Into the river of thougths

As mentioned in the previous post, one of the reasons I stopped writing was due to an idea that words hinder rather than help explain certain concepts including the idea of “seeing”. But a number of people have kindly pointed out that this idea may be flawed and I will readily admit that what I perceive as the inadequacy of words is more likely an ineptitude in my own abilities to bring forth such concepts into the right light. So it is with this understanding that I will continue to write and hope that at some point my vision will become clear enough in my own eyes that I may be able to share it in some truly meaningful way.

The idea of seeing, truly seeing things as they are, is important to me. Why? I am not sure though it is a question that would deserve its own exploration. Also I cannot say whether it was this idea that led me to photography. It may easily have been the other way round; I do not remember. Whatever the whys and hows I have a strong suspicion that once upon a time I would have seen things exactly as they are with no judgements, biases or filters. Back when words were merely sounds falling upon my ears and dissolving into silence with no more meaning than the sound of rain falling or floorboards creaking. Such a time was back when I was an infant. Seeing came before words but since then, seeing most often comes with a flood of thoughts— inherently made up of words—which rush by if I am lucky or, if I’m not so lucky, get caught up in eddies and whirls that inadvertently take my attention away from the pure act of seeing.

So why would this river of thoughts be so disruptive to the simple act of seeing? After all there are times—notably when I have a camera in hand— when this river is almost still with barely a ripple across its surface. The trouble is that even if the flow is totally stopped, there is one thing that the advent of words brought to that infant all those years ago. Words, along with their meanings, brought separation. The child stopped seeing things purely as they are and started seeing things in relation to himself. At that point the child became aware that it was him that was seeing and that he could therefore also be seen. At that point the child could no longer see just one thing, he would for evermore see a thing and its relationship to himself. And as words brought knowledge into his life and that knowledge formed into beliefs, the child became all grown up and forgot how to to simply see things just as they are.

At this point it is tempting for me to say that Art can help restore the ability to see things as the infant sees the world and I admit that I think of this as Art’s purpose (at least in part) but it is not quite so simple. The trouble is that I can only view art as I view anything else; I see the art and its relation to myself. Even more maddening I cannot help but also see my relationship to the art’s message. Not to mention the artist’s relationship to me. The easy way out of this dilemma is to say something like, it shows how all things are linked, how there is just oneness or some other new-age claptrap but it would mean little beyond some abstract understanding of some metaphysical philosophy. After all, it may even be possible for art to lead me astray if I am to confuse the artwork or the image for the real thing.

One of my favourite artists is René Magritte. Magritte was a surrealist painter who became famous for a number of thought-provoking artworks including a painting called “La trahison des images” (“The treachery of images”) which depicts a pipe with the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe“ (“This is not a pipe”). While he was reproached for this apparent absurdity he was simply stating the obvious; the drawing of the pipe is indeed, not a pipe but merely a representation of a pipe.

A perfectly valid question to ask at this point would be: so what? And the only answer I can give at this time is: I am not sure. I am not sure why this matters or if it matters at all. But sometimes I’ll see something, something common or mundane, something I see every day but I see it in a way I have never seen it before. It lasts but a moment, right up to the point where I get swept away by the rapids that is my river of thoughts.

Will this “seeing” make me an artist? I doubt it.

Will it help me make better photos? Probably not.

Can it change my life in any way? Well… yes, it does… subtly, ever so subtly.

It brings form to my emotions. It puts meaning into insignificant actions. It sheds light on deep memories. Because after such moments, when I am back into the river of thoughts, I realise that what I am now looking at is just a label formed by knowledge, manipulated by beliefs all of which come from experiences that together make up this story I call my life. In other words, by seeing the present clearly, I start to understand the past and how it got me to where I am right now, right here.

Magritte - The Treachery of Images

You are here

 

He had longed to go there all his life
but when he got there, he realised
there was no ‘there’ there
there was only here.
Exactly where he’d been all along.

 

“We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.” – H. L. Mencken

… if …

if

Another year, another bunch of words

At the start of each calendar year, since I’ve started this blog, I’ve created a Wordle of Plop for a bit of fun and to see what it is I write about. I also do it to remind me that whatever I write, it’s all just words. Nothing more. They mean one thing to me and most likely mean something else to another. This also reminds me not to take things too seriously, that seeing is better than thinking, that silence is better than talking, that joy can be found anywhere if the mind is quiet enough. It reminds me that an entire cloud of words doesn’t equate to a single moment of seeing what words can never express. Truth is not found in words just as peace is not found in thoughts.

“Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself” – Mark Twain

“Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap” – George Bernard Shaw

“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“The words of truth are always paradoxical.” – Lao Tzu

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” – Napoleon Bonaparte (or maybe someone else)

The word cloud above was created by Wordle.
It is a visualisation of the words found in this still "useless" blog.
I used a font called Duality.

Helps me relax

Another weird thing about me is that I can drink coffee any time of day or night without it affecting me in any way. Even if I have a short black just before bed I’ll still fall asleep before my head hits the pillow.

Hopefully that will always be the case.

As for that question I ask myself, it’s just another way of reminding myself to chill and not worry. Philosophically it’s probably just gibberish but the answer as I see it is that true nature does not care about the relative nature of what is essentially imaginary. And with that thought in mind the seeming craziness of the apparent world suddenly appears just as it should be.

 

More randomness

The thought had occured to her,
that she was as free as a gull in flight even when she felt moored to her fears
but she’d decided that was just new-age, hippie claptrap.

~§~

The older I get the more difficult it becomes to take this story I call my life, with any seriousness.

A random observation

Reality was beginning to blur and things were not as they appeared.

She was quite sure that the fabric of space/time had been torn.

And she only had her insatiable introspection to blame for that.

The great escape

He had the jacket and the pose but he knew his Jx50 Milan wasn't a 1961 Triumph TR6 Trophy and he'd never escape his boring life. Steve McQueen must be turning in his grave.

You can’t escape when this is all there is.

Be still

In the tumult of rush hour only the post had the wisdom to just stand still.

By all definitions

Once upon a time I had aspirations to become an artist. I fancied myself as the next Minor White or Henry Cartier-Bresson and in my reveries it dawned on me that it would be helpful if I had a definition for “art”; after all, how would I create something if I did not know what I was creating?

That was many years ago and I have since then, lost the desire to become an artist. As for defining “art”, well that never happened either.

I was reminded of this search for definition when I came across Seth’s definition of art. I do not wish to discuss his definition as I am sure it works for him but upon reading it I thought it might be of interest to share my own, non-definition of art.

When I was younger and seeking an understanding of what art was it became clear that definitions for art were as many as the ways one could create art. Definitions tend to fall into two camps, conventional and aesthetic. Conventional definitions of which Seth’s is an example, tend to work well for contemporary or modern art but fail to be universal and thus leave out a swag of art work that is of a different culture or potentially from a different species (again referring back to Seth’s definition). Aesthetics definitions are more universal but will generally miss out on including anything that is modern or radical. The obvious answer here is to join a conventional definition with an aesthetic one but that would merely raise the difficult question of the unity or disunity of the class of artworks. What is interesting though is that artists are generally not the ones who have tried to define art. My own experience has shown me that artists are often the last people who care about defining art. Philosophers however, are very much interested as are people who want to appreciate art without wanting to create it, like art critics.

Ever since Plato stated in the Republic that art was representational or mimetic (imitative) and that artworks were dependent on and inferior to physical objects which in turn are dependent on and inferior to what is most real, that is, the non-physical forms; man has debated not only how art should be defined but whether it should be defined in the first place and whether art could in fact be defined at all.

In my early search for definition the first thing that struck me was that there was no consensus on what art is. The second thing that struck me was that the obsession with this topic seemed to reside mostly among philosophers. Artists rarely bother to define art other than to explain their own particular class of creativity, for the most part they seem unconcerned with the definition of art. As one artist friend once said, “I know art when I see it and that is all I care to know”.

In recent times there seems to be a general consensus in the art world that just about anything can be art. I know that when I go to the Gallery of Modern Art and stand in front of two besser blocks with a coke can sitting on top that consensus is hard to argue with. Roberta Smith, a New York Times art critic has been quoted as saying that “if an artist says it’s art, it’s art.” Of course Smith’s definition begs the question: “in that case, what is an artist?” and we are right back where we started. Another New York Times critic, Grace Glueck, stipulated that something is an artwork if it is “intended as art, presented as such, and … judged to be art by those qualified in such matters.”

It is almost as if our modern-day philosophers have given up trying to define art. Ayn Rand certainly felt that way back in 1971, when in her essay on the philosophy of art, “Art and Cognition”, she wrote an acrimonious indictment of contemporary philosophers for having forsaken the search for an objective definition of art.

One thing about asking the question, “What is art?”, is that it eventually leads to the question, “Who decides?” I think it was when I connected these two questions that I started to lose my desire to come up with a definition. Like my friend and possibly like many others, if I am the one who decides what art is and if I know art when I see it then do I need to wrap a definition around it? After all, within a definition lies the seeds of limitation and where art is concerned limitation is the anti-thesis of creativity. Perhaps that is why artists do not concern themselves with defining art and perhaps this is also the reason philosophers cannot define something which is potentially limitless.

There are a number of texts that I know of on this topic and quite likely hundreds I do not know about. For those interested in following up on this I list a few of the writings I know about:

Art and Cognition by Ayn Rand

But Is It Art? by Benjamin Tilghman

Definition of Art by Stephen Davies

The Aesthetic Function of Art by Gary Iseminger,

The Metaphysics of Beauty by Nick Zangwill

For now I will leave the philosophers behind. I have to say I am not sure I understand their obsession for this topic any more, assuming I ever did. Instead I will continue with my own non-definition of art. I say “non-definition” because I would not be so presumptuous to suggest that I could achieve what greater minds have yet to achieve and also because I do not wish to limit art within a prison of words. However I feel that leaving this topic with such light-minded statements as “art is beyond definition” or “it’s all art” or even “it’s art if the artists says it is”, is a cop-out. It is a non-definition because it is likely to only make sense from my perspective; a perspective formed by my own memories, biases and prejudices. If you are familiar with my writings you know what I mean.

So here goes, what I see art being without really saying anything useful — something that tends to be a habit of mine.

I see art as being totally intertwined with life; with art expressing life and life expressing art. Just as mind seeks to separate, art seeks to unite. Life conceals beauty that we may discover it and then through art, express it. Similarly, art conceals truth that we may recognise it and through life, live it fully.

It has been said that Taoism is the “art of being in the world” because Taoism concerns itself with the present. The present is us, right here, right now and it is in us that creativity meets nature, it is in us that yesterday parts from tomorrow, it is in us that there relates to here. It has also been said that it is the present through which the Tao moves encompassing all that is dualistic. This dualism requires constant adjustment and this adjustment, for me, is art.

Art, by its very nature, reveals something about ourselves, as creators or as observers, and when done with rectitude art offers an opportunity to take ourselves less seriously, offering us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves and in so doing art becomes the humour itself. The humour of the Tao perhaps.

If it is true that man’s purpose is to reconcile Heaven and Earth. I ask you now, what better way is there to do this than through art?