Desiderata

Food for thought on Cup of Jo today; I just want a way to revisit it again, so I'm posting it here: "I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don't mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It's a really odd thing that we're now seeing people saying "write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep" and "cheer up" and "happiness is our birthright" and so on. We're kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It's rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don't teach us ...

Art historical retention and research. Art writing. Critical thinking. They are like any other learned skill. You need to continually practice them or they start to fade. Then when you finally get the courage to put pen to paper you've got scant to say and shit similes . Well, I'd like to start out small. I'm giving myself two weeks to write about a new artist every day. Someone up-and-coming, maybe even just finishing their MFAs. There are two reasons I'm choosing to focus on young artists. The first is that there is limited reading that one can do on an artist that maybe just graduated college. They are not in history books yet. They probably have a website and links to reviews of their senior project. I need to regain the skill of inferring, analyzing and dissecting works of art based on the visuals and available context alone. I need to remember what it's like to do original research. Maybe I'll even reach out to the artists personally. Young artists ar...