There's a Portrait of T Under the Roller Coaster

I’ve been rolling through a lot of old work lately and drenched in sentimentality. 

Did you know that sentimental art is “bad”? I learned this from an essay passage written in Sally Mann’s, A Thousand Crossings. 

I was floored trying to distinguish how she was able to be “intimate with her subjects without being sentimental”. I get it but it still doesn’t quite compute with me. To be intimate: how can one not be, at least mildly, motivated by a touch of the nostalgic? 

Searching a simple definition of ’Sentimentality’ returned the following:

“Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason.”

If this is true, why do people love Terrence Malick films so much and why isn’t this manipulation extended towards trends? 

...

So, I am going to be spoon feeding you a lot of sentimentality, for at least a little while. Feelings in art may be dangerous but so is being manipulated by trends and I have decided that I no longer want that kind of limitation. 

I have fucking multitudes, by god!