art

Mastery

Try to become a master at something. It is difficult. It is misunderstood. And if you succeed, which is doubtful, you will live in a world that thrives on mediocrity and overlooks your art. It will redefine mastery to include mediocrity.

But to be a master you must overcome all of this. A master dismisses those who smile snidely and do not care for such heights. A master does not brag because an artist does not need to. Mastery, though, comes at even a higher cost than all of this.

Failure is the norm. Progress is slow and tedious, often feeling like it is non-existent. You will be alone and the world will not care for what you love most. It will take a lifetime to realize that you have not achieved your goal. There will always be better. Your ego will stay bruised and you will relinquish pride with a tear in your eye.

Honesty will be forced and you will kneel, humbled, at the foot of the mountain that you know you must climb. This is when you will be a master but feel like a novice.

Numb

Why bother being good at anything? Why desire integrity with an onslaught of lies and smiles? Why want to make the world a better place when the world seems to want to be worse? Why knowledge when it is ignorance that reigns?

I don’t know the answer to these questions except that i doesn’t make sense to blind yourself simply because you live in an un-seeing world. It doesn’t make sense to fuel a machine built to suck the life out of you.

Numbness is not comfort. The loss of hope is not happiness.

Societies do not progress, individuals do. People have never done anything worthwhile. Some one has. The masses are a product; the inventor is an artist. The capitalist is a parasite; the engineer a drone, and the musician a drowning man.

In the end it doesn’t matter. But what we forget is that the end doesn’t matter. It is life, a good life, that is important.

To try to do good, to produce beauty is progress. All else is a cheap trinket in a dirty convenient store.

The Art of Conversation

We can communicate with each other. Think about that. We can share ideas and understand subtle humor. We can ponder our own existence and philosophize about the importance of life itself. We created many languages grown out of necessity and culture, and desire, and passion.

We can tell someone we love them.

Think about the times in life that we have missed doing this, that we chose not to, and instead allowed ourselves to be carried away by trinkets and blinking lights or by laziness. It is almost as if we die from a thousand unthought decisions that slowly drain our souls from our bodies.

Time is infinite but we do not have infinite time.

Our time is short and although time seems so absurd, time is all we have.

Words hold power and we hold words in our heads, at the ready. To share. We can choose to pretend and simply bide our time with meaningless chatter and we can choose Truth. We can communicate these words in so many ways. And through these many scenarios, learn ourselves, about ourselves and even from ourselves.

Words hold no value but language does.

Words are art and we must share this art as a musician must share the notes on a page. We owe it to ourselves and to others not to waste this precious art form that we come to dismiss for so many toys and trinkets. We must learn the art of conversation before we lose our way through the forest of rhetoric and the rocks of the mundane.

Become an artist and have a conversation.

Art

black-hole 2

A musician searchs for intertwining melodies, chordal movements, and counterpointed lines to paint a mental picture or to tell a story that can only be understood through sound.

A painter splashes paint, dabs color, carefuly inundates the canvas with lines of imagination, shapes of surreal dreams, looking for the picture that is indelible, cemented in his mind.

The poet draws words from the canvas of language and rhythm; memories are real, and reality as clear as the words on the page. The black and white of paper and pen the most beautiful of all.

The philosopher searches for the illusive truth, the difficult understanding and the never-ending hunt for reason. The art is euphoric and personal but applies to the world.

The farmer wakes with the dawning sun and looks over mother nature. His animals await, his plants sit silently in the morning light. Pitchfork in hand, plough on horse, the farmer smells the earth, the manure, the life that he creates.

The teacher draws in the coffee smells and pulls up papers, hoping for the spark of intelligence. Eager faces look for guidance, and the teacher looks for secrets that we call learning.

The carpenter draws a blade across the wood and puts his nose to the newly planed plank. Timber becomes lumber and lumber becomes the necessities of life.

If only…if only perfection were found in art. Then, and only then, the artists could rest their weary heads and contemplate the perfection in their hearts.