The life of a blade of grass

...and next day they mowed

Photo by McKeeth

In defence of Questions

I have begun to notice a singular pattern in conversations I have been having lately.  I ask lots of question trying to understand what other people think or believe. I try never to assume that I understand someone's point of view. Oddly people rarely return the favor.  I had a friend recently accuse me of doubting everything he said (because I asked lots of questions) but having no beliefs of my own. I wanted to say, "Well, you never asked me what I thought."

It seems that questions have a bad reputation. I remember asking questions in church settings and at university hoping to get an explanation but instead I got a lecture. It seems that questions are associated with ignorance, rather than the desire to know. I have come to realize that questions are often viewed as attacks, which they are some times, but not always. There is a danger in assuming that all questions are attacks. Questions are associated with doubt, but not all questions come from doubt. When I ask a question people often assume that I disagree, but I may need more information to draw a conclusion.

Questions have a bad reputation, for we say phrases like "to questioned his integrity" or "He questioned his beliefs". These examples show how we equate questions with doubt. To doubt is to question, but to question should be to seek understanding. What would the world be like if questions were seen as good. If we questioned our integrity to test our actions, if we questioned our beliefs to see if we really believe them. If we asked questions to find answers rather than to doubt them.


I guess the real problem is listening. Many questions are asked with out the desire of an answer. Many answers are given without paying attention to the question. Many professors have turned to me after a long drawn out explanation to ask "does that answer your question". I shrug my shoulders because I don't want to say no.

One important thing that I learned from asking my mom questions as a kid is that every question has an answer. Some times that answer is "I don't know." It seems that those two words with a contraction in the middle are very hard to say. It seems that not only are questions associated with ignorance but good answers like "I don't know" are also. Some how we associate "I don't know" with stupidity, there is no relation. Many smart, wise intelligent people have said " I don't know". Honesty and not obfuscation is the best answer to any question.

Another way to answer questions is silence. Upon occasion when people are kind enough to ask me an honest question, I will not say anything other than "That is a good question". I am not a very flexible person but my foot can get in my mouth awfully quick when I'm not thinking carefully. My answers usually come about two hours after the question by which time it is too late. I wonder what it would be like if we didn't expect instant answers. If we broke off our conversations went off and thought a while and then came back. That would be the way to respect a good question. Oddly I have found that many people have a reset button they push after each conversation. I will bring up a topic again after a few days hoping to continue where we left off but I have to start over and hear all the stories and facts all over again. I know its hard to remember what I told who but that is when you ask the all important question. "Have I told you this before?"

Questions need more respect. If I haven't convinced you feel free to ask me what ever you like. 

What is Art?

I am going to attempt to define what art is for me, or more precisely what it is that the artist does. It seems that when I ask someone to define art they start to wax eloquent about personal expression and beauty and forms and shapes but never do I hear anything concrete. Some would say that the thing that makes art beautiful is precisely the fact that it escapes description. I would agree that why we like art is a mystery, but how we accomplish it isn't.

Put simply, I define the artist as one who organizes symbols or signs to create meaning. Art, then, is a particular arraignment of symbols or signs attempting to create meaning. The mystery of art for me is that as human beings we quickly give meanings to an arrangement of signs. I could draw three lines on different sheets of paper and they would mean nothing. I could draw the same three lines on the same piece of paper and you might see a face or a triangle or a representation of van Gogh's left ear.

As I have studied different types of art I have again and again noticed this pattern of meaning by association. The way cinema works is taking different pieces of film and putting them together and suddenly we have a story. You see a hand holding a gun, then a man sitting in a chair, then you see a door open and your mind will put the three unrelated pictures together and you will get the idea that you are about to see a murder. By selecting the images you see the editor of the movie has created a meaning out of unrelated pictures.

The actor does in the theater does much the same thing. Instead of putting pictures together the actor puts actions together. Lets say you saw an actor walk across the stage and pick up a book. Nothing remarkable there, but lets say the actor read a few words and then throws the book in the trash. There are endless possibilities of things that picking up a book could imply based on its context, instead of throwing the book away the actor could walk back across the stage and begin to make dinner.

I have begun to see this common line among all art. The artist organizes and edits what you see. The photographer decides what you will see in the picture. The movie director selects what will be in the frame. The painter combines shapes and colors in a particular order. One who draws is putting lines together. The musician puts notes together to create a song and the writer selects what words to use and in what order.

It is amazing to me how simply putting things next to each other creates meaning, that the difference between a good book and a mediocre one is not the words used, but their arrangement. Of all the arts my personal bias is for the art of words. For words are capable of the most amazing associations. When you stop to think what a metaphor is, it is nothing more than a bizarre organization. It is in metaphors where we find out that the truth is a knife, that pens are swords and that life is sweet.

I would argue that art at its core has never changed. Our style has changed but the essence of what we are doing has not. I get frustrated when people talk about one art form as more advanced than another or when someone says that this painting or this poem is very "modern" in a tone that implies that it is less "primitive" than others. For me there is no primitive art, just snobby artist. I don't deny that art has change or that is has developed, but the truth is that the mechanics are the same as ever. Maybe we have changed and art has remained the same.

 If art is not defined by its order, than order is at least a characteristic that defines art.   For me how art works isn't a mystery. But why it works? I don't know.



Photography by: Andrew McKeeth

bulletin board

Which is more important? What you have to say or how you say it?

I can only guess at what people wanted to announce on this board, but I can tell you for sure that they used staples. 

Imagination and Me

I have often considered writing an autobiography. As of yet I feel that I lack both the proper perspective of age and have not done enough to write about.  So while the the full length version of my life may never. I will put down here what could possibly comprise a few pages of a book about my life.
  If this was an autobiography this would be a fragment of the chapter called, "A brief History of My Imagination."

A Brief History of my imagination

I have often wondered what other kids my age spent their time thinking about. My childhood was filled with all kinds of heroic, wild and often bizarre imaginings to name a few adjectives. My imaginings came in fads. Some times I would spend days running through forgotten battle fields of world war II doing amazing feats of bravery and valor. Then other days I would vanquish dragons and evil warriors. You might be thinking that there examples are wild and possibly heroic, but bizarre? Oh just wait. 

I used to imagine that life was just a dream. I entertained this fantasy off and on for years.  Imagined that the real me was actually sleeping and dreaming my current existence. The real me was a giant who lived in a world similar to this one except everything was bigger. Unlike this world you slept a life time and then woke up and were awake a life time. Then you slept again and dreamed about another whole life. I imagined that things that happened in this world, which existed inside the brain of the real me, were related to uneasy slumber. Rolling over in bed could cause earth quakes and natural disasters. I of course realized that if I was actually dreaming everything that was around me including my family and everyone I knew were actually projections of my brain. It was of course disturbing to think that my dad wasn't real but I figured he must be a shadow of my real dad in the real world where I was sleeping. I also began to realize that the dream world I inhabited was messed up. There were political problems and people went to bed hungery. Looking back I guess I was wondering if life was a good dream or a night mare. I often wondered what it would be like to wake up to my real life. If that world would be different. I wondered who I was in the other world and what it would be life to be awake for a life time before going back to sleep. Then I would imagine that it wasn't me who was dreaming that I was just part of a giant's dream and that I would cease to exist if he woke up. 

When I wasn't imagining that life was a dream I would some times imagine that I was the only person in the world and that everyone else was a dinosaur and they that took on a human shape when I looked at them. I would sometimes spin around very quickly to try and see if I could catch people mid transformation. I am unsure of the origin of this particular fantasy. I imagined that everybody was plotting against me because I was the only real human. I don't recall having any traumatic childhood experiences with dinosaurs.  I recall imagining how sad it would really be if my mom was actually a lizard who would put on a human shape just to fool me. This particular fantasy lead to a few other imaginings on my part. While I was pretty sure that my mom wasn't a dinosaur I would often imagine that the world wasn't really there until I saw it. Things appeared in their places seconds before I came around the corner and vanished after I had left. I would sometimes close my eyes and open them very quickly in an attempt to catch the universe in mid creation. I wondered if anything really existed when I was asleep.

These were  of course some of the more odd things my imagination came up with.  There were other more normal type things that I imgained; like death for example. I imagined that when you died you would spend eternity falling through black nothingness. It was a more horrifying experience that the lizards. I tried to banish the thought from my mind and ran to ask my mom what really happens when you die.

Of course my autobiography would go on from here to list off a few more crazy things I imagined and then talk about how these things shaped me into who I am when I write my Autobiography.

But for the moment I am still wondering what other people imagined when they were kids. Of course if they imagined anything like the things I did, I can understand why they might keep quite about them. Yet, what surprises me has been going to collage and hearing what are supposed to be deep philosofical questions. Do trees make a sound if they fall in the forest and nobody is there? Is life a dream? Are things really there is nobody sees them? In collage and books they talk like philosiphers and people with doctorits are they only people who come up with these questions. I just sit back and think to myself: I was imagining that when I was 7. Now what? 

Redundancy

I like taking pictures. The hardest part for me is having people watching. If I can get into the flow I forget that people are looking. But It is hard to blame people for watching me and even stopping to ask what on earth I am doing. I pick odd topics for my photography. I was stopped in front of a store and the owner rushed out to interrogate me about what I was doing. "Nothing" I reply to his question, " I'm just taking pictures of payphones"

   I noticed the other day that there more pay phones within 10 blocks of my apartment than really seems necessary. What you see here are just the ones I photographed. There must be at least 15 I saw but didn't stop. If you get board after the first few I understand. I really just needed something to take pictures of to learn how to use my digital camera.