St. Petersburg resident and all-around Super Poet, Peter Meinke, once had the MFA students at the University of Tampa visit the Salvador Dalí museum. Meinke himself frequented the museum. The daring and talented paintings inspired Meinke to think, pushed him to be creative.
I am not a big fan of Dalí myself, but his paintings, his warpings of the world, his unique means of protesting, preaching, and confessing forced even myself to look at communication, writing, and art anew.
As writers, we are wise to draw inspiration from different mediums of art. Some of Meinke’s poetry — and some of the great poems in the English language — started with or simply are a description of an actual painting.
It is with that in mind that I pass along this music video. Of Monster and Men did the song “Little Talks,” which many younger readers (or radio listeners of all ages) will have no doubt heard. The latest music video, released last week, has — I hope you will agree — the rich vividness and openness of purpose that Dalí so well-weilded:
(Pump it to hi-def, if the you’ve the bandwidth for it.)
It is tempting sometimes to write the story of the art we’ve just seen. But it feels like stealing. Perhaps the robust intellectual property rights of the west have made more tepid what would be in the east more daring? But retelling a story, from the very earliest oral traditions, has never been a foul. It has been a core component of art’s growth.
After watching this music video, I wanted to sit and write the novel of what I had just seen.
I say: Why not?