What is Art?

What is art? It would be arrogant of me to define art, as if any one person could do so. I’ll provide my explorations, my discoveries, my perspectives, my experiences, and my ideas. Nothing more, nothing less. It might end up being bullshit, but who knows?

When I was three years old I drew an airplane I’d seen flying through the sky while playing in a sandbox. I got out of the sandbox, opened the screen door, walked into the kitchen, went to my bedroom, grabbed some pencils and paper, and drew the plane I had just seen. The drawing was hyper-realistic. I drew the plane from the same angle I had remembered seeing it: from below. I didn’t draw a plane from the side, the front, the top, but from the underside at an odd angle from a far distance.

I put my face close to the paper to draw the precision in a very small but exact way so that it could represent what I’d seen when I saw it. I don’t remember what I was thinking as I drew it. I just drew it. When adults saw it they said, “Ooooh, he is a naturally gifted little drawer, a budding artist. Look at how well he can draw and he’s only three!”

At that age, I had few of the sorts of ridiculously false and misleading concepts imprinted on my brain, distorting my perceptions. I, at three, looked at my drawing and only saw how off I’d been in my representation. On the flip side, I was observing these adults who were looking at my drawing and looking at me making statements that seemed nonsensical. I figured their words were a type of play, an amusement of sorts, and I think I played their game with them (the memory is fuzzy on that point). It was fun as far as I can recall. But their thinking was of the type that develops amongst minds who had to figure out how to be functional in a surprisingly fucked up world and thus seemed robbed of inklings that discovery of their respective potentials were so much more vast than anything society imagined, knew, or allowed that they remained unwittingly trapped in a political, economic, cultural, and social conveyor belt of unfulfilling mediocre oblivion. Or, maybe, they saw the potentials, but didn’t have the energy, will, motivation, support, or … something else … to break free and let their minds open like the bloom of a flower.

Of course, flowers in bloom are nature’s Icarus, always following the sun, living short but spectacular lives, and then withering fast and falling to the earth to die, most likely forgotten. Does it matter? The point I was making was that I was sitting with my early attempt to create a symbolic representation of my perceptual experience … but not the entire perceptual experience; I was not trying to recapture the tactile sensations I felt as I arched my back and tilted my neck so that I could gaze above to visually search for the source of the auditory sound that had shaken the relative silence that had previously existed.

I, a three year old, was exploring the universe in the ways that my just-developing body, emotions, and mind were allowing me to do so. I am, as life form, wanting not just to know the universe, but to understand it. I did not want to understand the universe to dominate it, though. I wasn’t working for NASA, Russian space agencies, or corporations. I didn’t want to control time and space. I wanted to observe, make friends, and play. I wanted to have fun and I was curious about what existed, particularly what I did not know or understand.

I am an entity who has developed a particular self- and world-understanding. I am not willing to slow down for the timid. Goodbye, timidity. If you don’t like it, just get the fuck out of my way because I’m a bulldozer now and I am actively going to be working toward recreating the world in an image that I want. Yes, you may say that is arrogant, but it is actually quite humble because I, unlike the belligerent masses who impulsively act on any and every whim, have been waiting until I better understood my thought, emotion, body, and relation to the world. I didn’t go out at three or six or twenty or thirty-two to dismantle the world and make it in my own image. Who would do that?

Sociopaths, narcissists, etc. I hate to say it, but those personality “types” are not really psychological defects; they’re predispositions toward social advantage … in the thought and structure of Western civilization. It’s not socially acceptable to point out uncomfortable truths, but I don’t give a shit. I’m a flower in bloom and I will wither and die like all humans so why should I care what anyone thinks of me? Hell, everyone who might judge me is going to die as well so fuck ‘em if they don’t like what I think or do.

My drawing from three years old? I saw the flaws, I knew that even though the adults were complimenting the drawing that they viewed me as incapable of doing more because I was only three years old. As such, they limited me. I could have, by the end of that day, had I continued working, drawn a perfect representation that would have brought tears to the eyes of anyone who viewed it. Maybe. I’m going to say so because I don’t know what would have happened. I might have scribbled all over it instead—I wasn’t Mozart—but since all possibilities exist despite the world’s insistence to elevate probabilities over possibilities I believe I may have at least achieved a greater degree of satisfaction by transforming the drawing into ever greater opportunities to learn.

The same probably would have been true if I had sit at the piano and played. No imposition of “lessons”; just let me develop the ability to play by sound and spatial “feel.” I’ve done it as an adult, just sat down with no formal training and improvised. The first few minutes sound strange, but I’m just learning where the sounds exist on the keyboard, the area of the piano where certain notes are located, what playing two adjacent keys sounds like versus two keys pressed down with a key in the middle left alone. So on and so on and so forth, just focused exploration of sound, no worries about composition or so-called mistakes; there are no mistakes in that process because my intent is to learn where the sounds are located so I can begin to press keys in such a way that the sounds are enjoyable to me. I might do that for a time, take what I’ve learned and build a composition by ear, not one I could replicate exactly again—I’m not writing down notes for posterity or to play the same composition again and again and again. That’s not how I play; that’s not how I learn.

I own my learning. I create my learning. I don’t follow the rules of others. Those rules were developed by minds that think differently than I do and I don’t want someone else’s mind imprinted on my own. I’ll just end up discovering what they’d already discovered. I want to discover anew and anew and anew, to never stop learning, to never exhaust possibilities. How can I do that if I let others train me? Believe me, I do mean train rather than educate. I have respect for teaching and guidance, but not if it impinges on my ability to learn. There are plenty of authorities in positions of teaching or mentoring that hinder learning and even turn many away from learning as a practice entirely.

The economic system itself really fucks anyone who wants a life of unending, self-directed learning. External forces determining personal value? Fuck that. I don’t want to be a drone. Some do, I suppose, but has anyone in that situation learned enough to make a conscious decision to acquiesce? I doubt it.

I learned to paint in much the same way I described playing the piano. I used various instruments for application—putty knives, brushes, my fingers and hands—on various surfaces and found I like linen canvases best. I was attentive to how colors and textures looked adjacent to one another, spaced apart from one another. I didn’t have the language of color theory and I didn’t learn color theory and then try to apply it in my attempts to paint. Without knowing I was doing so I was learning color theory through my own self-directed efforts. As if there’s one way to learn color theory! For me, it is not by reading a book about color theory or even looking at images representing the concepts of color theory. My way is by using my eyes, hands, arms, body to find out what I like and don’t like. It was a long process, but I learned certain techniques, certain truths about colors along the way. I used acrylics because they dried quickly and I didn’t have a studio space. I found I liked laying the canvas flat on the floor and getting down on my hands and knees to circle the canvas while applying paint. Most of all, the process was fun. I was playing.

I think that’s what creating art is: play. If there is no imagination or experimentation or curiosity or possibilities of learning involved then I think it’s better to call the process work. I’ll let the Protestants have a strong work ethic. Me? I have a strong play ethic. If I’m not having fun discovering and learning then there’s no value in the endeavor.

The same is true when I look into your eyes and I allow you to see the fullness of my being in the way I am feeling it … through my eyes, lips, cheekbones, the angle of my neck, the arch of my back, the positioning of my eyebrows, how open or closed my hips are, whether I am tapping my foot or folding my arms, if I’m laughing or sighing, rolling my eyes, and, of course, if I lean forward and kiss you, tilt back away from you while whimpering, stomp on your foot to make you feel pain, tell you how much I like you, let you see everything about me as I’m able, and you, no matter how brilliant you think you are, still see little more than a guy who shows up late too often … but that’s because it’s what you really value. It all could have been discovery and play, but you fucked up by caring about something comparatively trivial.

That’s just it: I am not valued as I am. What is most valued about me is what I can do for you, what I can get for you, how I can advance your goals. I am an object for you to use to further your life. Your gift to me in return? “Hi, nice to see you. You’re a great guy. Thanks. Have a nice day.”

My response? Fuck you. Just turn and walk away when you’re done with me. I don’t need the bullshit niceties. It just wastes my time and it wastes yours and it leads to nothing but a sense that “Gee, maybe that person really does like me! After all, they just gave me the time of day, they told me they liked me, they did a few things with me.” No, this is the way it should be—well, for me, anyway: tell me, right off the bat: “I am a selfish prick. I don’t care about you, but I’m lonely and I’m hoping to siphon some energy off of you so I feel better. When I’m done and you are somewhat drained and you are looking for a mutual sharing, that’s when I am going to bail on you. Why? Because you gave me what I wanted and now I don’t need you and I never cared about you; I only cared about feeling a little bit better about myself.”

Engage with me if you want to collaborate, share, play, learn, live, and love. Anything less is a soul-crushing disappointment.