I really love this, not only for the serious call to stop seeing "art" as something separate from being, but also for the way you call out the ways our own internal narratives of being a split self can impact the way we see the world--so that our perception of our own experience is as equally fragmented as our internal self conception. I've been noticing all the ways I tell myself my "artist" self wants this, but my "nurturing" self wants this, and then my have-to-work self has to do this other stuff. I've been thinking about the ways these selves carry gendered meanings, too--how our vision of the free artist is often linked to a masculinist view of the artist as free, as taken care of by some devoted wife or mistress, making dinner outside the frame. So if I want to make dinner, and nurture others, somehow that impulse runs counter to the free, hedonistic masculine untethered self.
I really love this, not only for the serious call to stop seeing "art" as something separate from being, but also for the way you call out the ways our own internal narratives of being a split self can impact the way we see the world--so that our perception of our own experience is as equally fragmented as our internal self conception. I've been noticing all the ways I tell myself my "artist" self wants this, but my "nurturing" self wants this, and then my have-to-work self has to do this other stuff. I've been thinking about the ways these selves carry gendered meanings, too--how our vision of the free artist is often linked to a masculinist view of the artist as free, as taken care of by some devoted wife or mistress, making dinner outside the frame. So if I want to make dinner, and nurture others, somehow that impulse runs counter to the free, hedonistic masculine untethered self.