answer but the fact that many of them are being asked disputes the need for asking. like if this world has produced a you, attempting or wanting to de-twine these threads of (habit? social response? culture?) () then perhaps they are not really so tightly wound. at least not so tightly wound that we can not see them. if the this you speak of is the art work we make then i would say that this now is still important, is part of the opening of the door to imagining, empathy and action. i am assuming you are asking in regards to that question that comes up through frustration and the incomprehensibility of creating an art when wars are raging and people are starving to death and disease runs rampant and the ocean can’t even produce fish that would be considered organic anymore. when something like a poem looks ineffectual or luxurious. i am not without these thoughts but i feel like art is one of the few things which make people want to be alive. art, love...what else? and the wanting to be alive is what stirs people to cherish this strange (creepy) gift of life. and it is in the cherishing that people want to take care with themselves, the earth, each other. so now. and again. and our making and sharing shifts the world in that—for a small moment--the receivers of such art must suspend their own voice and give themselves to someone else’s language, time, meter, imagination, idea etc. and in the process grow or react or dream. it is this meditative reception of something which is not trying to sell them anything which serves as a trampoline for their own thoughts and actions and pathos. art is necessarily revolutionary. asks to be specific—challenges a listener, reader or viewer to think differently than they might have. it is like heart and brain yoga—the strength and flexibility one attains from the reception of work can be used in all aspects of one’s life. (sounds like boosterism) (go art go!). 220 |
i find these speech acts (analysis, criticality) meaningful for the same reasons. it is the rousing which produces awareness and through awareness people become engaged and it is this engagement which makes all the difference. there are so many other questions and exact opposite responses to these questions i’ve stabbed at (like perhaps we make art because we don’t have wars or starvation to contend with and need the gristle of challenge to chew on?)—some of these, though, are questions of the questions—fine tuning the asking. but i will not get to them all. i love your notion of neighborly here and this metaphor really resonates with me. i think this is a perfect summation of an ideal. one which you seem to have well mastered in your magical life. this sharing and building up—i am thinking of myriad hands constructing the giant art pyramids of our planet. psychic and actual objects which build on each other and react to the future. (retroactive dancing lessons pulled tight and taught*) here in baltimore the sun is coaxing small buds from the ground like a giant snake charmer in the sky. spring makes the worry a little less dire. yesterday i heard a man on his cellphone saying “i thought i missed it—i thought i missed it” he thought he missed the rapture—he went to church at church time and the door was open and there was no one inside. he said “it was eerie man—i thought they all been sucked up and they left me here” finally he found the deacon down in the basement and told him about this missing the rapture fear—the deacon said “well what were you gonna do” he told the deacon “i was gonna hold tight” but he told his cell phone friend “i figured i might as well go and have a drink.” *from hofer’s small book going, going