Demonstrate your work
* attended work. After two stupidly frenetic months, I now have almost nothing to do and I'm going through a bit of a "meh" phase. I'll get over it. Next month, I'm going to have two fulltime staff to train up and they should be with me for at least a month. Before that there's planning, but before that there's a couple of weeks of sitting in my chair, slumped, drinking endless coffee, eating all the biscuits and checking Quidco every five seconds to see if anyone's given me any money. I'll get over it.
* discovered I have lots more time for my OU thing than I thought. I thought the deadline was May 5th, but actualy it's May 19th. I'm a bit meh about that too, but soon I'll get back to normal.
* got a Tesco delivery. I arrived back with Joey to find the Tesco guy outside and apologised profusely for not being able to help him bring it up to the third floor. He was very jolly and assured me that he did it for a living and didn't mind. The first time. The second time he had to carry a case of beer up the stairs along with other stuff, and was notably less jolly.
* had good food and good company. Gordon came to town so myself, Lila and Cat treated him to beer, Mexican food and lengthy discussions of how great/crap Apple products are.
* tended to Joey who's really not well. She's asleep on the sofa next to me right now and I'm going to sleep here with her tonight,then off to the doctor tomorrow. Poor lamb.
* discussed art. Everyone could write their own unique definition of what art is. It's a subjective, Platonic ideal that doesn't really exist. Things just have the quality of it to certain degrees.
But just because it's impossible to define doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think part of the problem is that we usually try to do this in formal language, as if there was some kind of equation. I prefer a more poetic explanation.
I think of art as The Great Conversation. Basically, every human being who has ever lived has found themselves in the same situation: suddenly and inexplicably turned out into a universe that's uncomfortable and hostile; equipped with insatiable desires to be loved and respected; afraid of the only certainty in life, which is death. It's mad, being a person. It makes no sense.
So we think about it and we talk about it. We share ideas and we make up stories, we fantasise and we reason, we interrogate, we lie on our backs awake at night and ask questions and most of the time we don't even realise that everybody else is awake, asking the same questions.
And what stops us from being nothing more than a bunch of scared, lonely insomniacs is that we do sometimes talk to each other about these things. We share and converse and console. Most of it is just conversation (just conversation, as if anything is as beautiful as a real conversation) and it's restricted by our language. But for some people this is not enough. Language and time and place and culture aren't enough to deter them from wanting to speak to as many people as possible. So they invent their own language. And they create things that communicate to all people in all places in all times. And what they are saying is their part of the answer to those huge questions. Little fragments, some worth more than others.
To be human is to face some big questions. If you take all of the art ever created and put it together, you get the closest thing we have to an answer. It all fits together, in a way. It's all one conversation. The Great Conversation.
Anyway, that's how I think of art.
* discovered I have lots more time for my OU thing than I thought. I thought the deadline was May 5th, but actualy it's May 19th. I'm a bit meh about that too, but soon I'll get back to normal.
* got a Tesco delivery. I arrived back with Joey to find the Tesco guy outside and apologised profusely for not being able to help him bring it up to the third floor. He was very jolly and assured me that he did it for a living and didn't mind. The first time. The second time he had to carry a case of beer up the stairs along with other stuff, and was notably less jolly.
* had good food and good company. Gordon came to town so myself, Lila and Cat treated him to beer, Mexican food and lengthy discussions of how great/crap Apple products are.
* tended to Joey who's really not well. She's asleep on the sofa next to me right now and I'm going to sleep here with her tonight,then off to the doctor tomorrow. Poor lamb.
* discussed art. Everyone could write their own unique definition of what art is. It's a subjective, Platonic ideal that doesn't really exist. Things just have the quality of it to certain degrees.
But just because it's impossible to define doesn't mean we shouldn't try. I think part of the problem is that we usually try to do this in formal language, as if there was some kind of equation. I prefer a more poetic explanation.
I think of art as The Great Conversation. Basically, every human being who has ever lived has found themselves in the same situation: suddenly and inexplicably turned out into a universe that's uncomfortable and hostile; equipped with insatiable desires to be loved and respected; afraid of the only certainty in life, which is death. It's mad, being a person. It makes no sense.
So we think about it and we talk about it. We share ideas and we make up stories, we fantasise and we reason, we interrogate, we lie on our backs awake at night and ask questions and most of the time we don't even realise that everybody else is awake, asking the same questions.
And what stops us from being nothing more than a bunch of scared, lonely insomniacs is that we do sometimes talk to each other about these things. We share and converse and console. Most of it is just conversation (just conversation, as if anything is as beautiful as a real conversation) and it's restricted by our language. But for some people this is not enough. Language and time and place and culture aren't enough to deter them from wanting to speak to as many people as possible. So they invent their own language. And they create things that communicate to all people in all places in all times. And what they are saying is their part of the answer to those huge questions. Little fragments, some worth more than others.
To be human is to face some big questions. If you take all of the art ever created and put it together, you get the closest thing we have to an answer. It all fits together, in a way. It's all one conversation. The Great Conversation.
Anyway, that's how I think of art.