“As long as a human eye is looking, there is always something to see. To look at something which is ‘empty’ is still to be looking, still to be seeing something — if only the ghosts of one’s own expectations.”
— Susan Sontag, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” in Styles of Radical Will.
In her essay, Sontag discusses what she calls “the aesthetics of silence”, namely, art that is aimed at being “silent,” at refuting “art” itself. At one point she says that there is no such thing as literal silence in art, “no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form.” As long as there’s a viewer, something can be seen.
I especially liked the quote above because the same could be said about creating art, stories especially: that there is always a story if you know how to spot it, and let yourself write it out.
