Stay with me.

There's nothing at all wrong with Trixie from Speed Racer. She is intelligent and capable, she is resourceful... she can pilot a helicopter. She is a perfectly respectable and attractive woman. But she doesn't really do anything for me beyond that. The world is full of people like that. I am predisposed to focus on the women, but it's universal. Together people, successful people, bright people who do not hold my attention. Idly wondering why, I started to think about what key component she might be missing, and found a rabbit hole that tumbled away into a very difficult place to explain.
J.D Salinger died today and it made me wonder if this generation will produce anything of lasting merit. Harry Potter and Twilight are perfectly good stories, and entertaining to be sure, but on a core level I don't feel like they have anything to say. They are built on established patterns of human interest, repackaging what we know we like with lots of cleverness. But they don't have any ideas. They're not saying something. They are not art.
When I hear the word "artist", habit coaches me to think of an illustrator or painter. Of course the word is not so narrow. One of the shortfalls of my native language is its habit of inferring specifics out of broad terms. When someone says "I'm an artist," we should reflexively ask them to clarify. I'm not sure what this period in history will create that later generations will talk about, or require their students to write reports on. I can't think of any films or books. Sculpture, music, stage plays? I shrug. It's impossible to judge. Bach and Van Gogh only gained popularity many decades after their lives had ended. But the goal of art I feel is more than to "communicate"; it's too vague. If you don't know what you're trying to say, if you haven't attached yourself to an idea, you cannot produce art. So what is art, then? The attempt to marry some aspect of greater truth with emotion. That's my definition. An artist has a need in their heart to keep returning to this impossible challenge. It's something that only another artist will ever really understand. That's why Trixie and all those others simply glance off of me without purchase. They will always seem two-dimensional to me; they have no handhold here.
My interest is arrested by a girl with poetry of the soul.

-J