Meaning

Being an artist is simply the ability to turn something on its ear. To see something in a new light, giving it renewed life. Have you have ever looked at an object seeing it in a different way creating a new experience? The meaning which we traditionally (and often unconsciously) placed on the object is lifted and it seems to vibrate with energy. A shift in ones internal state of being is the source of this new energy. This happened to me after I had watched the series, Art in the Twenty-First Century, and then I went upstairs and in looking at my toothbrush it had become a work of art and not simply a tool for my teeth.

The Minimalists used this technique (no they weren’t just about the elimination of clutter). They invited you to look at a familiar object in a new way. Deprived of context and sometimes distorted in some way, size for example, helped to shake up the left side of the brain which names and categorizes things. This disorientation allowed an experience of a familiar object in a new way.

This disorientation can be very uncomfortable. The familiarity with what we know helps us feel secure in what can sometimes feel like an insecure world, but it can also flatten out our experience leading to a depressive state of being. We become numb and dumb. I sometime reach out to change something within myself and then regret it because it makes me so uncomfortable. I don’t know where I am going I only know I don’t like where I am.

So many things are changing these days I find myself disoriented on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. This blog is about embracing the disorientation, communicating with a larger audience, and learning about what works and what doesn’t work. Like it or not, I have chosen to embrace the disorientation as a way of life. During this process of being disoriented I find as long as I am not alone I can adjust and then I begin to feel better. As so many things change I also have learned some things never change. These become my inner truths. They are always open for debate which often reaffirms and strengthens them, and always alters them in some special way. These inner truths reorient me and connect me to the larger world.

I invite and appreciate your comments. World events, personal events all welcome.