YAY DUST

[pwwhitley@zzzzzzz]

George...even your ecumenical approach reveals a bit of Plantation mentality, don't you think?  You take your rocks "everywhere they need to go".

Perhaps our dinnertable discussion would benefit from more definitions...what is the meaning of "is"?

Society's main function is to preserve the status quo...what good does it do to discover the most effective way of growing wheat if you can't remember the secret from season to season?

The individual who discovers a new...he says "better"...way will be resisted until, usually after a long struggle, the new way is proven and accepted and preserved by society.  It makes you wonder how many innovations failed to survive the struggle and were lost in the dust of time.  There are many wonders known to have survived the struggle with society but not the struggle with time:  The Colossus of Rhodes comes to mind.

But all "art" is not innovative.  A lot of art is repetetive...of previous artists's work and of itself.  Brancusi repeated his forms, but then anyone who does representational work is repeating to some degree what others have done.

If I remember correctly, Plato had no use for artists in his ideal republic...being ideal, there was no need for change.  I think Heraclitus got closer to the truth...there is no ideal, all is change.

Whenever I use or hear used the word "truth" I think of Robert Frost's Secret, roughly it is:

While we dance around and suppose
the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Philip Whitley