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.




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