Category: Art

It always seems strange, in a way, that something as “superficial” as art could effectively help deepen our understanding of things. This surface representation of how we see and interpret the world around us somehow being capable of adding new levels of meaning or awareness to our experience of life in general. As if it’s drawing things into focus – honing in on what it might mean to be human.

Of course, it might also be seen as a strangely exclusive, conceptual world full of its own terms, conventions and ways of talking about things so simple as light, colour, texture and perspective. As if the language of everyday life takes on all these precise meanings that could propel us away from a form of communication we might otherwise have found enlivening and valuable.

As with anything, there seems so much history to art that stepping foot into that world becomes daunting; as if we’re simply bound to reveal our ignorance and feel oddly at sea in a conversation whose language we never learnt. Hasn’t almost every area of life progressed to oddly specific places? Everything carrying this volatile weight of the past, with all that comes along with it: groups, arguments, sides.

Maybe it’s that language, like art, sits on the surfaces of deeper realities? Our words referring to a whole world of history, just as the artistic world rests on the long conversations that precede it. And then, beneath it all, there’s simply the question of “reality” and how we see it – how we come to describe in words, forms, thoughts or feelings the impression we have of all that’s around us.

Isn’t life all about how we’re seeing things? The sense we make of our surroundings using the ideas, interpretations or conclusions passed on to us. Our ability to see – to notice or understand – things perhaps shaped by all we’ve been told about what matters, how it connects and what it’s all saying. As if all we have in mind is informed by this conversation we were drawn into from birth with all of its preconceived notions.

Almost as if art might be trying to creep into our brains and find that place where thought and perception combine; challenging us to reconsider how we’re seeing and interpreting reality. This sense in which it’s forever placing other peoples’ perspective in front of us, asking that we see life with their eyes and grasp whatever meanings they were hoping to convey.

Which, in many ways, seems so human: this desire to communicate beyond the confines of our being. Each person seeing and assigning meaning their own way; hoping that others might experience life through their eyes and feel it with their thoughts. As if we’re trying to delve into the intricacies of perception and the sense we’re making from it – the way people see things and the things which matter to them.

Might it not be that unpicking that fundamental sense of “meaning” somehow deepens our ideas around being alive?

Notes and References:

The thought surrounding us
Thought, knowledge & coherent vision
Is there any end to the power of thought?
Do we live in different worlds?
Where do we get our ideas from?
The wonderful precision of language
Beauty is truth, truth beauty

Of all that’s surrounding us in life, how much is false yet beautiful? The pretence of beauty when, underneath, there’s little substance to truly justify the illusion. As if it’s now too easy to create the veneer, the superficial representation of something, without that which might’ve made it shine from within quite naturally. While truth itself might come across as less appealing, less pleasurable to look at.

The modern code as to what’s beautiful sometimes seems strangely distorted: given how easy it is to craft an image, what are we to read into whatever choices people might make? If beauty – in appearances, style or branding – can essentially be bought, aren’t we admiring money and inclination more than anything else? To think it says anything about the nature of what lies within could be quite mistaken. (Notes One)

In terms of culture, however, it seems we’re encouraged to feel that beauty represents goodness, ugliness the reverse. As if attractive people are somehow better – the ones we should be listening to, following, giving power within our community – while the less attractive are destined to stand on the sidelines or take on the part of evil. What does it mean to draw such simplistic lines between inner and outer?

While we might have more tools readily at our disposal than humanity ever has, what does it mean if we’re using them to craft illusions? To conceal and misrepresent ourselves with the constructed vision of how we’d like to appear. As if we’re increasingly wearing all these complex masks while the true self might never be seen – locked away, while some other version lives.

Isn’t there truth to honesty? To letting things be seen as they are. All the wear of time, form and function etching itself onto the surfaces of our lives. Everything speaking of its role in life, its purpose and usage. It all coming together into a clearly readable sense of where we stand, what we’re dealing with and what it all means. (Notes Two)

What are we actually doing in concealing truth? As if the whole of life might be an illusion – all this marketing spin coming to life and replacing what’s truly going on beneath. All the underlying realities still “there”, festering away unnoticed or unresolved, while something quite different takes place on the surface. What’s the point in hiding the truth and pretending something else is happening?

Sometimes it seems truth – despite its potential ugliness – might be more valuable, more worthwhile. At least then mistaken attitudes, choices or ideas can be exposed. Bringing things to the light of day, don’t we see what life truly is and how well we’re valuing all that goes into creating this complex and beautiful whole? Valuing everything rightly – even the darkness that needs releasing – seems important. (Notes Three)

If all of life’s a blend of light and dark, right and wrong, truth and lies, the paths we take within it may not be easy or attractive but they must make a difference.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What do we see in beauty?
Note 1: Valuable insights actors can offer
Note 1: Observing life & stepping outside of reality
Note 1: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 1: Do we know what stands before us?
Note 2: Values and the economic
Note 2: Aesthetic value of nature
Note 2: Masks we all wear
Note 2: Diplomacy and knowing where we stand
Note 2: Knowing who to trust
Note 3: Art as a way to subvert or inspire
Note 3: What makes a good life
Note 3: Visual language and spaces
Note 3: Times of revelation
Note 3: Living as a form of art

With culture, aren’t we worlds apart? Even within our own, some of us living this highbrow life while others face quite a different set of reference points, imagery and aspirations (Notes One). As if we’re all seeing life different ways; having such different values and interpretations of “reality” displayed and played out before us. Are those worlds something that can even “connect” in conversation?

It just seems, in almost every area of life, that there are very different conversations going on. One using the language of aesthetics, colour, form and gesture; speaking of power, tradition and classical education. The other, more pragmatic, raw and rooted in society’s everyday realities. One, perhaps, echoing from the remoteness of ivory towers while the other speaks directly from the streets of daily life.

Maybe that’s just what life is? We speak out of the rarefied world of ideals or the, often much bleaker, realities surrounding us. As if we’re always “somewhere” between idealism and reality as we seek paths between the two. Yet, isn’t there an insurmountable elitism to the first voice? This sense in which it’s a conversation few are privileged enough to have the time and opportunity to partake in.

Almost as if we “are” living in two worlds: that exclusive one with pretentious overtones and this more accessible one of clamouring, potentially less well-informed voices. Don’t we have to be “trained” into that earlier conversation? Fully acquainted with its terms, history, trends and developments if we’re to hope to speak without revealing some degree of ignorance that’ll undermine our words.

By its nature, though, does it “have” to be an exclusive conversation? Something few can have the “luxury” of studying, given how removed it essentially is from the practical realities of “life”. As if that highbrow conversation is simply an elevated reflection on the ideals behind our human condition; something so distantly related to the everyday that few can hope to make a living from it.

In any area of life – cooking, drama, fashion, gardening, art – do we “have” to either go high or low? Talking of plants in terms of form, palette, gesture, associations and effect, or looking more to the “truth” behind nature’s forms and how they relate to both us and the cosmic reality of our planetary existence. Is there more universal truth to be found behind all this? (Notes Two)

It’s just strange to think that culture’s conversations should be so remote, so divisive along the lines of inherited class distinctions. As if, in almost every aspect of life, we’re separated by conditions outside our control into having either idealistic conversations or ones that might just be poorly-executed reflections of those elevated ideals.

Maybe that’s simply life, though? That this one, idealistic world sheered off at some point to have its own self-reflexive conversation while almost everyone else was left dealing with the fractured realities of how well those ideals are working out each day. Is there any chance the two can join in one, meaningful conversation?

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture as information
Note 1: Visual language and spaces
Note 1: The stories that we hear
Note 1: Observing life & stepping outside of reality
Note 1: Everything culture used to be
Note 2: Appreciating other ways of being
Note 2: Understanding what we’re all part of
Note 2: Learning from the past, looking to the future
Note 2: Can there be beauty in communication?
Note 2: Shaping the buildings that shape us

Somewhere alongside this, there perhaps stands Dystopia as a powerful ideal.

How many of the problems we encounter in life are of our own making? The outworking of possibly flawed ideas, observations or conclusions from the past that, over the years, developed into something quite different from their original intention (Notes One). Living within systems created by humans, increasingly detached from nature and its wisdom, it’s interesting to imagine where that might lead.

Isn’t it the case that environments tend to shape us? All the activities, expectations and ideas around us effectively informing our choices: the kinds of things we might accept or get drawn into. As if we each read the world, from our perspective, and plot our course within it. Now, though, it’s seeming such an abstract, distant, remote, confusing kind of reality – something quite difficult to read or fully understand (Notes Two).

It must be an incredible responsibility to shape the realities others will be walking into, existing within, and living through. That we would be creating the environment for others to learn from and construct their lives around: drawing on the knowledge that’s presented; building on the foundations as they’re offered; discussing things using the terms that’ve been set.

Like Winston Churchill’s comment, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us”, sometimes it really seems we’re living within this strange handing-down of ideas, forms and structures. As if those before us “always” determine what they’ll tell us and the relative importance they’ll assign each element of the story – generation upon generation passing on some things and letting others fall away (Notes Three).

If society’s like a structure we walk into, what kinds of values, priorities and activities are being offered? Is this building more of a prison or a bustling, creative university? If “this” is the place we live, get our ideas about life, and pick up the threads as they’re handed to us, it’s fascinating to imagine what that conversation actually “is” and what we’re likely to make of it.

Doesn’t being in any kind of building effectively shape our feelings, perspectives and interactions? What we’ll experience in any particular room; how we pass between them, and all we see on the way; the encounters we have with others through the ebb and flow of the building’s functions. As if each part were a living, breathing structure we fill with our purpose and our presence in this ongoing dance of “life” and human activity.

Much as this relates to architecture, society or personal psychology, don’t we generally experience life through our place within it, perception of it, and the thoughts that’s bringing to mind? As if, passing through life, we gather up meaning to grasp where we stand and what our options might be. Each living within the structure they’ve made of their minds, relationships, and understanding of the world.

Art, architecture or philosophy can sometimes seem like distant, abstract comments on “reality” (Notes Four); in other ways, they seem capable of offering an interesting sense of what it might mean to be human.

Notes and References:

Note 1: How much do intentions matter?
Note 1: Problems & the thought that created them
Note 1: Values, and what’s in evidence
Note 2: Humans, tangled in these systems
Note 2: Treating people like sims?
Note 2: Reading into social realities?
Note 3: Passing on what’s important
Note 3: The value of a questioning attitude?
Note 3: Olds meets new, sharing insight
Note 4: Aesthetic value of nature
Note 4: Art as a way to subvert or inspire
Note 4: Living as a form of art

If we take creativity to be a process of looking at what’s around us, understanding the materials we’re working with, then crafting our own unique response based around that perception and skill, how dissimilar is it from the process of life itself? Aren’t we always encountering the world and adding something new of our own making? In that sense, maybe living’s simply an act of creativity.

That said, it’s perhaps something more commonly associated with the visual aspects of our lives – the style we’ve given our existence by way of our chosen clothing, interiors, belongings, gestures, and activities. In a world of consumerism and branding, it’s as if everything’s now just the palette of options from which we’ll portray ourselves as we wish to be seen.

It seems we have this natural desire to express ourselves through our surroundings, pulling towards us those things we feel resonate and pushing away whatever we’re not seeing as admirable or true for us (Notes One). It’s a fascinating interplay of self, society, culture and economics – all these subtle relationships of meaning or judgement that often shape who we feel ourselves to be.

But is it the only place creativity has in our lives? This tool in the hands of business, churning out ever-new options to define ourselves by and creative ways of influencing our behaviour. Sometimes it seems art’s just becoming this “coating” for the psychological calculations of industry, this smoke-and-mirrors deflection from the other agendas at play that makes everything seem desirably palatable.

Presumably it doesn’t have to be that way? The idea of “how we live” being an artistic endeavour seems quite capable of leading to wonderful places of beautiful, all-encompassing expression through every little thing that we do. As with anything, though, if we insist on it being “ours” and “self-defining” we’ll perhaps inevitably end up in these conversations of identity, conflict and criticism.

Beyond questions around the appropriation of art for commercial ends, there’s clearly a case to be made for it being an essential human function (Notes Two). Don’t we “tend” to see in images and metaphors? Reading meaning into the world around us and all the imagery we’re taking in – the human propensity for stories, drawings and movies – seems like it’s almost timeless.

Maybe what I’m saying is that the creative mindset seems a fundamental part of being human: our capacity for thought perhaps echoed by our capacity for vision as we see what’s there but imagine what might be possible (Notes Three). Finding meaning in life, creating meaning in our lives, making a difference to the world around us all seem like they could simply “be” these acts of imagination, creativity and hope.

As with most of my writing on art, there’s this sense in which I’m grasping for something I can’t quite touch. It seems undeniable that we’re creative beings, forever bringing new things to life through every choice we’re making, but where it’s all headed at this point is a challenging and daunting prospect.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 1: Definition, expression & interpretation
Note 1: Masks we all wear
Note 2: Thoughts on art & on life
Note 2: Humanity & creative instincts
Note 3: Art as a way to subvert or inspire
Note 3: Do we know what we’re doing?
Note 3: Creative vision in finding solutions

Somewhere alongside this, Things with life have to be maintained also talked of our roles in relation to the world around us.

Being creative can seem like a switch we have to press, a skillset we either have or we don’t, but is that really true? Isn’t it that we’re all being creative all of the time? Beyond the extreme, obvious examples of art itself or the process of human reproduction, there’s surely this massive middle ground where – with greater or lesser awareness, intention and deliberation – we’re all, constantly creating life anew through our choices.

We’re perhaps just creative beings: observing, thinking, acting (Notes One). All we do is, in a way, bringing something new to life through our attitudes, relationships, commitments, impacts, and so forth. We might quite passively create out of unexamined habits, but isn’t the result pretty much the same, in that it counts?

Because creativity seems to rest on vision – on what we imagine and believe to be possible, worthwhile or valuable. It’s understanding the world around you, seeing clearly, grasping some sense of meaning, responding with a degree of skill, and adding something to the mix. It’s perhaps an act of faith that our insight and involvement matters; that what we have to say might help somehow.

In life, then, we’re presumably creating every day? We might not believe our perspective, choices and contributions make a difference – we might feel it to be futile, that our lives don’t matter and no one notices. We might think nothing will change and there’s no point really trying. We could just continue on with our pre-existing choices, even if they seem to be causing problems.

But, despite the vision we have of what our existence might “mean”, doesn’t all this feed into the same, one reality just the same? We can create pessimistically, accidentally, intentionally, hopefully or blindly. We could just go with the flow of wherever we currently happen to be in life; repeat the same patterns over and over without quite feeling responsible for the process or the outcome.

It’s interesting to think what we create even when we don’t mean to, when it wasn’t our intention to cause those problems or elicit those reactions. If life’s our actions and reactions – all these forces emanating from our psyche, wandering the paths of our learnt behaviour to meet together with those of others – then the modern world’s a strange reality to be getting our heads around (Notes Two).

How much do we understand what we’re doing and what it’s going to mean? Who’s influencing our choices or the vision we have in mind? What wider trends are we, perhaps inadvertently, being drawn into? If all that we do is serving to create the world we’re all sharing, what are we adding and how aware are we of those realities? How much can we care about this collective creative project we’re each involved in?

It just seems that, beyond exclusive notions of what it is to be “creative”, we all play truly important parts in maintaining, upholding, sustaining, perpetuating and carrying forward what it might mean to be fully human.

Notes and References:

Note 1: The real value of creativity?
Note 1: What we create by patterns of behaviour
Note 1: Creative vision in finding solutions
Note 2: Ethics, money & social creativity
Note 2: Overwhelm and resignation
Note 2: Art as a way to subvert or inspire
Note 2: Problems & the thought that created them

Creativity’s presumably this age-old human function of applying ingenuity to the resources we have in hand or problems we’re hoping to solve. All the ways we look at our world and add something to it, another layer of perception or meaning that we and others may find valuable. This bringing into being of what previously wasn’t there, something produced out of nothing but our capacity.

Looking to the past, it’s clearly been a longstanding part of human life: the making, mending, maintaining provision of various crafts; the joy of participating in the cultural life of community; the necessity of applying ourselves creatively to make the best of things (Notes One). We’ve perhaps “always” been creative beings, engaging constructively and imaginatively with our surroundings.

These days, though, crafts are more often a luxury: expensive, time-consuming and generally unable to compete with the savings offered by mass production. It’s effectively uneconomical to make things the way they would’ve once been made, and few seem to truly value the dedication, beauty and love of a handmade gesture that may not always fit in with a contemporary sense of style.

It seems creativity struggles to find a place within modern society; becoming a hobby or a personal statement rather than an essential part of how we’re living. The consumer mindset seems to have created a world of replacement rather than maintenance – wear and tear is just an opportunity to buy something new (Notes Two). It also can’t help that, generally, things aren’t made in such a way that we’re even able to mend them.

At the heart of it, though, creativity seems to be about the human relationship with our environment: needs and desires; style and substance; design and beauty; resources and commodities; wisdom, purpose and honesty. Perhaps, in a way, it’s also about balance? About making that relationship constructive rather than destructive. The idea of living in harmony within that environment.

Historically, the Arts and Crafts movement seemed to be grappling with that challenge of balancing form and function at the advent of the modern age – the utopian vision of finally being able to solve humanity’s needs in elegant, unique and lasting ways. Their idealistic striving for truth and harmony seems quite beautiful; much as it might’ve given way to the more materialistic solutions now surrounding us.

It’s just interesting the place creative instincts have been afforded in modern society (Notes Three). It’s become the gloss that makes products or ideas more appealing; a potentially rewarding career for those prepared to lend their skill to commercial interests. It’s often taken with little recognition of its true worth – works reused without credit or remuneration. Frequently, it’s all seeming somewhat superficial or meaningless.

Yet, if art’s this sense of perception, understanding, intention, imagination and skill in how we engage with life and respond to it, why don’t we value that more than we do? It’s always “added something” to human existence – something perhaps hard to quantify and put a price on, but something valuable nonetheless.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture, art & human activity
Note 1: The creativity of living
Note 2: Is sustainable design an impossibility?
Note 2: Meaning in a world of novelty
Note 2: What are the true costs?
Note 3: Art, collaboration & commodification
Note 3: Thoughts on art & on life

At their most simplistic, art and culture are perhaps about our relationship to reality? The way we see things, what we think they mean, how we imagine it fitting together into some sort of coherent or meaningful whole. And, with that, it seems there’s this basic attitude of either hope or despair, belief or doubt – do we see the best or the worst in all this?

Equally, there’s the question of whether culture’s reflecting or somehow distorting realities in how they’re represented to us: adding something that’s not quite there or discounting elements of what is actually present (Notes One). Either way, it seems to be changing things – in our minds, at least.

Art, not then being a faithful mirror, can sometimes seem like a source of subversion as, intentionally or not, it misrepresents our reality. Perhaps pointing toward what “might” happen, one way or another, or hinting at what “might” be emerging or working behind the scenes – this emotive projection of intentions, trends or impending realities that may or may not be there.

For some reason, society’s seemingly tending toward despair. Seeing the world around us more clearly and comprehensively than previously, its darkness thrust forward and running awry, while also having that explored so (un)realistically within modern culture can perhaps only lead to a sense of resignation or a deepened sense of engagement with the process of what we’re creating through our lives (Notes Two).

After all, are we actually powerless to influence such trends, patterns and outcomes? Is there any sense in us responding on anything other than an emotional or intellectual level to what we’re observing around us? Is it even a waste of energy to react, to travel those paths if only with our hearts or minds? Are we wasting time caring about collective realities when we could just look to our own interests? Surely not (Notes Three).

I’m tending more toward thinking these things might be encouraging us to find our feet, hold our ground, understand our power. Rather than getting swept one way or another by voices or imagery from the potential extremes, to see how we stand between those two basic alternatives of optimism or pessimism in life. To understand the nature of our systems and the choices we have in responding to all that lands on our doorstep.

Perhaps art is there to draw things more sharply to our attention? To depict our realities, the risks and opportunities contained within them, so we might, somehow, be drawn out of any complacency to engage more purposefully in both our thinking and action with the world we’re seeking to grasp our role within (Note Four).

Might the function or value of art be in creating awareness so that we, in turn, can choose what we hope to create? Its visceral representations of life serving as opportunities – doorways – for focussing in on our challenges then, hopefully, accepting where we stand and actively deciding the role we want to be playing in things moving forward.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Culture as reflection
Note 1: Truth, illusion & cultural life
Note 1: It resonates, but should it be amplified
Note 1: What does art have to say about life?
Note 2: Living your life through a song
Note 2: Matt Haig’s “Notes on a Nervous Planet”
Note 2: Dystopia as a powerful ideal
Note 3: Right to look out for ourselves?
Note 3: And, how much can we care?
Note 4: Do we know what we’re doing?

In looking for answers we often turn to logic, thinking solutions are to be reached by way of convincing or compelling arguments. And maybe they are. There’s definitely a need to make our plans reasonable, and, thought being the crown of our existence, it certainly seems foolish not to call on it. But, equally, there’s this sense in which we’re motivated by what we’d like to create in life.

I’m thinking of things like visualisation and vision boards – practices whereby we imagine a future, building up these inspirational pictures of how we want our lives to be. Logic might compel us in a certain sense, but having a vision we truly believe in also seems a deeply motivating and powerful approach to change.

As a train of thought, it touches into a lot of fundamental questions around whether we ‘need’ to be convinced by argument, social pressure or the promise of reward in order to change all those aspects of life that are genuinely in need of improvement (Notes One). It’s circling in on the question of what it is to be human: to what extent we’re ruled by logic or habit or belief in what we’re creating here.

What is life? It’s honestly quite delighting to find that a couple of questions can lead down to that bedrock of “what is it to be human”. What are we doing here? What do we make of all that we find around us? How do we interact with reality, and what are we bringing through our presence and engagement with the process of living?

Life’s clearly a creative process: we take what we find and add something to it, based on reason or habit or compassionate understanding. As humans, it seems we generally respond in one of those ways. At the extreme, we’re capable of literally recreating human life; but, every step we take, we can either nurture or neglect that which sustains life personally, socially, environmentally, etc.

In that light, are we acting purely on logic or also on vision? Everything seemingly has its own logic, but I’m not sure where that leads us – whether it’s capable of reaching a coherent picture we’d truly like to be living within. Alternatively, is there another way of seeing and understanding how things fit together? A way of imagining where things might lead while also staying engaged in the process of shaping that reality.

It’s my convoluted path back round to the question of art: whether it’s an option, a luxury, or perhaps a powerful way of cutting through to the essentials and seeing life with greater clarity (Notes Two). Whether it might be capable of penetrating to the heart of things, shining a light of awareness and understanding into areas of unquestionable darkness.

Because life’s not perfect and we’re clearly in need of realistic, practical, inspiring solutions (Notes Three). Finding ways to grasp reality based around deep understanding, motivating vision, and empowering engagement seems, at times, something art’s truly capable of offering.

Notes and References:

Note 1: Pick a side, any side
Note 1: Fear or coercion as motivators
Note 1: Attempts to influence
Note 2: What does art have to say about life?
Note 2: The creativity of living
Note 3: Starting over in life
Note 3: Seeing, knowing and loving
Note 3: Codes of behaviour
Note 3: Finding flaws

Unintentionally, this very much seems to follow on from the thoughts within Culture as reflection.

Writing about life as much as living it, it’s easy to get tangled in details or lost in possibilities: we live in strange times where almost anything’s possible yet the realities of life can also be more constricting than ever. Life can seem quite overwhelming with all its choices, paths we could walk, and differing opinions we’d encounter along the way. What can we make of that?

Coming at it from a few different angles, I’ve at times mused over life being comparable to art or thought (see Notes One): ways we perceive reality then craft our best response to it. Other times I’ve looked at things more systemically, asking about human agency and the impacts we have (Notes Two). But life cannot be reduced to simple recipes, appealing as that prospect might be.

I mean, as expressed in many of those posts, life is what we make of it. We’re essentially these agents or actors capable of ‘reading’ situations and responding to them as best we can; those actions then filtering into that world around us – creating, sustaining or reinforcing the various systems making up human society and our footprint on the planet.

We could look at that and say we’re not free, that we have no real choice in many of the factors that shape us; or we could conclude that we are, that we have freedom in our response to it all (Notes Three). Clearly a long-standing argument about the nature of our existence, and not one I really plan to delve into too much here.

My point though is that, for me, there’s a certain creativity to how we might live: that we could look, understand as best we can, then decide our response so as to bring something more to life. If we conceive of art as a response to life – a perception, interpretation, and an answer in some form or another – then potentially that could help shape our lives in new ways.

Rather than life being a mechanistic set of reactions, formulas and predictable trains of thought, we could approach it more creatively if we wanted to. Often we do, in a way, but it’s often recast as personal branding, image, and so forth – that commercial conversation sneaking into questions of human identity, expression and belonging.

I’m not talking about strategic gestures in how we craft a self out of the opportunities of modern life, but a genuine creative response to the challenges of existence. This sense that we might look at life, look at our resources, and decide what we want to make of it: where we want to make our mark, the themes or areas we personally wish to focus on, and how we might collaborate with others in doing so.

All of that seems to contribute to this, slightly imaginary, conversation around life and the agency of human existence. It’s one reason arts are arguably important for civilisation, and possibly one option for finding our way within the complexities of life.

Notes and References:

Note 1: What makes a good life?
Note 1: Thoughts on art & on life
Note 1: What is real?
Note 2: Right to question and decide
Note 2: What we bring to life
Note 3: Krishnamurti’s “Inward Revolution”
Note 3: The idea of self reliance