Maya Deren writes:

“If one assumes something is a symbol, one must be prepared to answer why the artist has substituted at all; why one should assume that every image is a mask for meaning . . . As, ‘bird in flight.’ Well, I mean bird in flight. ‘Oh, you mean that is not a symbol for something else?’ No, it is a bird in flight. ‘Oh, it’s just a bird in flight?’ It is all a bird in flight might mean.”[1]

There was this guy named Gesamt Kunstwerk.
One day he decided to perform a concert.
So he readied a band & developed a score,
Then arranged for dancers to prance on the floor.
And that wasn’t all: he painted a scene
Of prairies and mountains upon the back screen.
And as he was painting, he added a bird
(Just a small detail, nothing absurd).

Now, when the bird he had finished, there entered a man—
The lighting technician, with pliers in hand—
The lighting guy stopped, and looked at the screen
Then he asked Kunstwerk: “Uh, what does that bird mean?”
Kunstwerk said: “What? Oh, that’s just a bird
A small little detail to add to what’s heard.”

The lighting guy frowned, then he said “Why,
I think it could mean something, at least if you tried
To tie it somehow to the rest of your show.
Then, when people saw it—maybe, who knows—
They would get more out of your opera.”

Kunstwerk shook his head, and said: “Why would I bother
To make every detail mean something else?
If people want meaning, they can do that themselves.”

“All I am saying,” the electrician replied
“Is that there’s so much that a bird might imply:
Like a soul taking flight, or a dude getting high
Or a game changing play at the top of the ninth
Or that feeling you get, on a warm August night.”
Gesamt, the artist, vexatiously cried:
“A bird in the sky is just a bird in the sky!
It doesn’t mean X, and sure as heck don’t mean Y!
Art isn’t math, some symbolical system
It’s simply a thing that engages the senses.
It’s an aesthetic phenomenon, and really naught else—
Art has no purpose beyond its own self.”

“You sound sure about that.” “Oh, I most certainly am,”
Said Mr. Kunstwerk, pealing the paint from his hands.
“I’m here to make beauty, not some drab, stodgy statement.
Now don’t you have something to go fix in the basement?”

“The basement can wait,” the electrician spoke.
“Art for art’s sake makes all culture a joke.”

“Come on now, you’re being hyperbolistic.”

“I ain’t using no hype; I’m calling you solipsistic:
Nothing can mean itself, at least not in culture;
For all art is communication, whether music or sculpture,
Painting or flickers of light on a blanket—
Heck, even a lady, when she’s at her toilet
Fixes her hair not just to “look good”
But to present herself as someone to be understood
By someone else, as, say, smart, or friendly-seeming—
For in the public sphere nothing’s devoid of meaning.
And the moment someone looks at something you made
They will guess what it means, & judge it accordingly.”

“Well, here’s what I’m saying,” responded Gesamt Kunstwerk
“The making of meaning takes so much effort, 
And I’m concentrating not on the ideas I might make
But a short pleasant journey for the audience to take.”

“Alright, I guess that’s fine,” muttered the lighting technician
Who, truth be told, was vying for a position
As a professor of Semiotics: The Science of Signs.
And as he pocketed his pliers, he made a final reply:

“A bird in the sky is not a bird anymore
When it’s put on a wall and is set to a score;
As soon as you make a bird out of paint
You’ve made “a bird” into something it ain’t.
And then you’ve placed this “bird” into a system
Which includes some dancers and also musicians,
And light and sound and fancy shapes
Enclosed in time, embraced by space
And, should your score include some words
Then drama, too, will be observed.

“And over every one of them, 
Flies this bird—and what of him?
If a single something he don’t mean
His significance still is not nothing—
But meaning, itself, might be too flagrant—
Maybe what art makes is not just a statement
But instead a state—that’s what’s conveyed
By these polyphonic objects you’ve carefully arranged
Into an instance of “total art”—
And I’d like to think your bird too plays its part
In making your opera a grand expression
Of the best and worst in the lives of all men.”

“Well spoken,” said Gesamt, who, before he let the other go
Asked the unionized electrician if he’d like to revise his libretto.

_______

[1] Deren, Maya, and Bruce R. McPherson. Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film. Kingston, NY: Documentext, 2005. Print.  (209-210).