The political sentiment of the whole world is reverting, we’ve done all this before. To some the responsibilities of modern life are more onerous than its opportunities are swell, and people abdicate, defer, and finally worship the leader who relieves their burden. Why does the peasant in rags stand in the ditch weeping, hat in hand, when the king’s gold carriage rumbles by? It’s an acquired quirk of communal living, some set of hormones squeezes around assigning rank, selecting appropriate emotions, equating love and loyalty in the brain. It’s all good for living in a pack, or a pride, or a tribe, especially for those on top, but life becomes less appealing as you move down the line.
Oligarchy is a fancy word and a difficult threshold to find, so why not just use the old familiar term ‘feudalism,’ the state of the world up until a couple of hundred years ago? There are those from both the top and the bottom, apparently, who want to go back, and there’s slippage in politics these days. Carry placards if you must, but change comes when people see the world and themselves differently, altering the operating instructions they’ve been given. There are a several ways this can be done -- by willfully accepting a package of beliefs no matter how bizarre, by committing to a total change of lifestyle, or by developing an interest in art
Least traumatic would be the third, art in this case being a physical device for loosening the unseen restrictions we place on ourselves, on how we see and what we think. An individual attempting to depict something universal and known drops a rope ladder of open-mindedness and possibility into your particular situation, one you climb by staring at it. Now I know this seems a lot to ask from a wall decoration, a clever investment, a third-hand connection to fame, but art has been hiding in plain sight all this time, practically invisible, even a joke. Humanity’s existential crisis has called forth the Jedi, awakened a sudden seriousness in the face of the next several thousand years of groveling in mines, fields, and forests watching gigantic yachts drift by, this time monitored by digital cameras in every crapper. Well, what’s art’s message, now that we’re ready to listen?
Art is an artifact of some fellow human’s journey out of bounds, a seeking after something besides money, cold hard evidence, and we all know the score. Without teaching it’s a long hard pull, no platform and no support -- that’s ok, part of it, crucial to the statement they’re making, and a large part of the message, pure and simple. If they’ve gotten this good without getting paid, there must be something they wanted to say, and maybe it’s just that, first of all. I didn’t do this for the money. That's one reason it might be a good idea to buy this person's art, anyway, and have it around to look at every day. It reveals a crack in the commercial code we all live by, a ray of light beaming from a larger human heritage of wisdom and equilibrium, recalling a bond we all share beyond capitalism's ‘mutual self-interests,’ aka cut-throat competition.
The artist doesn’t have to be wise, would be nice but isn’t necessary -- it’s the effort, the example, the courage to be original that dominates any decor, changes the mood and atmosphere of the room it’s in, and presents the possibility of new ways of thinking you have not been shown, not a set of rules but a door to walk through. Perhaps you don’t see art this way, and I sometimes I wonder if I’m just a bit in front, I'm thinking about a decade, but as the wind begins to howl maybe it’s time to look for ways to exert even a drop of conscious influence over the tons of input the brain processes every day.
Oligarchy is a fancy word and a difficult threshold to find, so why not just use the old familiar term ‘feudalism,’ the state of the world up until a couple of hundred years ago? There are those from both the top and the bottom, apparently, who want to go back, and there’s slippage in politics these days. Carry placards if you must, but change comes when people see the world and themselves differently, altering the operating instructions they’ve been given. There are a several ways this can be done -- by willfully accepting a package of beliefs no matter how bizarre, by committing to a total change of lifestyle, or by developing an interest in art
Least traumatic would be the third, art in this case being a physical device for loosening the unseen restrictions we place on ourselves, on how we see and what we think. An individual attempting to depict something universal and known drops a rope ladder of open-mindedness and possibility into your particular situation, one you climb by staring at it. Now I know this seems a lot to ask from a wall decoration, a clever investment, a third-hand connection to fame, but art has been hiding in plain sight all this time, practically invisible, even a joke. Humanity’s existential crisis has called forth the Jedi, awakened a sudden seriousness in the face of the next several thousand years of groveling in mines, fields, and forests watching gigantic yachts drift by, this time monitored by digital cameras in every crapper. Well, what’s art’s message, now that we’re ready to listen?
Art is an artifact of some fellow human’s journey out of bounds, a seeking after something besides money, cold hard evidence, and we all know the score. Without teaching it’s a long hard pull, no platform and no support -- that’s ok, part of it, crucial to the statement they’re making, and a large part of the message, pure and simple. If they’ve gotten this good without getting paid, there must be something they wanted to say, and maybe it’s just that, first of all. I didn’t do this for the money. That's one reason it might be a good idea to buy this person's art, anyway, and have it around to look at every day. It reveals a crack in the commercial code we all live by, a ray of light beaming from a larger human heritage of wisdom and equilibrium, recalling a bond we all share beyond capitalism's ‘mutual self-interests,’ aka cut-throat competition.
The artist doesn’t have to be wise, would be nice but isn’t necessary -- it’s the effort, the example, the courage to be original that dominates any decor, changes the mood and atmosphere of the room it’s in, and presents the possibility of new ways of thinking you have not been shown, not a set of rules but a door to walk through. Perhaps you don’t see art this way, and I sometimes I wonder if I’m just a bit in front, I'm thinking about a decade, but as the wind begins to howl maybe it’s time to look for ways to exert even a drop of conscious influence over the tons of input the brain processes every day.
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