- Cultish Creative
- Posts
- Art Is A Thing In Itself (Henry Miller)
You can always tell when something is art.
Yes, good art vs. bad art, and I’ll leave all the subjectivity in the world in those qualifiers.
But you can always tell when something is art because it’s got some container around it.
It’s got something that separates it off from the rest of the world.
It exists, as it exists, which - read how Henry Miller put it,
“Art is not the translation or the representation or the expression of some hidden thing. It is a thing in itself—pure, absolute, without reference. In whatever medium you choose to employ, the mastery of the medium constitutes the art. There are no rules, no guideposts. But one can detect bad art from good art—or better, one can detect art.”
I write a post like this, which is barely art in the way you should probably think about art, but it’s totally "art in the way I approach sitting down and writing these - with the idea of a frame around it.
I want this website, or email, or - encapsulated, completed thought I’ve decided to share - to have a frame around it.
Literal and metaphorical.
I want the idea to exist by itself.
I want to be able to find it later.
I want to be able to share it with you, so you can share it with someone else, if you want.
I don’t have a standard format for my Personal Archive.
I can write one line at a time or essays full of paragraphs.
I just want complete thoughts.
Smart or silly, like making sure I captured the time my phone autocorrected a text to my wife to say, “Look at these f***s - are not they smoothie tits?”
Art.
Things in itself.
Because maybe if I do it, you’ll do it too.
If I can do it every day, maybe you’ll do it one day, sometime soon.
And who knows what happens if we’re both doing this?
I’m not sure, but I do know more people making and being aware of art in the world is better than less people making and being aware of art in the world.
Go, write, make.
If I do it, maybe you’ll do it too.
We’ll both be able to tell it’s art, I know it.