The writer, the text and the audience

In On Connection, the British poet and rapper Kae Tempest explains how creative works can lead to connection, through the power of three parts: the writer, the text and the audience. These parts are equally important for art to be experienced as profound. They need to be equally “activated”:

It is the connection between the author, the text and you as you, at a particular point, with a particular set of circumstances informing a particular emotional response, that created that sense of deep meaning.

Researching my recent talk on creativity I got to a similar conclusion: the artwork itself isn't the only thing that's meaningful about it. This is the bit people like Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg seem to misunderstand when they say their systems are creative or able to make art.

To understand art, we need to look at more than the artifact, the book, the album, the written text, the poem. It's just as important to look at two other things to understand meaning.

One, what the artist put into it… their intentions, their life story, their attitude, their feelings, their mental state, their specific decisions in the process. Most of the time, outsiders can't really observe any of this. We might find out parts if you read their autobiography, watch a documentary or read interviews or, ahem, subreddits.

Two, what the audience experiences… this too is highly personal. What we experience when enjoying a work of art, hits different when we're just going through heartbreak. When we are drunk, or maybe sober. Or when our thoughts just wandered off to remembering to turn on the dishwasher. Context matters too, and can change over time.

This week, I saw Portishead perform their song “Roads” on a video they had recorded for Together for Palestine. It hit different on an evening that was dedicated to raise funds for Palestinian organisations. Originally supposed to be about the singer's longing for a happy life and her struggle to find a path there. But “How can it feel this wrong / can't anybody see / we've got a war to fight” takes on entirely new meaning in the light of how the world has filled up with hatred. The lyrics and melody stayed the same, but the performers and the audience brought different energy.

What the artist puts in and what the audience experiences could amount to a lot or to very little. Either side could pretend. And surely, not all art is made or enjoyed with a lot of care. Not all art connects all the time. But when it does, art can be truly special. And impossible to compute.