living attention
“The world is not made up of tiny pebbles”, Carlo Rovelli says. Instead, “It is a world of vibrations.” A reality of continuous fluctuation. A constant thrumming. Everything we presume to be fixed or stable is composed of its opposite. Beneath the surface of what seems solid is a frenetic aliveness. A well-spring of motion and unfolding. Relations, events, and interactions.
Most of what we call art, then, is really the residue of something more energetic. The sediment of something more intricate. Art is not the thing made but the discoveries and revelations that occur in the making. It’s the systems and methods. The countless small decisions, movements, and gestures. The iterations and processes. The marks made, erased, revised, abandoned, and returned to again and again.
Art is a conversation. A negotiation. An ongoing exchange between hand, and heart, and mind, and material. Where thought and feeling flux into the tangible. It’s the emergent property of a dynamic accumulation.
Art can’t be reduced to an object. It is a word desperate to shed the skin of its noun-ness, and longing to arise in the fullness of its verb-hood. A work of art is not an artifact or an endpoint. It’s an amalgamation of moments held in tension.
Art is attention.
May you trust the movements beneath what seems finished.
May your making give expression to the art of your present-ness.
May you always be attentive.
In case no one told you today, I love you with all my everything.
Art is in the everythingness. That can be a huge point of friction for many, through judgement or gatekeeping or fear. But when you're drawn to a crack in a brick in a random wall, it has your attention. And that, as you say, is art.
Perhaps for a moment and perhaps for an eternity. Art-Attention/Attention-Art
I like that “art is attention” - noticing, and demanding.