Doug Larson

My wife and I are opposites.  She loves to talk and I prefer to listen.  She and her sister sometimes talk simultaneously and neither seems to be listening to the other.  When my wife was interviewing people for our book, It's Okay to Cry, she discovered that she often talked while others were talking.  When she transcribed the audiotapes, she could not hear the other person because she was talking over him.  She learned a valuable lesson about listening.  I have also discovered that talking can energize me.  After giving a speech, I want to keep talking but there is no one to listen since everyone has fled.  Talking helps me to think through my problems and come to a better understanding of what is on my mind.

While talking can sometimes help us understand ourselves, listening helps us understand others. And by understanding others, we will better understand ourselves. If we listen to the words of others, they will teach us about life — both what to do and what not to do. 

When we spend our time talking, we become self-absorbed, caught up in our perceptions of the world, and unaware of those around us.  Listening allows us to step outside ourselves and see the world through the eyes of others.  Listening helps us grow and develop as compassionate individuals.

We probably learn more from the failures of others than we do from our successes. As writers, storytellers and artists, we need to understand other people — why they behave in the way they do.  What motivates them?  What drives them? The better we understand people, the more realistic and truthful our art will be.  

So take the time to listen to others and understand what makes them tick.  Your creative work will be stronger, wiser, and more engaging because of it.  

Charles Demuth

Self-Portrait
(1907)

"Paintings must be looked at and looked at and looked at. . . . No writing, no talking, no singing, no dancing will explain them."

— Charles Demuth

American Artist

1883 - 1935

My Egypt by Charles Demuth
(1927)

Commentary

One of the lessons I learned early in my career is not to explain my poetry to others.  If I had to explain it, then either I did not succeed or the reader failed to understand.  I would attend writer's groups where we would share our work and then the group would critique it.  Some writers would keep trying to explain their poems if they didn't feel the group grasped the meaning of the poem.  If you feel you have to explain your poem to the reader, then you failed to write a successful poem.  



I think the same is true of any art form.  You don't need to explain your work.  A painter shouldn't explain the meaning of his painting.  The viewer has the responsibility in the communication exchange to study the work to the best of his ability just as the reader also has some responsibility.  It is a two way street.  

Biography

Charles Demuth was born in Lancaster, PA where he lived and worked for much of his life.  He suffered from both lameness and severe diabetes for most of his life.  He graduated from the Franklin and Marshall Academy, an all-male prep school, and studied art at the Drexel Institute and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  While Demuth studied and painted in Philadelphia, New York, Paris and Bermuda, he created most of his mature work in a second floor studio in the house he shared with his mother in Lancaster.  The house is now the Demuth Museum.

Cross-Pollination

Artists often influence each other.  In this case, the painter, Charles Demuth, was inspired by a poem of his friend, William Carlos Williams.

The Figure 5 In Gold (1928)

Inspired by a poem of

William Carlos Williams:

The Great Figure

The Great Figure

by William Carlos Williams

Among the rain

and lights

I saw the figure 5

in gold

on a red

firetruck

moving

tense

unheeded

to gong clangs

siren howls

and wheels rumbling

through the dark city.