"The Greeks said they understood it (art), but what do we have left of their understanding? Mimetic echoes of retranslated, second-hand, subject material. Same problem with the Bible, Quraan, etc.. And the same goes for a lot of critics/artists/philosopher's 'original' work right up until the 16th, 17th, and 18th C.'s. This was why I was so interested in literary theory, per se, as when I graduated from undergrad, those topics/areas of discourse were where the 'cutting edge' of theory were going -the philosophy of language, dialects, idiom, regionalisms, and even (god forbid) sentential (or even quantitative) logic! There was a move going on to understand the essential elements of communication on a theoretic level, in the hope that it would help shed new light on the actual experience of the subject that included all (or some or few) of these basic elements.
Now maybe therein lies the catch-22, i.e., that words fail." 'This is perhaps where we begin to part ways in our thinking on the subject. The art experience is something common to everyone on etree--otherwise we wouldn't be going through the pains we do to collect art that moves us. I'm looking for descriptions of the experience that motivates us to be collectors and concert-goers.' Well, to answer directly your question, I would think that it is just those exact 'quintessential' experiences that we (ourselves, as subjective agents) label/describe (randomly -or deliberately?) as ideally or paramountly 'artistic' that keep us comin' on back for more! Problem is, exactly as you pointed out, that it can't be the same for you as it is for me -and I think this can even be proven on a reduced biologic level today. Make no mistake, I'm not allowing my boat to fall upon the shoals of solipsism, but there IS a question of connection at the center of the human element. By this I mean that do the neural patterns that coincide with MY experience of this [agreed upon] substrate reality or series of events impart/cause in us necessarily different routings of electrical current -do these patterns co-exist identically in separate brains? When we're both standing looking at that sunset, are the exact same areas of my brain being stimulated electronically as they are in yours? Can they? Seems like a large logical jump to me, but I've been wrong before. Are differences in electrical pattern routing at a biologic level really the essence of experiences direcly connected to this [again, agreed upon] substrate we call reality? If they did, would they represent (or re-present) the perceived experience identically to each separate brain (and assumedly each different individual, person, human being)? C'mon. No, the magic of sharing a great show is just exactly our self-deceiving (and maybe even believing at some level) that what we shared is/was communal or common in a content-sense to all those present for said artistic experience. No, the essential nature of the written word, a representation in general, a pictograph from a cave wall recently unveiled to the world anew after eons of silent hiding, is nothing without its requisite and necessary conceptual implication -absence. Hence on some level, there will be some inability to comprehend, to see, understand, or perceive. But this is all tied in to the transitive nature of the world and of perception -life in general themselves. Soprano's in 2 minutes. Gotta go. tom _______________________________________________ etree.org etree mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://mail.etree.org/mailman/listinfo/etree Need help? Ask <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
