Journal - Rant-001

I love art. I don’t love a specific thing about it or type of thing it can be. I like art because people who are artists are set free and apart from society - its expectations of 9 to 5 and good behavior at all times. Artists have an excuse and society supports them to a degree. Is it not an act of charity to pay someone for their mere creation? We value the openness of their experience and marvel that they can share with us - reaching from inside their experience outward - they move us towards space and color, shape and meaning (etc) - open experience. For an artist there is no expectation except that he create. A starving artist is not inappropriately starving. He is never moving beyond what he can express - it is only his self-made limit on potential or perhaps some sort of overshoot that limits his freedom in the world. But his mind is free at times; at times there is nothing, no checking, no alterations or censorship. Here is something that comes out of outer space, slightly beyond what could have come a moment before.

Update:
I got into a heated debate over this last night with my wife. She was saying that art is empty and subjective - she doesn’t like all the hoopla around it, “I don’t belive in art”. I was trying to point out that there is something there that remains, whether she belives in it or not. Many people take refuge in art, along with other worldy things. I personally like it because it doesn’t amount to anything - it is open, and enduring, as Trav/s says in the comments - it isn’t something created. It is only expressed, revealed. Anyway, this attitude of mine might be the ‘romanticism’ he is talking about. Finally I looked up the definition of art and found this:

One day a wag — what would the wretch be at? –
Shifted a letter of the cipher RAT,
And said it was a god’s name! Straight arose
Fantastic priests and postulants (with shows,
And mysteries, and mummeries, and hymns,
And disputations dire that lamed their limbs)
To serve his temple and maintain the fires,
Expound the law, manipulate the wires.
Amazed, the populace that rites attend,
Believe whate’er they cannot comprehend,
And, inly edified to learn that two
Half-hairs joined so and so (as Art can do)
Have sweeter values and a grace more fit
Than Nature’s hairs that never have been split,
Bring cates and wines for sacrificial feasts,
And sell their garments to support the priests.
-Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.

See, I think all the hoopla is really remarkable, really something and when we are moved by art it is a very good thing - tears stream down our faces. Of course we could do this over a dandilion, couldn’t we?

I don’t know anything about it.