OK Not to Know, Cedar City Arts Council Column for Iron County Today

 OK Not to Know

By Sara Penny, CCAC Vice President

The older I get the more I find there is much more to know. I joke that 22 is the perfect age because younger than that many students want to be older and after 22 most people want to be younger. It is also the age when you start to realize how little you know. Learning is definitely a lifelong pursuit.  

Anne Carson was recently named as the Nobel Laureate in Literature and I have been trying to learn about her. “The best thing a work of art can do is take your mind with it,” she said. She uses her boxing class lessons as way of demonstrating the Greek concept of taking care of each other. She infuses modern ideas with ancient academic research. She says that “noticing small things makes a difference”. Really noticing other people “outside the stereotype I already have them is always surprising.” 

At the recent Southern Utah Book Festival, Elaine Vickers recommended the book 10 to 25 by David Yeager. He “reveals that young people aren’t incompetent—they’re just wired to prioritize social connection, identity formation, and peer respect over abstract goals like academic achievement. Rather than fighting these natural drives, effective mentors harness them by adopting what he calls the 'mentor mindset': combining high expectations with genuine care and respect. His approach has shown measurable benefits in academic performance, particularly for marginalized students.” It is why having music practice with a friend and sharing pizza may yield better results than hours of solitary practice. Any chance to make art a social experience improves the outcomes for both young and old.

Another presenter, A.M. Luzzader, has been surprised that teachers and coaches use her children’s books on dragons as motivational models for children. Small Flames are young dragons facing challenges that resonate with readers.

In the session on AI in writing, the consensus was that the “human spark” is essential to the creation of art. So an AI program may write a story or a piece of music, but will it resonate with humans? Can we even tell the difference? The authors were pretty unanimous that they strive to write and rewrite their work rather than using AI tools, other than spellcheck. I will grant that spellcheck is a valuable tool, but careful proofreading is also essential. 

I especially enjoy listening to accomplished artists who are searching for new ideas. There is an overlap of “debilitating uncertainty” and “arrogant confidence” in creating art. You have to have enough gumption to move forward, but not let the ego overtake the process. An ego that is so big it blinds the eyes and stops the ears does not lend itself to artistic creation. It is more valuable to continue to be surprised and to continue to learn.

As Anne Carson said in an interview “I’m really trying to make people’s minds move, you know, which is not something they’re naturally inclined to do. We have a kind of inertia, sitting and listening. But it’s really important to get somehow into the mind and make it move somewhere it has never moved before. That happens partly because the material is mysterious or unknown, but mostly because of the way you push the material around from word to word in a sentence. And it’s that that I’m more interested in doing, generally, than mystifying by having unexpected content or bizarre forms. It’s more like: Given whatever material we’re going to talk about, and we all know what it is, how can we move within it in a way we’ve never moved before, mentally? That seems like the most exciting thing to do with your head.”