noticing
Is art a help or a hindrance
asked? Is it what fixes us or is it the thing that fucks us up completely? Is it the curse or the cure? The symptom or the medicine? I’m neither an artist, nor an expert, which means I’m not the person you should be asking. To my knowledge there is only one question that I’m qualified enough to answer confidently. Yes, I would like fries with that, please.
Over dinner recently my son told me that anything can be an art, based on the amount of attention we bring. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree they say, but he seems to have fallen far enough away because he thinks and speaks with a brilliance that outshines me. He can see the orchard for the trees while I’m still fumbling.
One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned is that seemingly opposing things can be true simultaneously. Art, then, like most things, isn’t something fixed, or static, or stationary. It’s dynamic and rife with complexity. It contains multiplicities. It’s a prism of shifting refractions reacting to the way the light keeps changing. It’s rarely a matter of either/or but is always a kind of both/and-ing.
It’s our frailties, our faults, our flaws, our fragilities. It’s our strengths, our accomplishments, our victories. Our traumas and triumphs held tandemly. It’s all of it. It’s everything. The bitter and the sweet.
It’s the attention that turns it into art. It’s attention that finds beauty in the failing and meaning in the mending. It’s the tender act of simply noticing.
May your noticing bless all it touches
May the act of making meet you not as a curse or a cure, but as a companion.
May attention always lead you to where your heart is.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all of my everything.
I LOVE the Transcendence piece.
Also my daughter outshines me constantly as well. 🩵 It's a good, if humbling, feeling, isn't it?
How old is your son? He sounds so wise!