It Is Difficult On Train "A"

Ideas and actions have consequences.

The idea that individuals or cultures are somehow "beyond" cause and effect brings about the most severe of consequences.  There is a profound difference between destruction and extinction.

Agency

Vanity and money are undeniably powerful motivations for creativity.

The creative act in the service of a higher vision is its own motivator.

Up for Air

Artful contrivance is not the central fact of cultural expression.

That central perspective is, and always is, reserved for expressions of authentic experience, as opposed to mere appearances, no matter how refined, raw, or superficially impressive.

Among many things easily observed, the continuing decline in cinematic arts attests to this.

Grotesques

There is no individuality within collective strictures, nor can there be.

Yet this does not apply to appearances, as these are by nature insignificant in contrast to conformity of collective thought, expression, and action.  A spurious, superficial "sense of personal identity" is conferred by acceptance of infantile extravagances. Countenance and bearing are of little moment to those who define social and cultural agendas, provided absolute conformity to ideology remains fully intact. Consequently, the apparently extreme, distorted, and abnormal become commonplace, and the slavish adherent to illiberal groupthink is as easily identifiable as a traitor to humanity as the nameless, faceless apparatchik.

The independent thinker, artist, warrior, and self-reliant individual, on the other hand, defies both illegitimate authority and mundane expectations. The very existence of free culture demands this.

Projection vs. Awareness

It is ignorance, or a lack of intelligence, to approach any artistic work with assumptions of any kind.

Artistic works, paintings, music, performance, mixed media, etc. only suffer when crafted for the purpose of serving social and political agendas.  What may "make a statement" as propaganda is nonetheless transient as "art".  Of even less value is the assessment or opinion regarding a work that is based upon such ideological conventions, which are as insignificant as mere subjective biases.

What is demanded of the artist is equally expected of the observer, and that is aesthetic perception.

If You Look Closely

Consider a social and cultural environment that is actively hostile to the arts.

Suppression of individual freedom is the outcome of collective tyranny and its concomitant control of expression that reduces every work to a form of propaganda.

It is a monumental challenge to stand against a tide of surrender.

Edge of Perception

Know the concrete and the abstract of the phenomena of appearances.

Awareness of the cultural environment is the difference between freedom of action and acting according to the influences of forces neither recognized nor understood.