Perhaps the subject of this entry should be An Ever Enveloping Cage instead of An Ever Expanding Cage. The latter, an unfortunate mistake that I could easily reach up and change with my agile cursor and typing skills but shall not since it would eliminate the need for this sentence, signifies the same as what scientists of the modern age bark when they refer to the expansion of the universe. It’s stretchy. If my cage is also stretchy, then it doesn’t move to accompany other philosophies, ideals and lumps of garbage left by so-called neighbours who have trundled along. No! It stretches like our universe, becoming larger but keeping the same contents. Its contextual surroundings never change.
I’d like to think that my mind is not estrecho like that of a pueblo-bound palurdo. I’d also like to think that as the universe stretches, it becomes so diffuse that each of my neurons becomes an individual Boltzmann Brain. Oh, they will, Herr Cynic! By that time, however, the stretch will have rendered the concept of distance useless and each of those brains will be its own universe, divorced from contact with any other. Fuck um.
I’ll start again.
I’d like to think that my mind is not estrecho like that of a pueblo-bound palurdo. An expanding mind only becomes bloated on its own feces and beliefs. An enveloping mind absorbs new concepts, has the ability to create abstractions between disperate elements of ideology, philosophy and culture.
This brings me to the primary topic of this entry. I appreciate art more when it is can be decontextualized without damaging its meaning. As a unit of art, it can stand apart and shine, like a Boltzmann Brain out of contact with any other so-called sentient cloud of vapour. If, in other palmistry rites, an obra is steeped in its context to the extent that it cannot be separated from it to be appreciated, it will be diminished for me. I will not appreciate it. It becomes a painting hung on the outer wall of a stone bubble. I have to travel to that bubble’s whereabouts, observe the lines and swirls, then enter the bubble itself and glean ideas about what’s going on inside, re-emerge, consider the coloured forms once again, possibly repeat, etc.
I think and deal in abstractions more and more as I inch towards decrepitude. One of my greatest ex-loves, lyrical and poetic forms, don’t entice me like they used to unless they are also floating in an abstract mist. Specifics ruin the experience. I used to be a big fan of musical storytelling. I was into Harry Chapin and such ilk. Perhaps my ever enveloping cage has enveloped too much. To appreciate art, I wish its context dismissed. I realize that is more difficult with narrative oriented poetry / lyrics. Thus, I distance myself from them. I float in an abstract mist. Music, being a more abstract form itself than language, fares better for me when its context is not immediately apparent or if it is a hybrid of many contexts all referring to one another in complex ways. When it can only be appreciated fully within one of the aforementioned stone bubbles, it’s not going to get my attention.
For me, art that has to be contextualized for appreciation is not arte puro. It cannot transcend its origins. I have to use a modifyer to name it accurately - folk art, pop art, or whatever. The age of complete decontextualization shall come, and it will be beauty puro.
