Fiction Weird Science First/Personals Kitchen SyncronicitiesSatire

Creativity
is a mainstay of our western values.

And yet it is also a source of much confusion, many negative emotions

and a lot of intellectual hypocrisy.


Culturally we worship and adore creative musicians, writers, dancers, actors and all manner of artists and artistes. So important is 'art' to our collective cultural identity that we will blindly follow some popular fad and fail to put our own critical faculties to use.


The older you get and the further back you can look, the more you will realise how much crap we've had shoved down our throats in the name of 'popularity'.



Instinctively we all know this because we also have an individual identity with its own artistic and cultural values. And when we catch ourselves blindly following the flock we too often misdirect our anger, turning our scorn on undiscovered and unknown artists just because we can. They have no huge fan base to argue on their behalf. Thus, we have become cowardly in our willingness to champion new artists even when we know they're good.



So much talent gets suppressed and repressed. And it doesn't even take negative feedback to kill a dream. In the world of poetry a simple lack of positive feedback is enough to discourage a genius.

Have you ever felt your own spark of creativity stunted by reluctance or asked yourself 'why bother' or 'should I really say this'? I think we all have, but no one wants to willingly expose themselves to the ridicule of the masses. Sadly the truest artists are often the really shy ones, the most sensitive to criticism.



But we, the Committee for Alien Content (CAC) are here to expose what we think is good in early 21^st century writing even if the author is reluctant and other reviewers don't get it. All we ask is that you give this poet a chance. Not 30 seconds, not a few lines; read the whole damn thing and then think about it for a while and then read it again. Because we said so. And because y'should. If ya know what's good for ya.

This week's CAC Continuum was researched and assembled by ~jwf~ as part of the Committee for Alien Content's Continuing search for truth in a world gone mad with reality television and televised reality.

The CAC Continuum Archive


We gratefully acknowledge the support of
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