Artistic Distance

I read an interesting short story for one of my English classes fall semester of 2018 called,  Swimming Lessons by Rohinton Mistry.  It is a short story within a bigger collection of short stories called The Tails of Firoshabaag.  One phrase that stuck out to me during a class discussion was “artistic distance,” which we decided, as it relates to writing, describes the amount of time needed to pass so that an author can write objectively about an event that has taken place in their life.

This was interesting to me because it prompted me to look back at mundane or exciting things that have taken place in my life and attempt to more objectively consider them.  I saw that artistic distance didn’t have to only apply to writing, it could apply to any form of art, hence the name. Beyond the art world, it could also be applied generally to your life in a more “situational” way to help see things more clearly in retrospect.

Have you ever been in an argument with someone and in the moment you couldn’t think of a comeback, but later on when you replay the fight in your head, after some time has passed, you think of just the perfect thing you could have said?  That, to me, is using artistic distance beyond the art world. I would call it “situational distance” but you could name it anything. It can allow you to see what was handled well and what wasn’t which may either give you the chance to fix your mistake or learn from it.

Artistic distance as it applies to my own work has taught me to take a step back from my short stories or opinion articles and not get too close to them to the point of overthinking.  I read an article called Artistic Distance by Paul Burton in which he mentioned that taking a step back can give an artist more clarity.  So I learnt that “Artistic Distance” can be very helpful especially when experiencing writer’s block as I so frequently do.

So, along with allowing one to fix or learn from their mistakes and gain clarity on their work, it can help with getting through grief or anger with a more objective perspective.  I think situational or artistic distance is what allows us to understand our world more clearly.