[DMB]
This is one more reason I feel so lucky to live in Denver.
[Arlo]
I love Denver. When/if I ever decide to live "urban" again, Denver is
where I'm a'heading. I think the description you give in your post
exemplifies the non-distinction between "art" and the daily activity
of our lives. When we cease making this one artificial distinction, I
think a lot of other things will fall into place. We should rescue
the word "craft" from its association with quaint, cliched, antique
goods and return it to its rightful place as a verb to describe this
form of high-quality activity.
"Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his
expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent
and you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a
single line of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along.
For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing
even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and
the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of
written instructions because the nature of the material at hand
determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the
nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are
changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at
rest at the same time the material's right."
"Sounds like art," the instructor says.
"Well, it is art," I say." (ZMM)
What intrigues me about this Pirsig quote is that his initial
distinction refers to "labor" (novice workman/craftsman) and sets the
stage for "art" to be freed from its binding association with
extra-curricular, superfluous, paint-music-sculpt-dance-etc prison.
This is a little off-topic, but I do think that Early Hippie Thinking
got this right.
[DMB]
Tom Wolfe is a bit of a Victorian, though. I'm gonna disagree about
lumping him in with the poets and pranksters.
[Arlo]
I see Wolfe's ideas on uniting "journalism" and "literature" to
parallel that of other the whole "rotisserie/sculpture" schism (same
with Hunter S. Thompson). But to be honest with you, other than his
earlier stuff I don't pay much attention to the man.
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