Monday 28 March 2011

Museums and reverie

phone-doodled portraits of 4 famous artists
Mostly, people talk about one thing (at a time), but I'd like to talk about two and see whether they can be connected. It's like a game of logic. I want to continue with my fascination with collecting and with museums. One of my favourite museums is the Meir Agassi Museum. Among other things, Agassi collected invented artists, the biography of whom he would write in great detail. Like Hokusai, he hid his versatility by choosing different pseudonyms. I thought about doing that myself, and decided against it, embracing all the facets of me under the umbrella of me. I chose to be, in a way, my own museum. Now, for theme number two: a few months ago I read an article in Psychologies mourning the end of reverie. It claimed that through the constant fidgeting with mobile phones, social networks, etc., boredom is now officially dead - the downside of it being the disappearance of reverie (daydreaming instead of fidgeting) that is so necessary for our creativity. I think that whether you want to reverie or not is entirely up to you and that fidgeting could be catalogued and displayed in your own museum, becoming material for inspiration and further thought. Of course, it could also be a mandala, swept away by background noise.

Sunday 27 March 2011

The art of looking sideways

I have been wandering, if not aimlessly, rather soullessly, through meanders and mazes of little sense, searching for that inspiration, or even for that desire for inspiration, that makes my journey through life an exciting and adventurous one. So, in this state of depletion, I entered the library yesterday and found a huge tome, called The Art of Looking Sideways. It is a most irritating piece of work, as it is written in all directions, weighs a ton, tells stories that are too long, and has quotations. But. It suddenly woke me up from my torpor. I can do this too, I thought, play with images, words, type, aimlessly, but now in a positive way, wandering through the same or different meanders, randomly collecting flowers, pebbles, ideas, dreams, obsessions, distortions. And then put it all in a book, a big irritating book that weighs a ton, for my own benefit, or yours or nobody's. But doing it. Perhaps I'll call it The art of doing.
I discussed this with Diana drinking cappuccino.