Greetings,
I certainly agree. Both posts were wonderful.
Marsha
At 04:35 PM 1/27/2009, you wrote:
Hi All:
It appears Mel has struck a deep responsive chord with his recent
description of lessons from a boat builder.
Mel's post was preceded just a day or two by Arlo's post citing the
importance of ZMM reuniting ''art' with everyday activity.
I don't know about anybody else, but if after a decade of discussions this
site was compelled to come away with just one message for the world, I
think it would be these recent posts from Mel and Arlo.
I wonder how many other contributors agree that they neatly and memorably
summarize the MOQ's guide to personal fulfillment.
Regards,
Platt
> > mel:
> > A boat builder with whom I used to work
> > frequently repeated a phrase: 'beauty is free'.
> > The first few times he said it, the timing was
> > a mystery to me--Why did he say that, now?
> >
> > Eventually I got it. He was prodding me
> > towards seeing that how I made the structural
> > pieces of the boat look were more important than
> > the simple plan-form of structure. Analogous
> > to how different the musical score is from the
> > performance.
> >
> > Inevitably, the 'beautiful' elements found
> > efficiencies that the purely functional lacked.
> > What seemed an accident or a trick was instead
> > a deeped insight. Whenever I made a part
> > more beautiful in appearance, it was also stronger,
> > better fit, more efficient, etc. It was so, because
> > I had unknowingly paid attention to more parts
> > than simply the abutting or adjacent bits.
[Arlo]
This may be slightly off your topic, but I've always thought the most
important part of ZMM was in reuniting "art" with everyday activity. That
is, what both the classisists and the romanticists got wrong was that
"art" was divorced from other forms of human activity into a realm of
particular behaviors. We (in the general sense) tend(ed) to see "art" as a
very specific subset of painting, theatre, music, literature, etc. What
ZMM resolved was that "art" was an aesthetic/Quality that could be (and
should be) (and IS) an integral part of everything from building
rotisseries to repairing a motorcycle to welding a chain guard.
In ZMM, both the classisists and the romanticists were seeing "art"
from its old perspective, the classisist shrugged off "art" as
un-important or trivial (syrup of style kind of stuff), while the
romanticists were seeing "art" as a bounded domain of particular
activity (drumming or painting or the like). The "rotisserie builder" and
the "abstract sculptor", Pirsig reminded us, are both "artists" when they
follow Quality in their particular activity. Thus the resolution to the
romantic/classic divide is a larger view that begins with a redefinition
of "art" and its relation to everyday, lived "life".
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
.
_____________
Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
(Fernando Pessoa)
.
.
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
