Saturday, January 11, 2014

What ART I am-ith

So it's a new year, and time we had a very important discussion...

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY NEW BOOTS?!?!



I knew you'd love them. I sure do, after five years of barely cheating hypothermia with each pair of these failures.  




Now let's talk about something of equal importance--the purpose of this blog. 

Another self-serving, useless piece of cyber space real estate? A forum for intelligent discussion? Neither?

We'll get into this discussion with a whiney rant. I know you love those.

I started this blog a few years back to talk about my adventures and to have a place for self-expression, only to soon worry that it is selfish of me to only write about myself when there are wars and Kim Kardashians in the world, only to then realize that it's okay to write about myself because my honesty will somehow cure the world of all its problems, only to then flail in this cycle of immense and unproductive self-consciousness. 

Why? 

Because at this point in my life I actually am trying to get my stuff figured out enough that I don't actually want to waste time or space with something that doesn't matter. How about that, I mean it. 

How adult of me, right?

See, I just spent three weeks working on this post only to delete it because it was all wrong. Now, I need to be somewhere in 10 minutes, and consequently am filled with such inspiration that I am sitting down to write this. 


Sometimes I have these wild moments of intense clarity at the climax of one arduous journey only to have it evaporate the second after it arrives. 

Here are examples of this plight:
 
1. After a long road of becoming a vegetarian, the holidays taught me that "turkey" is considered a vegetable. Now I have never loved meat more. 


2. After almost 28 years of dealing with some of the most unruly hair that ever existed, from chemical relaxers to 500 degree flat irons to "interventions" by hair stylists, I've never been happier to have thick hair so that I could donate it.





(Thanks Locks of Love for the inspiration.)


3. At a time when I was ready to leave Boston for feeling fed up with its many consistent frustrations (see above winter boots situation), I then somehow began to truly embrace it.


4. I just recently decided to move on from my first official teaching job after being there for more than three years. The wonderful music store and its great staff and community made me grow into a legitimate teacher and solidified my musicianship.
Why would I leave? 
Over something really stupid. Traffic!
I finally had to decide that the amount of energy getting somewhere shouldn't necessarily outweigh the amount of energy spent doing the thing you're going there to do. 

There are other reasons too, of course. I have plans. 
 


HOWEVER! 
The very minute I walked out on my last day, clarity hit again like a frying pan over the head.

Perhaps teaching is in fact what I am meant to do! Would this have hit me if I hadn't chosen to leave? What does this mean? 

Who knows. Back to the cycle.

5. I look down on and resent bad art, but spend a lot of my free time learning guitar chords for Miley Cyrus songs. 



Perhaps all this is leading to the question of what art really is.

Just like what makes a good blog post or good life choices, what makes good art?








Good art is what makes you stay in front of the television for three days straight with the shades drawn, sweat glistening around your blood shot eyes, eating nothing but funyans that stick to your pajamas, and having all it go by like three minutes. 

Bad art is nothing but shock value.

Cheer up though, chicklets.

Bad art makes good art stand out because art usually stems from the unfairness of the world, and therefore intense suffering. So, if this blog is bad art to you, it'll make the good art that much more appreciated. 

Therefore, I proclaim that I am doing a mitzvah.

Also, it's just this simple. Sometimes I'd rather write about winter boots than the existential paradigm of the changing climate of classical music as it relates to Armenian politics in the 29th century.

So sometimes bad art is okay. Sometimes I'd rather be myself and entertaining than someone else and boring. 

"Entertainment" can even become legitimate art. Here are examples:

1. Musical artists like Bach, Madonna, George Gershwin, Gregorian monks, Miley Cyrus (to name a short few). 
2. Nudity on network television. 
3. Rothko, Picasso, my finger paintings as a young toddler.  
4. The dollar rack at Target.
5. Lip plumper from the dollar rack at Target. 



 CONCLUSION:

In the end, "success" is always admirable. The fact that you're reading this at all is success to me. 

That's why I add lots of pictures--so you will keep scrolling down.
 
"Please shut up."


But the success discussion is for another time, if you are even still on speaking terms with me after this. 

Maybe it is actually this simple:

Each creation, no matter what the level it is, 
is just a vague collection of atomic particles of star dust 
in one practically nonexistent fraction 
of this vast infinite, incomprehensible abyss of a universe. 

Please discuss amongst yourselves now. I need a break.


3 comments:

Musicputnam said...

<3

Mr. Phil said...

Has anybody seen Art?

Does the expression "Artsy Schvartsy" refer to non-Jewish women?

We do know that Liz is the coolest. And you can take that to the Banksy.

Rochelle said...

I learned so much about you. 1) Never realized that you had a relaxer 2) Really liked what you had to say about "bad art" making "good art" possible...Keep writing, Liz. You have interesting things to say!