So much for frequent updates...

I can't really describe anything I see. What are the four main forms of artistic communication? Music, writing, pictures, and the performing arts. As much as we attempt to use these forms to describe the others, they don't really come close to being able to show the same thing.

An example: I was on the bus. As it drove back to my house, I looked out my window, because what else is there to do on a bus? The sky was overcast, and incredible. The clouds looked like great, fluffy, ethreal mountains that were taking turns half-covering the sun. When sunlight managed to find it's way through the cloud cover, it streaked down in strange golden cords, highlighting trees, patches of road, and whatever else it hit. Somehow the contrast between grey sky and brilliant sunlight caused the trees to explode with unusual colour, making the whole ride home seem like some wonderful fantasy setting, designed solely to show off the glorious beauty of nature.

There. That description was not good enough. We could nit-pick, and say that it was overblown, or maybe I could have worded a few things differently, but ultimately my description is nothing compared to the visual cacophony I experienced. What I saw was beautiful. Nature is wonderfully designed, and the only way anyone can truly understand how I felt about that bus ride home would be to go back in time, and ride the bus with me.

Writing cannot adequately describe anything visual.

But this is also true for the other forms. Dance, though magical, can't actually communicate a message with the same clarity that the written word can. The most powerful piece of classical orchestration you ever heard still falls flat when it comes to providing the same feeling-soaked audio-visual experience provided by dance (except for contemporary dance. That stuff's just silly).

But does this incompatibility make any of these forms lesser? Absolutely not. Rather, it makes each the more brilliant, as it forces the consumer to use their own mind to expand upon the art presented. The imagination is all it takes for a good book to construct an exciting fictional setting, and though paintings themselves do not inherently contain emotion, somehow artists can still convey extraordinary messages through their paint.

So please, let each art form be what it is, and continue to put your wonderful mind to use when it comes to understanding and appreciating each of them.

On Art, part 1

What is art?

No, that's far to general a question. Let's narrow it down. What is the purpose of art? Well, to know that, one must first clarify what is art. I want to compare the identity of art to something else, like the identity of technology, or the meaning of fashion, but art is so much more than that. I don't mean to say that art is grander than any other thing in existence, but it's meaning and purpose is much more scopic.

When you go to a gallery and you see a sculpture, how do you interpret it? As a fairly pragmatic person, I tend to initially value things based on how practical they are. Art doesn't have any practical use. In the hierarchy of humanity's needs, art sits at the top as an unnecessary privilege which we indulge in if we can afford to. Art comes after food, safety, relationships. So, it's not essential for human survival. The purpose it serves, if any, is not required to maintain human survival.

So art is an indulgence. Well, maybe not indlugence, but it's there to amuse us. I think.

Yesterday I walked through the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery. In one corner of the building was a sculpture (as one tends to find in art galleries). The sculpture consisted of a trunk, similar to the one below, but it was open and had a clay representation of an ice flow inside it.

http://mrsworkinggirl.com/myparty/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/trunk3.jpg 

What did it mean? I had no idea. I looked at it from different angles, noted the painting of a tiger on the lid of the trunk, observed the blanched colouration of the ice flow, and I didn't know what to think.

My middle school art teacher always emphasized the concept of "clarity of statement." He taught me that art, when done right, should indicate to the viewer exactly what the artist was trying to convey. If the goal is to provide social commentary, then those looking at it should be able to understand it, albeit with a little background.

Pablo Picasso's Massacre in Korea

If the goal is simply to examine the beauty of an object, then the artist should seek to focus entirely on the object in question and not clutter the art with irrelevance.

Vincent van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows

But is that the way art has to be? Of course not. I think. Maybe. I don't know. There are no hard rules for art, which is one of the reasons that it's so darn hard to interpret.

I find the above van Gogh painting to be beautiful, and the Picasso painting to actually be fairly repulsive. Does that make one than the other? I would argue that it wouldn't, because "prettiness" is a purely subjective condition.

So, art is produced only after all our other more important needs are met. Some art has a clear message, and some does not. Does this message imply purpose? I'll ponder that in my next art post.

The Splendid Return

Hi blog, how are you?

How have you been keeping?

I'm fine. I don't think much has really changed. I mean, I got a job. that's about it. It's a decent job; it pays well, I get decent hours, and my coworkers are tolerable. It's better than painting. Though, when I think about it, I think my peers in construction were actually a good deal nicer than my restaurant ones. But whatever.

So blog, how have you been spending your time? I see you're still getting a steady stream of page views even though I've sort of been neglecting you. Granted, most of those views are probably from my baby brother, who continues to neurotically check my blog even when he knows that it hasn't been updated.

I've gotten into crochet. I'm not very good, but it's something to kill time with. We'll see whether or not I stick with it. I feel like I need to narrow down my interests and focus on doing less things to a greater extent.

So, do you like your current colour? I've thought about changing it, but I just can't be bothered to spend any amount of time editing something that isn't really that bad. The default layout serves all my purposes pretty well.

I've also noticed that some people are still viewing you using Internet Explorer. That's disappointing. I hope you do something about that before I decide to post again.which I will. I promise. Soon.

Metal Monday Mornings

Good friends, I have failed. Shameful missteps have haunted my footsteps of late, and I acknowledge that my stumblings are entirely my fault. I have failed, and I will do so again. Inevitably. It angers me. To be so doomed, to be so pathetic. What can I do, but wait for more sin to envelop me? What can I do? I wonder and beat my brow, willing myself to change, or at least to escape. Is this it? Is this it?
Hold. But hold indeed, what is that?

It is the bass drum!

It is nothing. A low, pumping, pulsating, beat, nothing more than a stretched out wave of frequency. But hold, dear body, how dare you shift likewise! You enjoy the beat? I can't but help it, tho it contrasts harshly with my strong desire to roll around in self-pity. How dare I jig at such a time, I was enjoying my most melancholic moroseness!

But what of it? There's a God, right? What must he think? His child, so flawed, slopping around in sin and temptation, and what must he think? If anything or anyone can pull me out of this most melancholic mire, it most definitively is the great being who thought the whole darn universe into existence! Pull me out, slap me upside the face with common sense, and shout into my ignorant ears, "HEY! Wake up! What are doing there, slouching meekly, when you are still alive? You are alive, aren't you? Your body still functions, and here you are, in the middle of creation, selfishly thinking only of yourself?"

Forget my losses and my shortcomings, they are in the past! Yes they happened, and yes I am sorry for them, but what is to stop me from living still? Learn from your mistakes they say, get back on the horse they say, and so I shall! Enough sadness, I will confront the future both with defiance and with pep, and will  boogie into the future with the bass drum of the present cheering me on.

By Jove and by Gaffrey, if anything can change, it is me!

The Coffee Shop Man 2

The coffee was hot. Good. If it’s not painful to drink, I drink it too fast. The jazz was interrupted by some garbled French babble before flowing back into some slow swing music.

My target didn’t look up when I sat down. Whatever. His pouting was almost laughable. “You shouldn’t have moved your hat. You know how hard it is to miss your beady little eyes,”

He grunted. I continued. “Seriously though, I thought you left this town. What happened? Vengeance not a strong enough motivator anymore?”

He grunted again. It was a distinctly cordial grunt. I sipped my coffee and burned my tongue. Somehow he sighed without moving his chest. “Mik,” he grated, “I don’t wanna talk. Go ‘way.”

I didn’t move. He looked at his mug like he just realized he was holding it. “I dunno why I came here. They don’t even serve booze.”

“Hey, focus,” I couldn’t figure out how he could be so apathetic. “What happened to Logan? You had the train ticket and everything. Why are you still here?”

“Hey, I’m not still here. I’m long gone.” He slumped forward and flopped his forearms on the table. “Point is, I came back. Been back for three days.”

Usually it’s easy for me to keep my voice steady, but for some reason it started getting all shrill on me. “So you were there for what, a few hours? Didn’t you find them?”

Naturally

There’s sweet, icy piano music a-slidin’

It’s natural

Sweet background music

But the piano ain’t where I’m lookin’

Cuz she’s a-standin’ there

Existin’

S’all

Just standin’ round, natural-like

But elusive, y’know? So… elusive

Got that dark brown hair, an that way she moves… even when she’s not…

A special, so original smile

An I steal a glance at that smile, an that hair, an those moves

An brother, I just don’t know

Can’t make no sense out of myself

I’m just confused

But she…

She’s still there

A-standin’ around, all natural-like

An she’s just out of reach

Too… damn… elusive

An brother, I’m pretty sure it’s my fault

The Coffee Shop Man 1

I saw him from across the coffee shop. It was kind of a dumpy coffee shop. One of those out of the way hovels where prissy hipsters come to brood and commune. It smelled like coffee; an attractive, but distinctly bitter smell. Similar to the man who just walked in. He was balding, but his rock of a chin more than made up for this trivial shortcoming. It was one of those chins that allowed male movie stars to star in romantic roles well into their fifties, simply because of the chin-painted illusion that they haven’t lost any of the masculinity from their decades old prime.

I tried to make out what he ordered. The stupid staff in this joint takes really takes their sweet time in making drinks, and by the time they were done I had forgotten that I ever cared about what his drink was at all. Thanking his server, he swept his stiff leather coat in a slight, dangerous swirl and strolled out the way he came in. Smooth jazz began to play over the tinny speakers in the ceiling.

I watched the man stroll back to his ride from my window seat. A black Escalade, of all things. Any doubt that his shades cast about his identity was quickly brushed away after one caught a glimpse of his car. Subtle indeed.

Finishing my drink, I waved away a nearby degenerate who felt that it was his duty to tell me all about how he spent his irrelevant weekend, and was about to drop my glass cup on the counter and leave, when the guy in the corner raised the hat off his face.

I hesitated. Not good. My mind quickly churned out the potential results to my walking away, not reacting, and not giving in to my curiosity prodding at my brain. Thankfully, my mind has a habit of churning fast. I turned my awkward delay into an order for a refill. The cashier passed my used glass back to his coworker, his eyebrow arching at my insistence not to use a clean cup. You say it’s weird, I say it saves me $0.05 on my drink.