A word on Art

Imagine the scene I shall inadequatly set before your eyes: a grim street, the evening has set, and the darkness of the night is apparent though one can still see about him. The alley is simply a straight path with some openings on each side, narrow points of faded light. These points seem to the casual observer as a wonderful escape from the dark stretch. We can find comfort in these regions however it is because we are drawn to them that we should not venture towards them.

Now, being incomplete as we are, we will seek those regions of light in hope that they may fill us though we have already been instructed as to the folly of obsevering them. Are we not lucky then? for as the observers of this tale we may indeed look inside. Now, without much fanfare or fulfillment we observe a false light covering the immediate path after which there is an unparallelled darkness.

But ignoring the light for now, we shall return to the alley:

The alley is littered with trash, one cannot step for fear of trodding on some nasty heap. And as such is the alley: a straight path with various niches of light to the sides and an inexorbitant amount of garbage lying on the ground.

Now, the man in question (our allegory for an artist) stands at the opening of the alley. He is faced with this abominable road that he must now walk and ponders his options. He must walk it, for he was born into it, however what does he do with the garbage? and does he continue along his original trail, straight through the dark corridor or does he take one of the escapes from the side? Does he cleanse the muck as much as he can? or does he step carefully on those tiles with less filth in an attempt to cat-walk the alley?

The first conclusion we shall arrive at together with our poor gentleman is that no creature could tred over the muck without filthing himself along the way.

The second conclusion we may arrive at is that cleansing the rundown alley would require much more than one man's dedication, and would entail within the task a total submersion in the filth.

The third of the initial conclusions or judgements regards the side paths: though they seem inviting and easily allow escape from the rancid smells, there's no indication as to where they lead and if they would ever converge with the original destination offered by the main road.

Now the man must accept a decision,and as we observe him we see a determined look strike across his features as he bends to pick up the first piece of trash.   

Knowledge begins with experience, and as the man gathers the garbage he is filled with the woe of the smell, the unpleasant touch, and horrible feeling caused by a general submission to filth. As he continues along the path, picking all the garbage that he can: stuffing cans and cigarette butts in his bag, and pockets he is weighed down. The weight becomes so unbearable that with time he comes to a new understanding: he must rid of some, in order to carry more. Though this does not seem a reasonable conclusion, it is the only way in which he may continue along to the end.

He first rids himself of the worst of it: the smelliest of the butts, the raunchiest of the items (here is the youth) and is already made light by the symbolic unburdening of his body. with time
he begins to strategically unload heaps along the road (maturity), though after some time of
exhaustive calculation he simply throws piles every which way so that some of the road could be
cleansed following his original methodology.  

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A simple explanation follows the allegory: the artist walks along the avenues of life where he stumbles and the trash of experience. Once he is overwhelmed by all he encounters he begins to create the frantic pieces of youth, then the great pieces of maturity, and finally the divine pieces of age. and such is Art: to dislodge the sum of all experiences into various assimilations that are art.