What is Art?
Art doesn’t exist until it’s created or expressed by an artist… so we gotta start with: What is an artist?
What is an artist?
An artist is a living creature (with a nervous system), who expresses their perspective / experience / self through an art form.
This is why everyone is already an artist.
It’s not trite or disingenuously inclusive, because to “be” an artist, all you need to do is:
Pick an art form, and
Express something about your self or experience through it
That’s basically what a perspective is.
Or at least one that can be shared outside of your own mind.
In this way, an artist creates art. Art is always one-of-a-kind, because it comes from the one-of-a-kind perspective of the artist (or the living creature with a nervous system, AKA a perspective).
Your nervous system defines your perspective in conjunction with your thinking mind. The mind-body system is really one thing not two separate things.
And that’s it. That’s the entire game of life right there… it’s life expressing itself until the old is cleared out to make way for the new. Just like any ol flower, bush, or person, you get a defined period of time within which to choose how to express the life within you. What will you choose to do?
Back to the question.
What is art?
Art is the self-expression of a living being’s perspective & experience given form.
For example, if “God is the name of the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape” (credit: Barry Taylor),
then art is the blanket we throw over the ephemerally singular experience of a nervous system to see the shape of it.
That living thing’s nervous system is having a unique experience, and an artist is someone who gives themselves permission to express that. We get to see someone’s perspective when they allow us to see what they express in whatever form they express it in.
Art as A verb
So you want “to art?” Easy. Let your sense of life within your nervous system move you. You’ve begun to art. Let that wave complete, at you’ll have either have created art or expressed art.
Art is just the result of self-expression.
Examples Of Valid Art Forms:
Spoken or written word/music
Instrument-based music
Rhythm made manifest
Body movement AKA dance
Spaces & experiences
Ideas, thoughts, or sequences of them in a certain order
Who Cares?
Well, pretty much everyone. Or at least anyone who cares about the fact that they’re alive inside a nervous system of some kind.
So for example, I care. And maybe you do too. 😘
Getting distracted by the infinitely expanding aisles of hot takes oozing out of the ai-generative slop internet that we no longer enjoy but are addicted to is easy. It’s like having your face & genitals sucked off at the same time but it’s all in your head, and yet, your nervous system still processes it as real. Because you have a perspective, in case you forgot. You get the mental stimulation of life, but no personal experience of it.
It’s facts that our nervous systems did not evolve to sit immobile, and proxy-experience hundreds of thousands of other people’s perspectives without moving an inch and maybe even falling asleep in the middle of it.
It’s facts that our nervous systems did evolve to move. Rhythm or movement of some kind is literally the sign of life.
Having deconstructed and reprogrammed my personal internal system multiple times now, I find this clarity is LIBERATING to those of us who feel pulled to an art form of any kind. Knowing why this pull is happening, what it is, and what to do with it is SO LIBERATING… Especially when our culture has hijacked and harnessed this most basic life expression in order for a few people to experience domination and excessive wealth.
I think anyone who wants to feel alive, would feel relieved to know that expressing themselves is the most basic answer to “what is the point of this life”?
