"What do you hope an audience comes away with after [reading, watching, seeing, hearing] this [book, film, show, song]?'"
I have probably been asked this question a thousand times, sometimes by friends or acquaintances but more often by rookie journalists unsure of themselves and their craft.
I wish I could say I've never answered it. But I have answered it, in a vague reassuring way, in a kind of circuitous meandering attempt to not offend the interviewer by dismissing it altogether while at the same time trying to point to why this question should never be asked.
The reason none of us should ever ask or answer this question is simple. If I have made something and I invite you to experience it, I want your experience of it to be YOUR experience of it. And, not incidentally, I'm also of the opinion that if I am good at making this thing I'm inviting you to take in, I've not aimed it unambiguously at a single message target. Because that, I'm sure, is the domain of essay writing, or blog posting, or tweeting.
Art draws us in via the details. Shakes us up a bit. And spits us out onto the sidewalk of life unsure of whether we want to go left or right or cross against traffic. And if it's great art, it keeps tap-tap-tapping gently at our shoulder day after day after day until somehow in a way we can't quite even articulate, we are forever changed.
That naturally becomes a private beautiful thing we hold dear but which we don't glibly articulate.
