Art

My apologies if you don't understand any of this. I think I do, but ....

“It’s putting your mind somewhere else.”  A phrase by artist, Laurie Anderson,  on the TV Show 60 Minutes on 4/3/22.

That’s exactly what it is.  What art is. It literally borrows your mind. You have to go along.  It displaces you. 

Of value?

Until we know much more about the mind, we can’t say.  It feels, however that it disrupts a dominant phase or pattern and you do not return to exactly the same place.  That might be good.

Our minds are never obedient.  That is, we do not solve problems on demand.  There is always a “fey” quality to our thinking, an erratic movement of attention.  It is sometimes squalid.  Well, maybe, pedestrian. And largely we are inattentive, concentrating on changes in light and sound and movement that signal retreat or advance. 

Real art, and here I mean that hijacking of the mind, changes the “key” or “mode” or “palate” of thought. 

Just when we are satisfied with the working of our perceptions, the normality of our awareness, the reassurances of our thinking, and have poured ourselves a stiff drink, “art” lifts us off one track and places us back on another. 

Loss of regularity is uncomfortable for many, thrilling for a few.  And these few are those that “get it.” 

Real art is not simulacrums, reproductions, repetitions.  Not what people mean when they say, “this looks like a cow.”

But the “not cow,” cow.  Red and floating through space---is disturbing.  Ruptures the moment. Is art.