What makes art Art? What is it that differentiates a velvet Elvis painting from the Mona Lisa? They're both just portraits of a smiling person, after all, but one is kitch and the other is Art.
My theory is that the thing that makes art Art is the same thing that makes the ordinary extraordinary, and that makes enlightenment Enlightenment -- how much attention you bring to the experience, paired with how much you bring to the relating of the experience to others. The ordinary really isn't. There are no such things as ordinary days and extraordinary days; there are only days. What turns the former into the latter is just paying attention, and noticing that *every* day is extraordinary. And it's the same thing with enlightenment; nothing whatsoever changes, except your perception of everything. So, to expand upon my theory, just noticing that the ordinary is and has always been extraordinary isn't Art. Just noticing that you have always already been enlightened isn't Art. Both are purely subjective experiences; only the person experiencing them experiences them. It's when you attempt to convey these subjective experiences to others that Art happens. If you can bring the same level of attention that you brought to noticing the extraordinary and noticing enlightenment to the attempt to convey it to others, *then* you have the possibility of creating Art. What distinguishes the velvet Elvis painting from the Mona Lisa is the degree of attention the painters brought to the creation of them. If they did a good job, the extraordinary or enlightened visions they experienced subjectively somehow get captured in the artwork, and "come through" the painting, such that other people can get a sense of the artist's subjective experience. That's my theory, anyway. How you see things don't mean shit, and don't make you an artist. But if you can manage to allow other people to see things the way you see them, sometimes that becomes Art. Paris is a great town for art. There are 204 museums in the city (not just 153 as Wikipedia thinks), and all of them are open FOR FREE one evening a week and one day a week. I'm looking forward to cruising a few of them. If I find any of them extraordinary, I'll try to report my subjective experience here, and see whether anyone can catch a buzz off of it.