About the Author
To quote Susan Sontag herself :
" Love words , agonize over sentences . And pay attention to the world ."
The source of my art is indeed words themselves . These artifacts of our ideas and symbolic representations of our existence touch on concepts both sublime and horrific , and I find that endlessly fascinating .
As the painter has a palette , I have the dictionary and my beloved thesaurus .
I ’ ve written in the past about the dangers of " over-optimized " content , but allow me to offer you a far more insightful view in the words of Sontag herself , specifically as it relates to art :
" Real art has the capacity to make us nervous . By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that , one tames the work of art . Interpretation makes art manageable , conformable ."
One of the challenges I face in the marketing world is the constant pressure from the advertising intellgentsia to " simplify " my writing . The argument goes that it ' s important to reach as wide an audience as possible , and that means keeping written materials below a ninth-grade reading level on something called the " Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level " scale .
Dear reader , I may , at some temporal increment beyond this one , share my considered thoughts on the Flesch-Kincaid scale , as well as enlightening you as to precisely which level of Gehenna such a ghastly conglomeration of came from , but for now , suffice it to say that ... I ' m not a fan .
I believe that reader-humans ( like you , my fine and decidedly un-feathered friends ) should not be treated as if you ' re borderline illiterate . While it may be true that my choices of obscure verbiage and discursive sentence structure can be a challenge for readers , it ' s almost embarrassingly easy to determine to meaning of any word or phrase they may encounter . Does it follow the guidelines and ( angels and ministers of grace defend us ) " best practices " laid out by the so-called experts ? No it most assuredly does not .
But then ... perhaps that ' s the shape of my art .
apple
About the Author
Mackenzie Clench is a creative instigator , agent provocateur , copywriter , author and general man-about-the-internet , kicking over the apple cart of " that ' s-the-way-it ' s-always-been-done " and giving the advertising intelligentsia aneurysms on a nearly daily basis . In addition to his work as a copywriter , he helps groovy entrepreneur-humans discover and fire up their own beautifully mad ( and madly beautiful ) engines of creation to sing their song through the power , majesty and ass-kicking awesomeness of the written word .
mackenzieclench . com
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