Esoterika

The thing about being an artist is that you don’t really have hobbies in the normal sense. Non-artists often say, “Oh, it must be fun making art; it must be fun writing.” But they don’t realize that it isn’t, necessarily, because it’s not a choice; it’s a compulsion. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s hell; either way, it’s something you have to do in order to feel whole. It’s soul-defining. If you weren’t making your art, or at least thinking about making your art, you wouldn’t quite feel real.

(Incidentally, by ‘being an artist’, I don’t mean a value judgment about who is and isn’t one. In my observation, it is a spectrum of personality types, a temperament with many variations; it’s about how you view the world and what you feel compelled to do in response to your experience... regardless of whether you are making tangible artwork at any given time. An artist is always fomenting and synthesizing, thinking consciously or subconsciously about output in response to life’s input. One way or another, sooner or later, something will come out, whether a painting, a poem, an outfit, a fruitcake, or just a barbaric yawp.)

So for me, origami and knitting are among the few things I do that are actually hobbies. With a hobby, I do it if I feel like it. I have little ego investment, and no compulsion to work on the project or achieve a certain result. I have the impulse to make a neat object, but I don’t feel driven to learn the totality and perfect the craft. I don’t lie awake dreaming up new things to make with it. If it frustrates me, I stop. If I don’t do it for a few months, I don’t feel guilty or depressed that I’m missing something essential. It isn’t definitive to my existence as a person. It’s just something I occasionally like to do. For me, that’s extremely unusual... but also a relief. At this point, I practically rejoice when I identify a craft or medium I am NOT interested in pursuing—there’s so many already to make mental and physical space for! Can’t stand to quilt? Great! No interest in encaustic? Excellent! That just leaves all the other stuff to accommodate... Still, there's almost no artform where I'm not interested in at least grasping the basics. Since knowledge is power, my goal is to have the index!

Ponder and imagine, structured environment, definitely. The only part I'd maybe quibble with is the detail/big picture. But then, it has to be either/or, whereas conceptually I tend to be interested in both; I want to see both the big picture and how it is constructed. Visually, though, I am definitely drawn in a visceral way to intense skies. I tend to be interested in close-up images of people, too, but in these images the people were all tiny and faceless/ impersonal, and thus not as interesting to me as the vista. Interesting.
( quiz results )

Okay, I've read it now (thanks, grian_ruadh!). And I must say I found it quite satisfactory. It’s nice to see that Rowling really has grown with her audience (and her character) and come up a notch as a writer. Ultimately, it’s about what all serious fantasy is about: death, rebirth, afterlife, survival. Like Earthsea, Narnia, Tolkien, The Dark is Rising, Out of the Silent Planet. I don’t in any way put it in the same quality bracket as those, but it was good. It’s about moving to a more adult understanding of what death really means--both an intolerable loss and a necessary transition; an inevitable change of being, not an end.

( spoiler-type comments )