I think I’ve made that quite clear, that I don’t think we should judge a work based on whether it was written by a man or a woman, someone from European or African or Native American or Asian or any other descent, by someone who was straight and cis or LGBTQ, or any other similar category. Meaning, we should only ever judge the work on its individual merits, and the person themselves as an individual.

The entire point of this essay is that we should judge people as individuals, based on what they do, and not their various “identities.” I think identity politics to be a very dangerous game — it’s one of those things that you don’t want to legitimize because your opponents will also end up doing it, and whenever they do it, it has historically turned out quite terrible.

None of this is to say that people’s identities aren’t developed because of their culture and subculture, socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic identities (their own and/or others’), political situation, differences in abilities, mental differences, educational differences, family situations, friends, work, and on and on and on and on. I’m a dialectical thinker, and I always keep the full context of what it means to be and become human in mind. Each of these things help to individuate us, even as our own genetic tendencies, moral views, grit, and so on contribute to how we take these things in and adapt them to us and us to them. All of which necessarily contributes to the particularities of any given artist’s works, as do the art works to which they are exposed, the hard work they have engaged in, and the skills they have developed.

Yes, skills are a vital aspect of being an artist at all, in the same way and for the same reason that a scientist who has great ideas but can’t run any of the equipment isn’t actually a scientist, and will never be a scientists because he/she cannot do the experiments to prove anything. The proof of any artist is the skill with which they create anything. A musical genius is worthless without at least learning how to play an instrument correctly — they probably ought to learn some musical theory as well. I’m not sure that’s a remotely controversial statement — and yet, it seems terribly controversial to state that poets and visual artists ought to actually learn their craft and various styles and techniques so they have the tools to realize their vision, whatever that vision may be.

I’m not sure how many of my essays you have read, but I would argue that you cannot understand any of them if you haven’t read and understood all of them. Each essay is within the context of everything else I have written. They are all collected together here.

That being said, do tell me where we disagree. I too want something that everyone else hasn’t already done. That means moving away from the white male-dominated postmodern avant-garde and toward a natural classicism that embraces the traditions of all of the world’s cultures, finding both their common and uncommon beauties. And even in my rejecting, I don’t fully reject. I want an art that is postmodern, postcolonial, Modernist, Academic, Renaissance, Medieval, ancient, German, Malian, Japanese, Aztec, Micronesian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, pagan, Greek, Roman, Assyrian, paleolithic, Indian, male, female, cis, trans, embracing all sexualities and none, finding the beauty in all of these and many, many, many other things. It’s in that which we will find something new, not in the reductionism of identity politics.

Again, I do want to know where we disagree. I need specifics.

I believe you to be an honest inquirer, and I believe you keep coming back because there’s something in what I write that you want to engage with because it’s a positive thing to you, and you only want to make it better. That’s what dialogue is all about.