“The work of art is an intricate interplay between concealment and un-concealment, secrets and exposure, and invisibility and visibility.”
In his article, The Arts as an Area of Knowledge, Louis Cheng explores Martin Heidegger’s thoughts on art as a means to know the world around us. It’s a two-way street of mutual discovery, one beneficial to both the artist and the audience. As Flannery O’Connor famously put it, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
Of course, step one is to get your audience’s attention. Withholding information triggers the imagination, and the reason this works is central to our nature. We’ve always been attracted to the interplay of the revealed and the hidden. Mystery fascinates us because it ignites the primal need to know what comes next — a basic survival skill. That’s why story tellers withhold certain details from readers, who must turn the next page to find out what happens next.
To quote from Flannery O’Connor again, “You have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”
Once your reader confronts those large and startling figures, they’re open to what you have to say. That’s when the real journey begins.
M.C. Tuggle, Writer 
Great post! Flannery O’Conner is one of my fav’s, thanks for sharing my friend.
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She’s one of my favorites too.
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Speaking of O’Connor: 30 minutes ago I almost took out a collection of Flannery O’Connor’s stories from the library. But I ended up instead with a novel by Joseph O’Connor.
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Yeah,
If you haven’t read Flannery before, you’re in for a treat.
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O’Connor was the queen of shock in my opinion. One of my English professors in college was an O’Connor scholar, so we read several of her works.
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Truly. People imagine she’s a Catholic apologist, but she wrote hard-hitting dark humor.
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Your “Quote of the Day” post had many! I most enjoyed:
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” (O’Connor)
“Mystery fascinates us because it ignites the primal need to know what comes next …” (Tuggle)
Thanks for sharing this/these.
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Doug,
Hey, thanks! Flannery is an inexhaustible source of ideas.
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Dear Mike,
It seems that we have a number of things in common, namely, our love of art, and perhaps even our promoting other artists, either by championing them and/or critiquing their works. Also, as a lover, collector, composer and connoisseur of art and music, I like to think about and comment on art when time permits and circumstance prevails. The multimedia post of mine promoting the works of John Clinock is entitled “🦅 SoundEagle in John Clinock’s Art Rat Cafe 🎨🖼“.
In addition, I often explore the intersections of art and science, of public and private spaces, of the cultural and the technological. Whilst I concede that technology offers enormous unexplored potential allowing emerging artists to express themselves in unprecedented ways, I do have certain concerns and caveats regarding science “reproducing” reality and artists representing it. In a special post entitled “🎧 Facing the Noise & Music: Playgrounds for Biophobic Citizens 🏗🌁🗼“, I have endeavoured to give a very good inkling of the kind of society that humans might be heading towards.
The two posts can be easily located from the Home page of my blog.
Yours sincerely,
SoundEagle
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