Thoughts: art, philosophy, language, existence

When creation takes over; when harmony and rhythm reach a synergy, fresh reality is born. Philosophical systems are a certain synergistic phenomenon. They all utilize the same principles of language upon which established frameworks maintain a semblance of stability. Arts reflect emotion from agent to super-agent -- the true artist creates the mirror while looking into it; the true thinker questions what the mirror reveals. Philosophers of Art use channels of analysis that seem to penetrate mere subjectivity, but if that were truly the case, the interpreter of the piece of art is essentially a Philosopher of Art. There is thus a line that can be distinctly drawn between the two. The philosopher engages with a work of Art and enjoys it aesthetically, or not. Given that the piece of work was able to "connect" the viewer to its impetus, the interpretive engines are ignited; art simply requires this. Even if one gets complete satisfaction existentially from their own work, locking it into a fire-proof safe for no one to ever see but the combination holder; without a modicum, at least, of interpretive "space," the product becomes a lesser thing. By virtue of its resistance to outside interpretation, it contains no "meaning" except what the artist may, or may not have intended to express through the work itself. Thinking reflexively, the philosophical Mind essentially creates Art; when he or she finally chooses to "open the safe" as it were, to stand up to the required scrutiny of the "Other," what once was a mere "lesser thing" becomes a thing-with-its-own interpretive space. Perhaps I'm risking the regresses of Platonism slightly, or my Emersonian "youth" is peaking through, but I'd venture to say that harmonic synergy, or rhythm: when things just seem to be "perfectly in order," touch upon an Ideal, pre-rational, a priori; entities of the metaphysical shine through with aesthetic perfection, or simple "Goodness" when such synergy is created and sustained. Plato "participated" in his Ideal as much as he could, drafting Ideals in concentric circles around one another with a Pureness in the center. Yet, the "center" of a circle is also the "center" of a square, or a number, or a mountain, or a scale, or a solar system, or a universe, or a mind... What are these things we create then? Are they existential "eruptions," manifestations representing the subjective, representing for the interpreter? Mere ideas and music, visually descriptive paradigms, cinematic, illustrative phenomena, from a center, to a center...? Might not they just be centers, or sources... cruxes? Are we all the same then regardless of our character differences, our sensibilities, our temperaments? Is there "truth" in a "name?"


The greatest thing about being human is having the ability to be human. 

 

November 11, 2009