the dark back of time

"It is always said that behind every novel lies an episode, however pallid or tenuous or intermittent, in the life or reality of the author, thought it may have been transfigured. This is said as if in distrust of the imagination and the inventive faculties, and also as if readers and critics needed something to hang onto, to keep from falling prey either to the strange vertigo of that which is absolutely invented and without experience or basis-as if they did not want to feel the horror of something that appears to exist as we read it, that breathes and whispers and sometimes even persuades, yet has never been-or to the ultimate absurdity of taking seriously what is only a representation, as if they were struggling against the lurking awareness that reading novels is a childish pastime, or at least inappropriate to the adult life that is always gaining on us." -The Dark Back of Time by Javier Marias.

I love this, it reads as my thoughts on the subject. It exasperates me when people ask, "but what does it mean?" while looking at art, or reading a story. It is what it makes you feel. Whether the reader wrote out of real experience or with a particular emotion, what it means is how it makes you feel. Nothing more. Nothing less. Every piece of art doesn't need a title. It can just be art.