In nineteen sixty-five, Victor Shklovsky wrote, 'art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stoney... The technique of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged...' and there is something quite persuasive about this. Art is about making us think. Of course we have the subjective idea of what we like to see, hear or feel but what we really need is, how does it make me think. We could be passive and watch porn (for example - and I loathe porn and all it stands for, that is a personal point of view) but burlesque, or ballet, dance from my friend Debbie Lee-Anthony, now that is something different and it demands thought and participation as thinkers. Am I a snob in this respect, I suspect so, but only because, as I have already reported (and I like this very much), 'The making of art happens not in a temple but in the mess of real flesh-and-blood lives and loves.' I am inclined to think that NOT making art (and I speak for personal experience) makes us grumpy. I find I need to do something, even if its just writing a line or a chorus that will never become a song as I strum late at night. Every day, I strum, or think about a line, or write a pencil description, or think about the story I am writing now, to think about the article, to think about the ideas I am pursuing, every single day of my life, every single day. Most of the time it leads nowhere, but it keeps me thinking about the process of perception as an aesthetic end in itself... for whatever you do, for whatever its worth.. don't waste your time... make every word hurt:
