No Rules

What I love about art (the arts) more than anything is the fact that it has no particular rules or boundaries. I even wrote a poem about this a while back, entitled, "No Rules."

If you try to change the rules in math and decide that 2 + 2 = 7, sure, in your new world of math, that may be correct, but the teacher won't mark it down that way.

If you decide that your boss's layout for a project that you're to have done in a week's time isn't quality enough, so you decide to change things here and there, you might as well go looking for a new job.

If you want to see a movie, but don't want to pay for it, unless you have connections, then good luck.

If you decide to go 100 in a 55, expect to get pulled over for doing 45 over the speed limit.

Everywhere else in life, there are non-stop rules, boundaries, and guidelines enforced on us. At work, school, at theaters, concerts, bars, in relationships, with the family, parenting, driving, but not in art. While there is a certain formula used in all other areas to make things function in a consistent and reliable fashion, there is no one formula used to determine the success and impact of art.

An old friend of mine, actually, a gal I dated for 2-3 weeks, read a poem of mine one day and told me that while it was good, it didn't follow the guidelines and rules that poems are supposed to follow. I was completely baffled by this statement. I mean, it would've been one thing to say that the poem was garbage. But, to say that it didn't follow the "rules" in poetry (art) made me laugh. E.E. Cummings, did he follow these rules? Poe? Frost? Dickinson? Van Gogh? Dali? Monet? Picasso? Elvis? The Beatles? Jimi Hendrix? Alfred Hitchcock? Stanley Kubrick? Kurt Vonnegut? King?

These people and others didn't follow the guidelines, because there aren't any. Art would not be so unique and beautiful if it had to be a certain way. If all books looked alike, all poems looked alike, all music sounded alike, and films were shot and acted alike, and all paintings looked alike, art would not be unique and special. It'd be like anything else with so many rules and boundaries, a programmed robot could partake in them.

Art is the voice, expression, and freedom of humans coming to the forefront. As long as we have art, we have some bit of freedom. If and when some people attempt to put a stranglehold on it, that's when it's time to speak up to make sure that regardless of all other rules and boundaries we have in our lives, we can still feel free with art.