Bottle of Slime

The urge to create art usually starts with a dilemma. The form could be about love, or conflict, or fighting something that went awry a while ago, but it's always ultimately about making sense of the world.

The world resists. It tells us that our choice is unimportant; that others' choices are more meaningful and more communicative than our own. It resists because we believe that interpretation is one of the singular acts that perpetuate one's identity. I believe I have a taste in music, books, clothing, art, language, thoughts, looks, etc. when in fact most of these things are made with the intention of persuading me to believe in their view of the world. I believe in some; some I don't.

Taste, and interpretation, is more about shutting other things out than choosing specific things. In other words, interpretation is the deselection, rather than the selection, of objects or characteristics which we notice. Most of my identity comes not from what I am, but from what I'm not.

Relatedly, the mark of age comes not when our attempts at art become more compelling, but when others' become less so.

I don't mean to say that the work of art becomes less powerful as I age, but rather, it becomes more isolated. It tells me not that X is more powerful than Y, but that the language of X is helpful in explaining the world while Y's is too difficult or irrelevant to understand.

The real task of interpretation is to attempt to understand that which does not validate your identity in any noticeable way.

I dreamed I killed a baby deer once. I even posted it to this blog. Let's believe I dreamed it again last night. I have to eat even in my dreams, and I was set upon eating a deer.

The spear stuck from its side, and as it fixed its glance past me, I imagined it was giving one of those looks where you try to see something that moves really fast, like a single blade on a ceiling fan, or a bee.

Who was I to interrupt?