boat not tied to dock.

[duccio]

Here is a companion piece for my last entry of a 'boat tied to dock'. With that one, I was thinking about how the boat is freedom, but how sometimes we tie ourselves to immobility, maybe out of fear or lack of belief in ourself. Others of course have their own interpretations and that is as it should be. We all have lived lives that have tuned us in to a world of our own making. I guess many people have no opinion - maybe they just see a boat a rope and a dock. Big deal. They don't think metaphorically. What they see is what it is. Maybe they call it art. Maybe not. Maybe nothing.

The other day I had a dialogue with a friend about a piece of public art we saw. I liked the piece well enough, but did not take it too seriously because I could not find anything within myself that could relate to it in any meaningful way no matter how hard I searched.

My friend said that I had to understand what the artist had in mind.

Then, I entirely disagreed. I said the work must speak for itself directly to me. If it needs to be explained by something beyond itself, it is a failure - at least to me. If the only way to understand a work of art is via an explanation, who needs to see the work? The explanation will suffice for the meaning. The art work is then simply reduced to craft: a bauble. Each person must access a meaning from within themselves, not from without. That's what "meaning" is.

With the 'boat tied to dock' photo, I thought how thin and tight the cord is that holds freedom from being free, the thread with which I hinder myself from stepping out of "ordinary" and into extraordinary. That's all it is, that thin little restraint. Yet here I am. Well, maybe I had no such thought. Maybe it's just a boat, a dock, lots of yellow and black, and a little piece of rope. Pretty.



The Californian. The official tall ship of the State of California. Built 1984. Home port: San Diego. Photographed in 2008 when it was visiting San Francisco. What a wonderful sight.

Comments

[shinsetsu]

That's a huge cargo ship behind it isn't it? Ships of all kinds are awesome.

With art, some kinds can be helped with an explanation, but I guess I tend to separate that kind of art into its own class, like when that man put up a cloth (?) fence for miles and miles. It's his 'art' but I would call it more of an experience or show or something. (My ignorance is showing here). Look at literature. You can read some of it purely for enjoyment, but if you know what the symbols and story behind it are, it's much better.

But like, people could explain to me all day about Picasso's art, and I still hate it. Wouldn't matter.

The part about stepping free from the cord that holds you to ordinariness reminds me of how parents ruin their children by not instilling in them the ability to love themselves but who rather call them names and criticise them. Forever after all their lives in the children there will be a tight cord binding them to this negative assessment rather than propelling them forth into the best they could be.