Great art comes from specific conditions. It can be a specific ensemble or performer, a specific message from the creator. It can be a specific story to tell, a specific theatre to perform in, a specific time in your life.
Stephen Sondheim says in the revue Sondheim on Sondheim,
“If you ask me to write a love song, I don’t know what to write. But if you say, ‘Write me a torch song about a girl who’s just been jilted by a guy, and she comes into a bar and she’s in a red dress and she orders a grasshopper,’ that I can write, because you’ve started to characterize and give me specifics to write about – there’s a drink to write about, there’s a bar to write about, there’s a dress to write about. Who was the guy who jilted her? Why did she choose that dress?”
Specificity is core to artistic creation. That’s one of the reasons that several recent Disney movies have been so well received – Frozen in Norway, Moana in the South Pacific. They’re specific stories.
Pixar always tells stories heavy on specifics – they imagine a world, populate it, and then tell a story within it. The details (even the easter eggs) they put in all enhance the specificity of their art. I was delighted to see that they’d done it again with Coco – placing it in a specific culture and time, with specific music and art, specific traditions and dynamics. The story they tell is universal – of family, love, and passion – but it is the details with which they tell it that makes it special.
How can you make your art more specific?