Art: Advances in Acuteness
We live our lives creating connections between sensations, memories, ideas and fantasies. Each of us is a beehive of bodily activity. Still, we mustn't forget that all of our experiences come to us through a ridiculously narrow filter, since a specific biological design limits our responses to the wide field of physical phenomena. Acuteness is the source of calm and pleasure: it is a means of confronting reality with the least amount of fuss.
Faced with our own beautiful complexity, it would be foolish to stigmatise any work of art as 'convoluted' or 'difficult'. Art is a simple tool for fine-tuning our experience of being alive. Observation of the world and the imaginative reordering of its selected elements are complementary methods of training our acuteness. The eureka and the what if.
Misguided manmade distinctions tend to get in the way of intensity. The acute mind punctures the thin covering of codified culture which obscures so much of primary experience. This line of thinking does away with such tedious debates as 'high' versus 'low' art.
How often do you feel elated by the fact that you're an organism with clear spatial-temporal limitations embedded in a delightfully elaborate (and, for the most part, unmapped) system? That "unmapped" part is the key, of course: experience and imagination give you the necessary instruments to become a fledgling cartographer.
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The above sketch captures many of my guiding principles in a fairly succinct form. Much could be added, little could be taken away. The Romantic style has to be dealt with, though. Perhaps I'll rewrite the thing one day. Maybe around New Year? Oh, and the net connection is up and running again. What better time to post a totally linkless entry?
