Tag: musicians

What is art?

Posted on by philipdodson

All art is useless, I think Oscar Wilde said that.

A fork is useful but I could live without a fork. Art is use-less but I couldn’t live without it.

We slave away in our so called ‘proper’ jobs doing very important stuff to earn lots of money. We’re told at school and by parents that the arts aren’t important and we need to focus on math, science etc so we can get those ‘proper’ jobs.

Then what do we spend our money on from our proper jobs? Well, art for the house, music to listen to, we go to watch a play, we go to the cinema to watch a film, we watch TV, we watch YouTube, we buy a beautifully designed and crafted piece of furniture, we pay an architect to design our new house, we buy a beautifully designed fancy car that looks amazing and so on.

Yep, we work hard to spend our money on stuff that artists, musicians, actresses, designers, architects, creative writers, and so on, who have worked tirelessly as an artist to bring you their art to entertain you or for your enjoyment.

Art is imperfect and it is the imperfect that we love in life, the cracks are how the light gets in.

Useful things are just that, utilitarian and functional. Art is the life and soul of the party, the reason to be alive.

Art is life and without it life would be just useful. I want a use-less life filled with art.

It’s all been said

Posted on by philipdodson

Saying something new is a challenge for us all. Everything has been said. It’s a challenge for writers, musicians, artists…well, everyone actually.

However, this is true only to a certain extent.

Where we add value is taking all the influences that we experience and then adding our view of it. What each of us experience is unique to our own journey and the more adventure we add to the path, the more diverse our experiences are. Therefore, have more to add value to.

Simply repeating others is stealing, but adding our take is where the value comes. Our own unique world view is where the difference is.

We each have an opportunity to add that value and there is where we can say something new.