L'energie de l'habitude

:

"Roulez lentement:  je suis presse."

(Winston Church a son chauffeur)

1. Merci a Soeur Dao Nghiem du Village des Cerisiers

   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbPPPy8Pe_o

L'homme est un prison

L’homme est une prison où l’âme reste libre.

-Victor Hugo

Zen teachers

I don't think he would be offended by this.

I've had many Zen teachers in the past, but I keep going back to  my cat, the Zen teacher par excellence, not necessarily the best but the one whose presence I enjoy the most.

"Stay in the present moment," s/he wordlessly says to and reminds me,  "That's where I am."

-my cats


"You make me smile with my heart."
-Lorenz Hart

A Zen teacher can say this but only my cats have lived this so marvelously.

The night

Sometimes you have to work at night when most people are fast asleep...and when and where there is no light at all.  

-Lily H., with a debt to Djuana Barnes, Nightwood and to Goya, Los Caprichos

T & M (and T): Trauma and Medusa and Teacher

Michelangelo da Merisi

It is how we respond to a traumatic event which determines whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Medusa turning us into stone, or whether it will be a spiritual teacher...


Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma 

The rainbow

Racism comes in all colors and hues.

(I know from personal experience).

-Lily H..

To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry. (Arthur Danto)

"...This led Mr. Danto to propose a new way of defining art. The term would be bestowed not according to any putatively intrinsic, aesthetic qualities shared by all artworks but by general agreement in the “artworld,” a community that included artists, art historians, critics, curators, dealers and collectors who shared an understanding about the history and theory of modern art."

[my underlining]

I'm not so sure of the utility of this defining art, as it could lead to not chaos but some self-evidently untenable propositions and positions, especially as in our time, political pressures--whether from the right or left--have entered into the equation.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/arts/design/arthur-c-danto-a-philosopher-of-art-is-dead-at-89.html?_r=0


“To see something as art requires something the eye cannot descry — an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld.”   -Arthur Danto, The Artworld, essay (1964)




I thought "the idea" was to return to populism and anyway from elitism.  Or is the contention that once the general public has a basic understanding of art history, it too will join the ranks of those who can say what is and what isn't art?