As a suggestion to anyone questioning the need for or validity of criticism in the arts, I offer Olivia Frey's

"Beyond Literary Darwinism: Women's Voices and Critical Discourse."

Why do we talk about this stuff? Well, as Frey would suggest, it's because we're GUYS, but that can be debated for other purposes. To apply it to OUR situation as artists, it can be said that we like to take our ideas and bounce them off the colleagues in our artistic community. Frey calls this the "adversarial method", whereby ideas are refined by using argument, pro/con, affirm/negate, etc. Some of us like this kind of discourse.

However, sometimes someone comes along who doesn't want to engage in this attack and parry of theory/art, and s/he is deemed "abnormal." Perhaps an artist just wants to offer their piece(s) on here "as-is". That is, maybe someone just wants to put their stuff on here hoping to touch someone somewhere with their work. No desire for pseudo-intellectual debate, no desire for stuffy, ineffective, meaningless banter, just desire for sharing. If you like it, fine. If you don't, move along cuz ya obviously ain't findin' it here.

-- Waldo