On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Arlo Bensinger <[email protected]> wrote:
> [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. > > > [Platt] Pirsig describes a time when craftsmanship (and other virtues) were valued: "What we tend to forget is that, unlike the European aristocrats they aped, the American Victorians were a very creative people. The telephone, the telegraph, the rail road, the transatlantic cable, the light bulb, the radio, the phonograph, the motion pictures, and the techniques of mass production—almost all the great technological changes that are associated with the twentieth century are, in fact, American *Victorian* inventions. This *city is composed* of their value patterns! It was their optimism, their belief in the future, their codes of craftsmanship and labor and thrift and self-discipline that really built twentieth-century America. Since the Victorians disappeared the entire drift of this century has been toward a dissipation of these values. (Lila, 17) Good to see Arlo wanting to restore Victorian "codes of craftsmanship." I wonder, though, what "Early Hippie Thinking." Does that have any relation to the current Democratic party agenda? 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/
