I like being part of a culture of images and surfaces and screens. I like to sit, for one thing, sitting is comfortable. Though I purposefully do less of it, because I have seen the effects of too much sitting on older people's bodies, on my contemporary's bodies. I write this from a stand up desk. Our bodies were built for lots of long distance walking, some running, and sleeping. Sitting for hours at time is an evolutionary luxury like eating a Snickers bar: we should try and outsmart its appeal if we want to live a good long time.
Part of being a culture of images and surfaces and screens and living in an attention-based economy is that outcomes are monetizable, and what started as a craft becomes an outcome divorced from its source.
Example: Embroidering in 2025 is a hobby, people do it because they like it and by and large give the outcomes away as presents. The fun part of embroidery is... embroidering. (And yes, it can also be fine art, and yes embroidered clothes are beautiful. But it started as a craft. And it remains most popular for the joy it provides as a practice.)
Every art form you see today has its source in the joy of crafting the thing. But certainly, the outcomes can capture a lot of money. Large amounts of money attract bad faith actors who aren't interested in joy or craft. They want large amounts of money attached to specific outcomes and will use fear to get them. We live in a time and place where money is more important than everything, including the bodily health and safety of our neighbors. We live in fear, and we create from a place of fear. And we sit a lot. In work, in cars, in relaxation. We sit and stew in fear.
We have sat so long and stared at outcomes so long we have mistaken language and appearance for substance and sitting for living.
But the body came first. Cold dawn and hunger and dead birds on the ground, silence and walking until the horizon changed in front of you, this is the human condition. Words began as sensations in the pit of the belly that we came up with a thousand symbols for. None of those symbols, none of that language, not all of our art can yet capture it. Consciousness holds that indefinable reality, text does not. Intelligence is not text, text is only an approximation of intelligence.
Intelligence, real intelligence, is saving yourself and others from misery and meaninglessness.
Imagine someone huddled in a corner of a prison cell, afraid every day they will be dragged out and hung. That is the position of your current creative. But we are sensitive beings who evolved to bring relief to ourselves and others, by creating meaning. By transfiguring our pain and suffering into joy and relief. We are here to transcend our sorrow and through that struggle lift others out of theirs through catharsis.
Art existed before money and it will exist after. I am going to walk more, and I am going to write slower. I am not going to create from a place of fear. The worst has already happened. There are machines that fearful people will use to do their creating for them that will always be more profitable than me. All I have lost is the cell I was huddled in. Now I am going to stand, and walk, and write joyfully, about what I find beautiful and true.
