I have just finished reading 'The Art Of Travel' by Alain de Bottom. Like many books it has been on my must read list for many years. Finally I found a tatty tired, over-written and high lighter marked copy in a used book pile. What an absolute joy it was to read it. I am a week end dabbler in paint. I now have started to really look at the world.
The poet's and writer's eye is so different from a painter's or artists eye. I found when out driving landscapes which speak to me. Seascapes that shout at me, flowers that whisper their secrets. Synesthesia has set in. Is it a curse or a blessing? I have absolutely no Idea if I am going mad. It is a strange feeling to look at the world again in a new way. I know the message of the mystics has always been to see old places with new eyes. However our eyes get tired as we grow older and we demonstrate a reluctance to capture enough or to lock it in as if it were the last memory.
de Bottom has demonstrated the cross over in the arts just as the physicist has a cross over in in science. The physicist has to know mathematics and have vivid imagination with which to project the maths into a physical reality. A philosopher such as de Bottom brings art alive through the written word.
Now to find my paints and brushes and see if I can create an eye for detail as John Ruskin or will I drift off to do more abstract uncoordinated splashes ore akin to my old self?
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