It's ironic that I started this blog because I was so inspired by Jenny Sue Speaks that I wanted to respond and yet, now I suddenly find myself unable to think of how to respond.
It wasn't that the Freedom post wasn't interesting - it was, very interesting. It's just that most of the posts leave many dangling questions to ponder, and this one actually had an interesting theory, rather conclusively stated. Which left me thinking.... huh, yea, I kind of agree with all of that.
Which left me in an unusual state (for me) ... I couldn't think of anything to say!
So, there is only one thing I can add to the great analogy of freedom and choice and a pie.
Maybe the whole thing really has to do with time, and you inherently have less of that as you get older. If you decide that you are really going to eat the whole pie, you could, but it would take a long, long time. Longer in fact, than you probably have, because the pie will get stale or soggy or rotten before you get to the last few pieces. (For some of us, this would have to be a pretty big pie to not be able to get to the end in a timely manner). For instance, by the time you finally get around to going to the Olympics, you'll be too old to actually do it.
So, you have to decide which piece to eat knowing that the piece you eat first will be the best because it is the freshest. Hmmm, that's a little depressing.
Moving on...
Why IS it that expectations so often seem to go unmet? Jenny Sue refers to expectations of youth, but I think this can be extended to all expectations, like when your fantasy vacation seems to not be quite what you want, but you can't even think what it is you expected. Is it better not to have expectations at all? Completely wing it in life, on vacation, when eating pie?
Or is the anticipation part of the enjoyment? Do we enjoy our youth more, inherently, because of the expectations? And maybe as we get older, the disappointment comes -- not from having our expectations fail to materialize, but rather the loss of the optimism of our youth.
Ok, so before I conclude my pointless inconclusive ramblings (I guess I chose a good blog title)... I have to rant a bit.
Jenny Sue mentioned having the luxurious problem of being unfulfilled. I have heard this expressed many times, by many people, including by myself. But I can't quite, completely agree with it. I don't think there is anything wrong with seeking intellectual, creative or emotional fulfillment. I really don't. And I don't think it is indulgent to want to do that. But it is true that there are a lot of people in the world who never think about this problem. I have two theories on that.
First, some people don't want to think about it - people that seem poorer than Americans but have riches that we can't see and don't value. (maybe time and family?) Perhaps the reason that so many people in our generation and demographic seem unfulfilled is because we're looking for something that our culture has lost. I've traveled to a few places, not third world (I'm thinking of Croatia and Venezuela), but also not wealthy tourist destinations. I remember thinking to myself, "These places look so boring. What do people do all day?" I also remember thinking, "Wow, everyone seems pretty laid back and happy with their rural, slow, and boring (to me) lives." I've always remembered that and wondered if maybe they know something I don't.
Second, I am guessing that by the term "luxury problem," Jenny Sue means that people that have to fight for day to day survival don't get to think about this problem. Obviously that is true. But that doesn't mean that they don't deserve to.
Here is my rant: A lot of people in this world do not have enough to eat, which totally sucks. It would be nice to think that this is a distant problem that has nothing to do with us, but that isn't true. A lot of it has to do with our food system, which many people have gone so far as to call colonialism without the colonies. I hate to make generalizations when I am only beginning to inform myself on this topic and don't yet understand the subtleties. But in a nutshell: we subsidize domestic food production making our food cheap to export. Great for us, and great for people buying it, presuming they have money to do so. Where do people from poorer countries get the money? Often they get it from food aid loans with terms that include requirements to shift their agricultural system from one that is based on farming a diverse food supply to feed the local population (which is assumed by us not to work) to one based on a few value added foods like coffee. So the idea is, the population can't feed itself with locally grown food, but it can sell coffee to import cheap food from other countries. The problem with this is that their food supply is effectively based on world prices for their export commodity, which isn't guaranteed to be stable.
Also, by pressuring countries around the world to allow free (no tariffs) trade, but subsidizing our own food production, we are obviously making it difficult for other countries to thrive if they happen to grow the same commodities as we do. For example, we are a huge exporter of soybeans, which is also an important export for Brazil. Low world prices, pushed down by us, can be tied to devastating practices there (slave labor, cutting down rain forests).
Ok, like I said, I am only just starting to read about these issues... but my point is, everyone should get to think about personal fulfillment, for which food is a prerequisite, and WE have a role in this. We should learn more about our food supply and food policies so that we can exert influence such that ultimately everyone around the world has a slice of pie and can hopefully become as unfulfilled as we GenXers are.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Who is an Artist?
So lets get the formalities out of the way...
Why a blog?
Because I love jennysuespeaks. I'm always left with so much to chew on, have a million ideas to share. To leave a comment long enough to capture all that I want to say seems, well annoying to other readers, and frankly, so hard to edit in the comment box that I can't articulate my thoughts precisely. So you may consider this an homage. Whatever you give me to think about, I'll take it as free license to ramble. On and on and on and on. (Me? No, never!)
So I saw a new post on freedom today, but I'm still reeling from the artist post, so I'll have to respond to the new one another day.
I think this is a topic we've discussed a lot, so forgive me if some of this is a rehash.
I kind of think I hear two different ideas in this desire to be artistic. The first one is a desire to express one's innermost thoughts. The second is a desire to make a mark on the world...to advance the world's collective progress one small step by doing something truly original that nobody has done before and that others can build upon.
I actually find the first, the desire to express oneself, most compelling. From a biological point of view, the human brain is the biggest, most complex and most advanced of any animal. I read (part of, I confess) an interesting book a while ago: The Myth and the Machine: Technics and Human Development, by a guy named Lewis Mumford. It was a hard read, but pretty interesting. His basic premise was that the biggest technical advancement that humans have made is not tools, fire, computers, but the development of language. That to overcome the isolation of living in our heads to develop a means of communicating with each other and to future generations is a stupendous achievement. He characterizes life before language as similar to our dreams; we lived in constant fear and confusion due to the inability to comprehend the world around us and to separate fantasy from reality. He proposes that language helped us to work together to make sense of the world around us.
Ok, so what does this have to do with art? I was thinking that if the development of a verbal language was so paramount and so difficult, and yet we overcame these difficulties because of a need to express ourselves, perhaps artistic mediums are further satisfying the need to express ourselves from parts of the brain that aren't salved by mere everyday verbal expression. For instance, why does music touch the brain so powerfully that to even try to describe the sensation verbally is clumsy and why is this sensation so exciting? Is this an area of the brain unexplored by verbal expression? (saw this interesting interview in the Times yesterday on a researcher that studies neurology and music).
So, again, getting back to art.... I guess I'm really thinking of creativity, not art. How do I differentiate them? By creativity, I mean unhindered expression through some medium. By art, I mean a finished product. So, creativity... I guess I think that to be creative, the reason that JSue's artist friends talk about a process is because it takes practice to master whatever non-verbal medium you choose as your creative outlet. You're learning a new language, which takes practice, a process.
But that brings up another question in my mind... Are you learning a new language (music, painting, dancing, writing) so that you can express vague ideas that already exist in your head or does the learning of the language create ideas that didn't previously exist? I'm not sure. I like to consider my guitar playing as an example to think about. Before I learned guitar, I never imagined being able to write my own music. But as I built my knowledge of the instrument, I found that I did have musical ideas that I wanted to express. I never sat down to "think" of these ideas on an intellectual level. It was more like, for the first time, I was sensing where I wanted the instrument to take me. (Unfortunately, I've never practiced enough to be able to get most of these thoughts out of my fingertips, but I could feel them just there, almost at the surface, and occasionally I succeeded). I'm convinced that these musical ideas didn't exist until I learned the "language" of the instrument, or if they did, they were so vague and buried that I couldn't articulate them. Somehow learning scales and other seemingly mindless, repetitive, non-creative tasks caused me to find a creative outlet for thoughts I didn't even know I had. Guitar, music, music, guitar, chickens, eggs, eggs, chickens, bla bla bla.
Ok, I think I've rambled enough, so I won't attempt to tackle question number 2 about making your mark on the world.
But I will say that I think you've got awfully nice peau. And not to be judgemental... but lots of people like to have cool sounding careers... Maybe that just means they wanted to impress you, and you could take that as a compliment :-)
Why a blog?
Because I love jennysuespeaks. I'm always left with so much to chew on, have a million ideas to share. To leave a comment long enough to capture all that I want to say seems, well annoying to other readers, and frankly, so hard to edit in the comment box that I can't articulate my thoughts precisely. So you may consider this an homage. Whatever you give me to think about, I'll take it as free license to ramble. On and on and on and on. (Me? No, never!)
So I saw a new post on freedom today, but I'm still reeling from the artist post, so I'll have to respond to the new one another day.
I think this is a topic we've discussed a lot, so forgive me if some of this is a rehash.
I kind of think I hear two different ideas in this desire to be artistic. The first one is a desire to express one's innermost thoughts. The second is a desire to make a mark on the world...to advance the world's collective progress one small step by doing something truly original that nobody has done before and that others can build upon.
I actually find the first, the desire to express oneself, most compelling. From a biological point of view, the human brain is the biggest, most complex and most advanced of any animal. I read (part of, I confess) an interesting book a while ago: The Myth and the Machine: Technics and Human Development, by a guy named Lewis Mumford. It was a hard read, but pretty interesting. His basic premise was that the biggest technical advancement that humans have made is not tools, fire, computers, but the development of language. That to overcome the isolation of living in our heads to develop a means of communicating with each other and to future generations is a stupendous achievement. He characterizes life before language as similar to our dreams; we lived in constant fear and confusion due to the inability to comprehend the world around us and to separate fantasy from reality. He proposes that language helped us to work together to make sense of the world around us.
Ok, so what does this have to do with art? I was thinking that if the development of a verbal language was so paramount and so difficult, and yet we overcame these difficulties because of a need to express ourselves, perhaps artistic mediums are further satisfying the need to express ourselves from parts of the brain that aren't salved by mere everyday verbal expression. For instance, why does music touch the brain so powerfully that to even try to describe the sensation verbally is clumsy and why is this sensation so exciting? Is this an area of the brain unexplored by verbal expression? (saw this interesting interview in the Times yesterday on a researcher that studies neurology and music).
So, again, getting back to art.... I guess I'm really thinking of creativity, not art. How do I differentiate them? By creativity, I mean unhindered expression through some medium. By art, I mean a finished product. So, creativity... I guess I think that to be creative, the reason that JSue's artist friends talk about a process is because it takes practice to master whatever non-verbal medium you choose as your creative outlet. You're learning a new language, which takes practice, a process.
But that brings up another question in my mind... Are you learning a new language (music, painting, dancing, writing) so that you can express vague ideas that already exist in your head or does the learning of the language create ideas that didn't previously exist? I'm not sure. I like to consider my guitar playing as an example to think about. Before I learned guitar, I never imagined being able to write my own music. But as I built my knowledge of the instrument, I found that I did have musical ideas that I wanted to express. I never sat down to "think" of these ideas on an intellectual level. It was more like, for the first time, I was sensing where I wanted the instrument to take me. (Unfortunately, I've never practiced enough to be able to get most of these thoughts out of my fingertips, but I could feel them just there, almost at the surface, and occasionally I succeeded). I'm convinced that these musical ideas didn't exist until I learned the "language" of the instrument, or if they did, they were so vague and buried that I couldn't articulate them. Somehow learning scales and other seemingly mindless, repetitive, non-creative tasks caused me to find a creative outlet for thoughts I didn't even know I had. Guitar, music, music, guitar, chickens, eggs, eggs, chickens, bla bla bla.
Ok, I think I've rambled enough, so I won't attempt to tackle question number 2 about making your mark on the world.
But I will say that I think you've got awfully nice peau. And not to be judgemental... but lots of people like to have cool sounding careers... Maybe that just means they wanted to impress you, and you could take that as a compliment :-)
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