A Painting Is a Presence

A painting is a presence. Not that it has presence, though it does. We’re talking about good paintings, real paintings; whatever any of that might mean, in them presence is an essential quality. Maybe quality isn’t the right word…. Is a being reducible to its qualities? Is presence something beyond quality as well as number?

Realms. How we position.

“How we position.” Seems to call for an object, “What?” before we can get into wondering about “how;” or even, who “we” are; we want to know what.

On Form

There’s a connection and relationship between the way we internalize honesty/deception and how we relate to form. Form is the means by which error is recognized and the means by which correctness is recognized. There are, it seems, two Muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in a few days…

… mostly in a single night. In it we find the yet unborn Twentieth Century – and its long tail, cracking like a whip over us even now. No need for any more warnings than that. By then others had already begun to populate dystopias and pronounce prophecies: Milton, …. What if a culture could

Addiction & Creativity

Addiction is getting stuck. Seeking relief from suffering instead of perceiving proprioception, we chase a form of release. It is temporary. Its effects lessen each time we resort to it. Our connection to clarity of perception – including a lived sense of its limits – weakens. Repetition digs us deeper.

Questions of Identity

Schools fail us by teaching students how to work with knowledge rather than how to deal with ignorance, not be a sucker with the unknown. Nassim Taleb This neither begins nor ends with schools. In a time when the most popular public stance is to celebrate our fears and idolize those who act on them

Carving Spaces

Chris, excellent. The one quibble I have is that I don’t think you’re considering the full implications of what you’ve suggested: “It’s a recognition of the total futility of any effort for victory for the side of ecology, conservation, or Gaia, on this civilization’s terms.” The last four words — on this civilization’s terms —

A Cross-post from Fine Lines: Further Notes on Craft

The trouble with talking about Craft is that everyone thinks they already know what it is. Let’s take a deep breath and set all those assumptions aside. Easier said than done. To begin, here’s some of what Craft is not: Backward Anachronistic, and therefore not a viable way to proceed. Continue…

Awe and Wonder

It’s customary to link awe with shock these days. “Shock & Awe!” Followed by that grimacing grin primates and dogs instinctively make when something that pleases them also uncovers a deep well of shame. The look we came to identify with W…. Shock & Awe would come to be the signature spell of the late

Our Predicament is Both Tangible and Elusive

We stand at a portal of transition, neither here nor there. The things we do to maintain our selves this day and what will keep us going farther down our track have little in common. Our predicament could be said to lie right at this point of divergence. What works – however poorly – today

Dissensus, Hygiene, Quality, Rhetoric, and Integration; a Stab at a Synthesis…

Dissensus is a tough master. If I choose to follow dissensus I pledge that though what I espouse holds no intent to violate any other, I will refrain from destroying anyone, though they espouse my destruction and this refusal might lead to my own death. I see no other way to make a break with

Cross-Post from Antonio Dias, Attending Quality

Attending Quality