here comes the airport scene. do they make it?

i am not an artist.

well, i suppose that's not entirely true. in our post-modern world, everyone's an artist, and everyone's a critic.

what i mean is -- in the classical sense -- i'm not an artist. i don't take art. i don't study art. i can't fully appreciate all the subtle nuances of a painters strokes, or the careful shaping of marble under a master sculpters chisel.

granted, i know a bit. i've been around, i have my opinions. but when it comes to expertise and art i'm pretty much an everyday shmuck.

strangely though, deep down -- all us non artists -- we all seem to derive a great deal of vitality from art regardless of our ignorance. we're not artists. but we love to pretend we are.

we love to write songs, write poems, write stories. we take pictures, draw sketches, frame landscapes. we all like to create art.
it's been said that great art can only come through the process of suffering.

i can't say i'd disagree with that. but why?

why does art always seem to best come from our darkest moments? when we're dying instead of living? lost instead of found? what element of humanity do we so appreciate, so empathize with in others, that we consider "great". why are artists always better when they're dead? why are their lives always greatest when filled with tragedy?

why aren't there any happy go lucky, sunshine and lollipops artists who have gone down in history as equals to the solemn, brooding and reclusive enigmatics?

i think it's no one likes to relate to happy people. we're all too self-absorbed when we're happy ourselves to care about whether or not other people are happy.

when we feel like crap though, all we care about is making everyone else feel like crap too. we're aiming to take down those smiling bastards with our arrows of jaded cynicism.

so what is art?

art, i believe in the interpretation our society has thusfar historically practised, is nothing more than an excuse to make other people feel bad.

if you're happy, you're rubbing it in with art.
if you're crappy, you're dragging others down with art.

so i guess that leaves us with two options:
a. art is evil.
b. humans are masochists.

personally, i'm going to go with option b.
we all SAY we like to be happy. but deep...deep down.....i think we all sort of get a sense of pleasure from being down. it's easy, it's thoughtless, and it's less work than staying happy.

we apparently love being depressed. as a society, it's the cool thing to do.

how odd.