Just thought I’d tell you about this philosophic debate I had the other week. Basically, I was having a conversation with a few people and told them that “blogging” is a new form of art. They seemed to have a hard time believing me, even though my argument basically went like this:

Before there was the technology of film, there could be no movies. Before there was the technology of television, there were no television shows. And so now we find ourselves with a new technology – the internet – and a new art form that has emerged with it. Now I’m not saying that all blogs are an art form. Information blogs, news blogs, blogs that are primarily used to talk about what mood you’re in and what you had for lunch, I do not consider those “art”. But I do realize I’m making the value judgement here about what constitutes art.

I believe writing is a form of art. I think that this was part of the problem with the people I was talking to. They couldn’t seem to grasp that art does not just have to be a sculpture or painting on the wall.

I believe that blogs such as yours and Raymi’s are art forms because they flow like poetic verse, each entry contributing to the larger mosaic. The photos, the non-book-like nature of them, is brand new to the media and artistic spectrum. As you’ve mentioned yourself, blogging should be raw, and posted with little regard for who will read it or even poor spelling. It was not possible to publish this way in the past, and so the art form has developed from the medium itself.

Yet as I mentioned before, by calling blogs like yours “art”, I’m resting on the assumption that you write in your blog with an audience presumably in mind, most notably, an audience that can speak English and understands something of Western culture. I personally believe that how we define art as a society hinges on who will be able to interpret it. For example, I might come across a copy of the greatest Japanese novel of all time, yet if I can not read Japanese, the book will be little more than symbols on a page. But I might look at the symbols and find them very beautiful, and take a page from the book and frame it and put it on my wall. Now it has become art, but not as the author intended. Society defines art, and the types of art that people produce depends on the society in which they produced it.

Anyway to make a long story short, I failed to convince this group of people that blogging is a new art form. I think I lost them when I said that there was a difference between what we define as “art” such as a painting on the wall, and what we define as “great art” like the Mona Lisa, or the music of Beethoven. I personally believe that the “aura” that exists around most famous pieces of art has more do to with it being famous than the quality of the art itself. After all, I’ve wandered around European museums and seen countless painting after painting, until finally you see the one that’s behind glass or in it’s own “special” room and you can almost feel the reverance in the air. This is not to shun the great works of art that actually are of fantastic technical or musical skill. I guess my greater point is that to the lay-person that knows nothing about art and the fine details of painting, they will look at the Mona Lisa and see a woman with a funny smile playing across her lips, and that would be all.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this when you get a chance.

Cheers,

Ian

let me on survivor dot com

bop raymi on the head, and drag her back here to hollywood. but im not the right man for her.

something tells me that shes not one of those girls who are all, hey lets see whats on tv tonight and veg out on the couch holding hands.

ice cube was on david letterman last night and paul and the band played the horn section from the courtroom intro of “gangsta gangsta” from straight outta compton and ice cube just smiled and pretended not to hear it

and i kept waiting for dave to say,

now, ice cube, dont you think its ironic that you were running around as Amerikkkas Most Wanted not that long ago and now you’re starring in a movie about a guy driving a car with a bunch of screaming kids in the back.

dont you think its weird that the Nigga Ya Love To Hate is wearing a red tshirt with the logo for the movie title on it, while on the david letterman show hyping a flick where you’re basically playing a Black clark griswold?

you, the brotha who wrote “no vaseline”

with a match and a little bit of gasoline.

but dave never asked anything like that.

ice cube just pretended that hes always been this laughing happy dad in the suburbs

and dave just pretended that ice cube is just this warm fuzzy dude

with no history

no ties to dr dre eazy e mc ren or yella.

didnt chant about being a gorrila in the mist.

doesnt have incredible clips of minister louis farrakhan on his solo records.

everyone was just smiling like soon the bags of money were going to be handed out to the man who acted the most clueless.

there was a time when mr david letterman

and mr ice cube had an edge.

this is not that time.

razyboy gives me props + run jen run + raymi

but im a bad example.

i drink, i smoke, i’m 111 and ive never owned a home and i currently dont own an automobile.

i dont proofread my shit, i watch a lot of tv, and on summer days in january i sit in my closet and write to you.

her name was geena she lives in a shoe. she has a beautiful young maid who comes by three times a week to make her meals and tidy up a bit because geena is in her early nineties.

my phone rings off the hook and sometimes i get upset but then i say well its better than having no one care about you and i grumble still, and i walk across the great hall to the dungeon and oh look theres the phone.

its geena, shes calling to ask me if i am single. she apologizes for such questions and she says you realize how old i am, obviously im not calling for myself, i just think youre a wonderful young man and even though shes married shes not technically married because he has a medical condition

if you can read between the lines.

and men are pigs. just understand that if you understand anything.

i thought how terrible that this nice woman, a maid for the elderly, works her tail off but then cant get any because of a curse thrown at her from a dark place

and what luck that she cleans my neighbors house.

me, king lover

possessor of maybe three candles, tops.

and i feel like i let the kids down because i didnt take her up on her roundabout offer because thats what bukowski would do.

thats what tommy lee would do.

thats what bill oreilly would do.

and today my annual visit to the hollywood celebrity orphanage was canceled as because it is 85 degrees and sunny this january afternoon, a generous donor bought the unfortunates tickets to disneyland, and so im off the hook until next year.

i mean, i dont get to see the little cutiepies for a while.

i dont know why more people dont adopt.

last night i watched american idol with rosalita who agreed with the crazy chick that mark mcgrath is hot.

i ripped off my pajama top and said fuckers got nothing on these 38 inch pythons.

which is true.

and my new printer is flashing red and green lights cuz its fucked up and broken even though its new, and there was a time when you could buy something, plug it in four months later and it would work.

but life isnt that simple all the time.

sometimes the angels want you to go outside and enjoy the nice things

and kickass on your second interview with the top secret nonprofit of love.

and my computer has viruses

cuz the bootleg firewall got eaten.

and i wanna say, just take what you want and leave.

and my question is, what ever happened to that idea where people wouldnt have hard drives at home, that all youd have at home was the controler box, and your harddrive would be on some secure box somewhere else, a maintained box, a clean machine and you would simply

trust

that everything was gonna be chill, cuz who really cares anyway.

and ive been eating pepperming patties like a fiend.

splink + lost in a lunchbox + mcbrown + starbody