Better starts with dissatisfaction. A holy discontent. A decided refusal to never relinquish the possibility of what could be to what has been. To never accept the current state of things. It starts with a willing rejection. It starts with a conscientious objection.
Better starts with dissent. It starts with protest. "At the heart of the lifework of many artists", Barry Lopez says, "is a simple but profound statement: 'I object'." There is something to be said about acceptance. About patience and quiet persistence. But there is a potency in finding a loud and resounding“fuck this!” Or...something more graceful? More elegant? Something better said? But, let's be honest. Few things touch the tongue with more grace and elegance than the obscenity of a four-lettered word. Better starts in the breakdown between sacredness and profanity.
When everything is made to make everything better than it was and better than it is. Better starts with a question. With something small. Something microbial. Something single-celled. With “what now?” With “what next?” It starts with “what if?” First one and then another and then another and then another yet again. A pathogen dividing, multiplying, a replication at an alarming rate. Better is a bacterium colonizing a system. It’s infectious. It seeps in. It takes over. Better starts little by little and then it changes everything. From the inside out and from the outside in.
Better starts with curious, and curious starts with dangerous. Curiosity killed the cat they tell us. But that’s not how the quote goes. “[C]are ‘ll kill a cat”, Ben Jonson said. Shakespeare said it that way too. It started as an indictment against worry. Until the powers that be realized that what worries them most are curious people. People curions about making things better than the status quo.
"The curious are always in some danger", Jeanette Winterson says. Not only from the world, but also from themselves. There's a curiosity you can't come back from. Discoveries you can't unlearn. Things you can't unsee. Some things that cost you everything. “If you are curious you might never come home", Winterson goes on to say. If you’re too curious you might never be allowed to. You might never be the same, but you might also change the world. Better starts with trying. With making one thing different.
Better starts with me and you.
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Your artwork would make an amazing book cover! I’m noting this for the future. Perhaps we could collaborate later!?
Curiosity might kill the cat, but Satisfaction brings it back. You rarely hear the second part. I wonder why... 😈