..and don't read
art critiques,
book reviews,
movie reviews or anything else that will inevitably contaminate your opinion of
artwork that is so obviously meant to be interpreted personally.
Oh, that song was so beautiful, until I read that it's actually supposed to be about rotting sentient garbage.
I can't even count the number of times I've ruined songs, books or movies by having a preconcieved opinion of their content before I experience them myself.
Jodie Foster IS Clarice Starling.
Art is so easily ruined by the screen of "experienced" opinion. Do painters paint for art critics? Do songwriters write for music critics? No. They write or paint for romantics, for people who love art and don't need a reason why, for people who don't need to know what every symbol and every image means exactly, but would instead rather infer their own personal experience.
Instead of experiencing things this way -- raw, new, real -- we amateur connoisseurs of music, painting, sculpture, writing, anything, ask our knowledgeable friends what they think of the world, and adopt their viewpoint, because they have seen twice as many paintings, heard twice as many songs as we have. They KNOW.
But perhaps for their cluttered viewpoint, they know much less.