rise to the top of bestselling charts, creating a kind of fool's gold effect. I'm most certainly not a hipster who refuses to buy the hottest, newest items, but there's something to be said for art that, created decades or even centuries ago, still persists in the public consciousness, even if only within certain circles. The Hero with a Thousand Faces was published nearly eighty years ago, yet the ideas it presents still matter today. Religious texts are probably the biggest example of this, but that's a different conversation.
So I come back to the question I asked in the first part.
Based on these definitions, are you consuming content or art?
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I should be clear--I am not advocating an all-art consumption approach. There's a level of mental exhaustion that comes with thoroughly examining good art, and sometimes that supply is depleted. After a hard morning writing, I listen to sports podcasts; after finishing a long series, I'll read a mindless thriller or sci-fi novel. I have no qualms watching Transformers or Mortal Kombat on a long flight or after a long week.
But I think for all of us, we can shift the consumption diet a little more toward art. All of us could stand to think a little more, to be a little more empathic. All of us would benefit from true engagement, not just passive consumption.
All of us would benefit from consuming true art.