Art is subjective. Four people looking at the exact same thing will interpret four different things. Individual perception, dimension, and genetics apply.

I was sitting in a public place, watching all the individual perceptions strolling by… wondering at the splendorous diversity… and it struck me (again) how we mirror the fabric of the universe in our subjective relativity. Yet, we are closer to deconstructing creation than we are to understanding our humanity.  Human ambitions frequently overpower our inspiration. Also, it occurs that our (relatively) shortened life span contributes to our willingness to ignore the gaping holes in our cumulative self awareness.

Let’s say I really want to understand how you think and feel. Not just you, but others, also. What I am after is to comprehend our subjectivity, in a relative sort of way. I don’t want to know how you think it, or how to change what you think… I am just sort of interested in what you really think from one moment to the next. How does that compare to what George, Jane, Joe, and Gracie think? No posturing, no pretense… the genuine article… in all it’s glory. The sigh that was actually sheer boredom, at a time when compassion would have been a more natural response for you, but you were overwhelmed by contrived drama. Inappropriate laughter or desires are not judged, merely observed with relative objectivity. <grin> Welcome to the wunder brane.

The fabric of this universe is interwoven with yours, but only to an extent. It might look something like a soda cracker. It has a front and back side which meet at the edges. A hypothetical traveler will not fall off the edge, but will casually stroll (in the absence of gravity) to the opposing side. The surface of both sides is dotted with a pattern of holes, also, which conduct thoughts (or events) from one brane (or brain) to another. No powers of inuition or psychic gifts required… simply locate a portal hole. You may notice the little cracker is a bit like a pillow, also… heat has caused pockets of expansion between the layers. The interior of these pockets is visible only in cross section. I hypothesize the hitherto missing cosmic material (mass, brain or matter) exists within these hidden spaces. The holes actually serve a triple purpose. 1. Limit expansion resulting from heat 2. allow exchange of information and energies between branes and brains, while 3. providing interior chambers and pockets for the containment of dark matter or anti matter.

You and I have certain things in common. To start with, your brane/brain is made up of the same stuff mine is, even if the landscape on your side is significantly different than mine. We may be polar opposites, but we both have holes and edges in common, which enable us to become familiar with the other’s brane/brain. The only requirement… is a sincere desire to understand, and a fundamental knowledge of the nature and limitations of our commonalities.

“Nooo, NO NOOOOO!”

Frantically clicking, head bobbing like a chicken at a flea circus, I searched in vain… it was gone. Another reminder that I need to get the update installed with the desk top plug in. This is maddening.

So, today I am taking an alternate route. I hope my expansive readership won’t mind. Love Me When I’m Gone is a slideshow; spur of the moment. It is over run with cliche. It has to be… it’s about an artist’s sacrifice. But, things become cliche precisely because there is an element of truth and because the world becomes jaded. I consider them to be the equivalent of contractions, like “don’t, shouldn’t oughta.”  Truth is, the best an artist can hope for is to be worth more dead than alive. The product is rough and poorly timed, but the Lost Post was about “sacred art” and so is this… after a fashion… so to speak… sort of.

Christmas came too early for me this year. In a tough ecomony, art sales bite. I lost my part time job a couple of months ago. Things are rough all over. It’s a little more difficult to find the Christmas spirit when you aren’t sure you can pay the rent.

I am making Christmas gifts this year. I actually prefer to make Christmas gifts, not because I am cheap, but because when I make a gift by hand I pour love into it. I am thinking happy thoughts, remembering joyous and tender moments as I work. It takes all year to produce hand made gifts for everyone. Ewps! I uh… had not actually… uh… planned… to make gifts for everyone! No, I generally make a few gifts each year. Not everyone appreciates the hand made gifts, and even the most collectable friends and family members seem to feel devalued if I don’t sacrifice some cash to the consumerism every few years. Personally, I would rather receive the hand made memory book, cherry wood keepsake box, or carved stone handled salad service… but that’s me. I am a fondler.

Some people are fondlers, others are foundlers. Fondlers are sensation junkies. They are biologically predisposed to handle, smell, visually absorb, shake, rattle, wear, rub… you get the idea. Fondlers are touchy-feely. (Hence, the sanding, polishing, staining, carving, setting, caressing…)

Foundlers, on the other hand, are keen to discover things, experience the moment of discovery, and share that moment when the thing is gifted. “I just knew when I saw this you would love it! It reminded me of that time when we went to the Bahamas and…” Foundlers like to find and claim moments, much like adventurers planting a flag in a newly discovered land or planet. A great many of my friends and family are dearly beloved foundlers. I, apparently, am a great discovery… well worth the “founding.”    

In any case, both fondlers and foundlers are thoughtful gifters. Both will devote untold hours to presenting a worthy expression of appreciation. Therein, lies the problem. How can I hope to generate so much, so many, worthy expressions in the midst of this unemployment crisis? It’s not humanly possible. My love and my mind may be timeless, but the flesh is weak… requires food, water, sleep… and care. Travel (to visit) is out of the question, as well.

Panic stricken, I ran to the studio weeks ago… and began to dig through my many keepsake boxes. I started with my “box of guilty pleasures.” Inside, I found a few cutsie-crafty items I had made, like the polyemere clay press molded face with elaborate beaded headress and the beaded crocheted wire bracelet. I should call this my “sand box,” instead of “guilty pleasures. It is full of “play” time activities. I smiled, and set those things on the table… the start of something for my grand daughters, perhaps. As I reached for one of three large wooden cigar boxes… and heard myself mutter, “Keep it simple… no time to elaborate.”

Today, my outlook is a little brighter and bit more humble than a few weeks ago. Today, I will sell a painting for half of what it was worth six months ago and am willing to consider taking a job sweeping floors despite my qualifications and experience. Today, I will put candy colored necklaces in simple, lined, boxes set with “guilty pleasures” on the lids and mail them to the girls. The gifts aren’t sacred treasures, the people are.

Creative Minds, Hard Times

Implications are, essentially, things left unsaid. “Two plus two” without a sum, a series of events left without a conclusion or, perhaps, presented without a linear sequence. Today, I would like to address the implications of linear thought. In part, because so very few of us recognize the effects of the Euclidean ideal in today’s western culture.

Borrowed from wiki:

“Euclidean geometry is a mathematical system attributed to the Greek mathematician Euclid of Alexandria. Euclid’s Elements is the earliest known systematic discussion of geometry. It has been one of the most influential books in history, as much for its method as for its mathematical content. The method consists of assuming a small set of intuitively appealing axioms, and then proving many other propositions (theorems) from those axioms. Although many of Euclid’s results had been stated by earlier Greek mathematicians, Euclid was the first to show how these propositions could be fit together into a comprehensive deductive and logical system.The Elementsbegin with plane geometry, still taught in secondary school as the first axiomatic system and the first examples of formal proof. The Elements goes on to the solid geometry of three dimensions, and Euclidean geometry was subsequently extended to any finite number of dimensions. Much of the Elements states results of what is now called number theory, proved using geometrical methods. For over two thousand years, the adjective “Euclidean” was unnecessary because no other sort of geometry had been conceived. Euclid’s axioms seemed so intuitively obvious that any theorem proved from them was deemed true in an absolute sense. Today, however, many other self-consistent non-Euclidean geometries are known, the first ones having been discovered in the early 19th century. ”

It would surprise many of the western cultures to know that not all cultures embrace linear thought. Our way of thinking has been so grossly infected with this system of thought that virtually no aspect of life has escaped it’s misleading grasp. We frame everthing we know in linear, geometric, terms. We teach our children to do the same, from kindergarten through high school, with numbers, history, science, and even writing. We live by the linear steps of progression. We determine what we are seeing by association with similar shapes and sizes. We guesstimate distances by the range of recession. We speak in axioms. We have wholly embraced this limited perception for two thousand years! Small wonder, then, that despite mountains of evidence to the contrary we continue to cling to it. It a cornerstone in the social and cultural fabric of our lives. In order to reach the masses in western cultures, any and all communication must be structured in the Euclidean manner. This isnt a law, it is just a fact.

If we “release” the Euclidean bindings, we can consider time in non-linear terms. No past, present, future. No before and after.  No hindsight. No “psychic” visions of the future. (Then and now may be parallels.) Archelogists may find themselves mining for ”future” civilizations in the continuum.

We can begin to consider densities as a factor not related to volume or size. (Tremendously helpful in understanding the nature of magnetism, for example.)

We can embrace light as both, a wave and a particle, divorced of linear restrictions, and perhaps even as a living organism. 

We might realize that processes of learning are spiraling through the hemispheres of the brain, at speeds exceeding light. Implications, no less…

Relationships are the foundation of art, technology, culture… literally everything we know about anything. The more we seek to isolate and understand the nature of a thing, the more we realize the thing is naturally connected to other things.  For example, seeking to understand and utilize atomic energy, we came to realize that it had a relationship with mushroom clouds, cold war, and the end of the world as we know it. The event could not be isolated.  The fact is, no event is isolated. This is a basic premise of physical matter which mankind is only now conceding… well, some of us are. There remain throngs of people who still cling to the darkened shadows of the cave, refusing to acknowledge the relationship between shadow and light.

Is there a familiar pattern, here? (Continuity demands that we ask questions for which the answer is known, yet consistently try to tweek and isolate the specifics until we achieve the desired result, or confirm the stated hypothesis.) Studies will show that humans know what humans want to know, deny everything that proves humanity is in denial, and accept only that which affords the promise of continuity of life as we know it.

The arts look at hard times Toledo Blade

In a November American Journalism Review article, Philip Meyer states,

“After 1990, of course, the effects of the Internet kicked in. When writing “The Vanishing Newspaper,” I underestimated the velocity of the Internet effect. It is now clear that it is as disruptive to today’s newspapers as Gutenberg’s invention of movable type was to the town criers, the journalists of the 15th century. ”

(Philip Meyer is professor emeritus in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill )

The article, and the book, suggest  “A smaller, less frequently published version packed with analysis and investigative reporting and aimed at well-educated news junkies that may well be a smart survival strategy for the beleaguered old print product. “

This target audience seems to me to be the very definition of today’s blogger.

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From the New York Times:

The Guggenheim’s exhibition “theanyspacewhatever” aims to resensitize people to their everyday surroundings and, moreover, to one another.

The Guggenheim’s exhibition “theanyspacewhatever”

Can there be any doubt that technology is desensitizing humanity? As we become more and more accustomed to our “remote media interface” with war, natural catastrophe, and disasters of all kinds; perhaps we are better informed of these events, perhaps not. What may be lost in translation is the emotional response that makes us human… compassion.

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