Easy Livin and California Dreamin
Freeways. Freetime. Freethought.
A visit to The Huntington Library is a trip around time and mind. Bounce from a Gutenberg Bible (1450ish) to a Blue Boy (1770) to a mash-up of Chinese meets Japanese Garden (Forever & Eternal). Discover a scandalous Nephew who divorces his wife (4 kids) to marry his Uncle’s Widow, doubling his inheritance. Stroll a Robber Baron’s Estate in the light of day. Corpse Plant smelling of rot and death. Or The Mausoleum.
This post will be more light and breezy than dark and dystopian. Bonsai Trees do that to a soul.
Geometry and geography juxtapose divine nature to define spaces. The eye is led to the object of focus, yet the soul finds the object of desire. In my third Element of Culture (let’s all say it together - I have a formula for that - read for yourself here), Art is as essential to humans as Food and Music, numbers one and two, respectively.
This playlist is kinda special. I had another one queued up, but after driving around LA today, windows down and music blaring, I changed it all up. A fellow writer here on Substack has introduced me to a ton of new-old music. I love finding a new-to-me artist and going all fabbit-hole on their catalog.
Check out his platform. And check out Young Gun Silver Fox (you have to click!). He interviewed them in his latest post, and some nuances came clear just feeling that vibe. I edited my playlist to include the coolest SoCal jams for driving the freeways today. Shout Out to Kevin: I was on the 5, 110, 101, and the 2. Perfect!
YGSF is just like Steely Dan. Except without the Steely. And without the Dan.
But what is Art compared to Food and Music?
Art has elements of the others in it. But not enough to make it that. So we put it over here, in another realm. Food, we eat. Music, we dance to. Art, we stare at.
Unlike Craft, its tag-team partner in the Arts & Crafts movement, (and my fourth element!) which Henry E. Huntington personified, Art sometimes feels like it didn’t take as much work to create. It did, as we all know, but Blacksmiths and Glass Blowers demonstrate their craft as it’s being crafted.
Mind you, the stereotype of an “Artist” is an eccentric alcoholic trust-funder, rolling in paint and throwing themself on the extra-large canvas of self-pity. Wait. That was a dishwasher at the bistro I ran in DTLA in the 90s. Damn flashbacks. Where are you now, Jack?
Artists like Bob Ross, whose dirty laundry (he hated his hair-it was a PR stunt at the beginning and defined him to the end) was exposed in this doc, were one of the first that I “saw” paint.
Others were the caricature artists at Disneyland. That Art is factory work and those artists are journeymen. Ross painted over 30,000 paintings on-air or in live demos. That’s a badass journeyman.
But Art means everything to you and nothing to me, in a way. People-watching is more than an observational task. It’s an imaginary psychological projection path that ends at one of two destinations: that person is a total loser and I’m so much better, or that person is so much cooler than me I suck.
Art expands the self-imposed prison of binary concepts. Still contained in whatever mind-jail you’ve built for yourself, light filters in. If the walls expand, the mind expands. So too the soul. But if Music has laid claim to the soul, what terrain of the human psyche can Art conquer for itself?
Where does it savor those conquests and what is that territory called? I see Art. It moves me. I feel it. In a no-touch world, it touches me. So how can that be real?
Art occupies the corner office in the Imagination Enterprise, the dream factory in our brains. The history of history is the story of Art’s ability to move the human experience forward and backward if desired. Or to spur a movement or restrict it. Art gives air to an object or smothers it. That’s why humans value it.
Art lets us be what we want to be. That’s why you like a piece I detest. It fuels our passion and sets a flame in our hearts, creating moments of indecipherable indescribable intoxication. Identical images intersect intelligence collectively, impacting imaginations individually.
My imagination guided me to find images of divine nature defining spaces. The bridges, sculptures, and structures are created and crafted by the hand of man. The trees, water, and sky are divine, of God’s hand.
We see in these images what makes us feel. Our placed importance speaks to our needs rather than the artist’s expression. Which is the purpose of Art. The artist is typically disturbed about something, and that disturbance becomes an obsession. Those obsessions become Art.
We all have disturbances and obsessions. I’ve decided to let them lift me up rather than weigh me down. Call me Artist. Call me Craftsman. Call me Chef.
Hell, call me what you will. Just don’t call me late for dinner,
Ric
Thanks for the kind words and signal boost! Finding music I hope strikes a chord (no pun intended) is one of my favorite parts of this project.
The Huntington Library looks like a perfect oasis, and well worth whatever traffic you have to fight to get there!
Super cool post