keep being halsted

keep putting real frogs in imaginary gardens

(and keep zen away from the frogs please)

i have similar thoughts as you regarding being an artist. after many contemplations over years, i realized that i never really asked to be the ‘artist’ or moreover, the ‘tortured artist’ but what i’ve learned is that i am rather tortured for long spans and what people around me identify as art is really just the products of me trying to cope with myself and my point of view on life.

does that make me an accidental artist? hmm…i have no answer there.

as to blogging, there is a quote by jeanette winterson in her novel the passion: “i write so that i’ll have something to read later.” more to the point, i don’t think those of us who write do it to remember the events in our days. i think we write more to remember how we feel.

Seriously, though, blogging is much maligned by our culture, I suspect, because it raises so many issues about authenticity and narcissism (which are issues in our culture anyway). But what is blogging really other than an extension of the epistolary form for a culture that is too impatient for Igo-Ugo correspondence and so large and complex (and isolating) that we seek a kind of intimacy with many strangers instead of with just one friend?
Anyway that’s my deep thought for the day. I really appreciated the birthday card you sent me recently (even though it may have been automated) because, quite honestly, I hadn’t thought of you in months, perhaps years, and it made me return to your site and remember why I was first impressed by your self-expression. In human history there have been many definitions of what it means to “know” a person; my knowledge of you consists entirely of the bits and pieces of this site that I’ve perused and a few emails/text messages we’ve exchanged. Anyway I guess I’m trying to say, it was good to hear from you, and keep being Halsted please.