the other day the wife and I went to a museum…
the “San Francisco Museum of Modern Art” or SFMOMA…
we have been there a couple of times before and liked it…
we are kinda museum junkies… every town we go into, we find
a museum to go to…….
anyway, I wasn’t as impressed this time as I have been before…
but it was ok…and as I walked around, I was thinking about ART…
what does ART do for us? what does it mean? why have ART?
ART at least for me anyway, changes our viewpoint, changes our perspective
on the routine of our existence…
we exist within certain daily views and perspectives and routines…
everyday I am greeted with the same faces, the same viewpoints,
the same check stand, the same train ride…there is no variation
or changes in my viewpoint…
ART shakes that up, it shows us something outside of our daily routine,
it allows us to see something new and different and shakes us outside
of our comfort zone…
even if the ART wall is a pure yellow, and we saw that, it shakes us
out of our comfort zone because we don’t see yellow like that…
usually, usually we see yellow in small discrete packages or as part of
some colorful attempt to gain our attention…
the yellow, it doesn’t become a point of object, it doesn’t become
the point of our attention…we see yellow all the time, but
we don’t focus on it or we don’t “see” it for being yellow…
but as part of some larger effort to get our attention…
ART changes our viewpoint in making us see things in a new
and different light then we normally see it…
I think a good way to put it is that ART makes us focus on things we
don’t normally focus on…we don’t focus on or try to see colors
or shapes…… ART forces us to see things… things we see every day,
but we really don’t see…colors and shapes become part of everyday
routine in a way that we no longer see them as distinct and separate…
ART make us aware of things we have lost sight of because of our daily
routine…ART begins at the exact same point as philosophy…
the becoming aware of…philosophy starts at the same point of
awareness…seeing something we have seen a thousands times
before and suddenly we see it in a new light…and this sudden new
awareness allows us to see it in a new way, it now means something different
because we see it in a new light…ART and philosophy have the exact same
starting point…to make people aware of things they have seen before…
and as I have noted before… awareness is the start of everything…
the beginning of wisdom is the being of awareness of what it means to be
human………
to know who you are… to know thyself… the Socratic injunction
begins once one becomes aware… becomes aware of the
existential questions that we face at birth…….
“the unexamined life is not worth living”
the “unexamined” life… to become aware of… that is what the
word “unexamined” means here…if we don’t become aware of our life,
then our life is not worth living……
to become a great person… one must first become aware…
to become a moral person… one must first become aware…
to become a philosophical person… one must first become aware…
to become a religious person… one must first become aware……
to become something more then an animal/human…one must first become aware…
to become aware is the start of everything…
and that is the value of ART… it begins a process of becoming aware……
if you want to find the meaning of life… the first step is becoming aware……
every answer you seek begins with the act of becoming aware……
every question begins once one becomes aware…
Kropotkin