Monday, March 20, 2006

Awareness before Action

The word holistic gets thrown around quite a bit these days but I’m not sure that many people fully understand what it means. When I think of holistic I think of operating in a massively parallel and non-linear fashion. This language may not make a whole lot of sense. When I say massively parallel I mean inclusive and concurrent in time, space, and scale; all things simultaneously considered. Non-linear meaning letting go of the idea that you have seen it all before, that what you are experiencing can be completely predicted or understood with a finite number of variables or an existing set of categories and forms; take care in the degree to which you extrapolate and interpolate your past understandings into the present moment. I may have said this here before but I will repeat it: Nothing much matters but everything.

Monday, March 06, 2006

What a Tool

I was at a small art opening at a local gallery the other night and I got to talking with the artist. There were a handful of pieces that had a particular impact on me and I wanted to ask her about motive, message, and meaning. She answered with only the physical and logistical challenges of making and transporting the works. I asked again in a slightly different manner and again only details of the process of creation. This reinforced the idea that we are but tools of a creative force that we do not understand. We are the brush of a mysterious muse. Do we understand sufficiently our implement before arogantly removing it from the hand of its steward to wield ourselves?