ON ART
For me, Art is the salve that I apply to the emotional and intellectual wounds received in battle, while fighting against forces waging a raging war against the future of human existence on the Planet Earth. Terrible forces like ignorance and greed — selfish shortsightedness. Forces that promote and/or sustain the notions of human dominion and entitlement handed down through the generations on the pages of allegedly holy writings, which give us a false sense of superiority and security and exempt us from any real participation or responsibility here.
We don’t think of ourselves as biological creatures, connected intricately with everything else and constrained by the limitations that control all other biological creatures. We perceive ourselves as aliens that have been granted the right to take over, dominate, use, devour as much as we want. Because, you see, one day we will be transfigured into perfect beings and transported to a perfect place far, far from here (so each person’s false reality tells them, in sweet, comforting tones.) These are the strange human ideas and ideals that must be changed. This is a war, the only war if you ask me, which is worth fighting at all cost, because losing it precedes a future that is void of human minds that will interpret and appreciate human Art.
Each day that passes without significant victory brings a deeper despair and makes the war seem ever more hopeless and pointless — as pointless as the current war in Iraq. So for me, Art is not a gift as much as a necessary prescription, given to those who understand the urgency of this time — those brave souls with the nerve to keep looking at the problems of the world, day-in-and-day-out, in an effort to find workable solutions. Art is the medication dispensed to keep them from losing their minds — to keep them from running out and joining the oblivious throngs who are either unable or unwilling to concern themselves with anything graver than whether their favorite baseball team will sign a star pitcher to round out its bull-pen.
