let there be light

This blog exists because I'm a writer and my other blog, as much as I love it, was never intended for essays and ramblings.

Read Books Not Blogs. That neat little saying is making the rounds a lot these days. But rather than it being indicative of our abandonment of the printed word, I'd say it actually represents what we believe blogs to be: fast food. Reading on the internet is all about fast food. Small, meaty morsels of text we can swallow without chewing (nutritional value irrelevant) and enough images to fill a gallery. That's the way we want it and that's what most blogs are set up to satisfy within us - the need for speed. Online we even have a handy acronym for our reaction to long posts: tl:dr. That means 'too long didn't read.' How rude.

I'm guilty of copping out myself. I arrive at the latest post of a blog and I skim read the first few lines and I just know that it's good content, it's mentally stimulating, it will challenge me to think outside that dreaded box people always mention in motivational speeches and art lessons. But it's so long and I was hoping to hit another 30 blogs and reply to my replies before even working out my content for tonight's post.. Yes, a woman who spends countless guilt-free hours diving in an ocean of books and magazines doesn't have twenty minutes for an amazing free article by some intelligent soul on the other side of the world which could potentially leave her intellectually and spiritually richer. And that's because I've trained my sad little brain to believe that blogs are like McDonalds. A guilty pointless pleasure to indulge in and tell no one about.

Well, no more. Not only am I going to embrace online essays by the thoughtful and informed much more often, and feel better for it, I'm also going to do my part by littering this little plot of cyber space with gems of the tl:dr variety.

Kunst Macht Frei (Art Makes One Free)
Yuri Albert
2006

I love neon signs. And I love the twisted nature of this piece. And I do believe in the sentiment. Hence my decision on the blog's title. But for Yuri Albert, whose career and life is centred around contemporary art, this piece is about exposing the art world as a system like any other - rigid, regulated, sometimes painfully grey. It offers itself as a vehicle for freedom but for Albert, whether it's work, art, or any other motivation, the freedom it promises only locks you into its expectations of you and is ultimately a mockery of the essence of freedom itself which asks that you be free of any formula or required action.

So, it works for me on a number of levels.

I want this blog to be about art -of course- and design and literature and magazines and dead poets and heroes and villains and things that happened ages ago and things that might possibly occur in the morning. So, I guess I'll have to see how that goes.