Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → cogNation

Eye see what you did there.

For me, art is a way to then the abstract experience into a tangible reality. Its about taking something personal that only you have experienced, and transforming it so that it now exists in a form that everyone can experience, appreciate, and draw their own conclusions from. At least, that's what poetry is for me.

Ah well did you see that I was thinking of some forgotten metaphor that the eyes are the windows into the soul, but then again there are many other good comparisons of what eyes can imply. Though I do find it interesting that when one dreams there eyes move as if they are watching something.

As for that abstract experience to be interpreted, we ourselves, that is our own minds try to interpret the world even onto subconsciousness. The construct of our minds played by the igniting neurons in the depths of colliding abstractions of the memory and the vision has such a profound effect to actually change the physical body.

Ultimately our minds are the construction of experiences, whether they are physical experiences or the processed abstractions we contemplate. the best example I could possible describe is the act of our brains trying to contemplate the idea of Motion, that is in reality some things change so suddenly that they become blurred, which is the result of the brain not being able to understand such a drastic change so in our minds we see a blurry object. Yet there are many things we can contemplate because we have created a vast arsenal of tools and machines to interpret things into what we can perceive.

In essence, even the most logical foundations of anything rely on the interpretations of things beyond our senses, our minds, heck we cannot even understand the vast correlating events that lead to our own existence because we were limited to the abstractions of ancient man. So to me when this machine of the world pounds out the cogs of uncreative, dull, and worst of all lame, yes lame, that is those who have had their senses cut out to be driven by rules or methodologies and do not pursue change of themselves because of some imposing authority...still questioning my own actions though I do try to pursue my own enlightenment...I find myself ever more ruined by my own thoughts...yea poetry, though I do not know it well, so I will write my thoughts as a metaphor...what better than that of fire,

Sometimes I seek chaos and wish for calamity but the dull grey veil ensnares my spirit for my body must live in such a pit of dreary smolders. To seek the dim lights glowing in the dark, and watch the closest fade, the far spark, but the dark will not brighten. All that is left is the warm ashes and the hope for more embers, and perhaps a burning flame one day soon.


btw would you can to share some of your poetry?

I interpreted the eye as representing one's ability to see how one is often times just part of the crowd, rather than an individual "I". But that's art for you: ambiguous. Refer to above post of mine as needed. ^^

To say we are limited by the "abstractions of ancient man" is a tad... Harsh, I think. Is there not some measure of beauty in Hebrew poetry? Or in Islamic architechture? Or in Ovid's Metamorphoses? And look at any Renaissance-era paintings and you'll see how heavily they were influenced by Rome. And Rome by Greece. And Greece by the Minoans. And the Minoans by the Assyrians. And the Assyrians... Ad infinitum, ad nauseum. With art, it is impossible to create without bearing evidence of past influence. It's how well an invidual can take these influences and shape them into something new and unique that greatly contributes to what makes "art".

Well, here is my thread, where I put all my stuff.

Feasting with the Pleiades,
And running from Eumenides,
Ambrosia and nectar fail to suffice
My itching veins; their thirst for ice.

I'm conquered by Tiberius,
And chained like Prometheus.
As I'm beset by harpies, clawed, I ask:
From whence cometh the gods?

Ah well what I mean is for tens of thousands of years there were gaps lost, because ancient man didn't have too much left behind, for one reason or another there is just the scrutinization of these artifacts they left behind. One could assert that there was some interaction between civilizations but when you go as far as saying one built another then one might forget the more less common peoples. Ultimately there is little evidence of people interacting within a thousand miles of each other let alone the bigger world. Even over a millennium there is little evidence of these prehistoric civilizations interacting mostly things like the origins of stones for tools or other things that can be analysed chemically . We depend on the writings being interpreted by these scholars and build a history from them. I did an indepth study this past month on the Minoans and tried to compile a decent timeline but there was so much to determine I didn't finish before I had to move on to a different topic for my class. One thing I remember is that the name bestowed to the "Minoans" was set by an englishman in the first years of the 20th century, he dubbed them that because the interpretations of the Greeks was of the story of the Minotaur, which was known to be in Crete. I am also sure that according to geological evidence the rise of oceans in the Mesolithic period prompted a drastic shift from nomadic hunter gatherers to more dependence on fishing in the region spurred the basis of a seafaring society which eventually became the Minoans, which are to be one of the largest trading cultures in the early era of the Aegean Sea.

I understand that saying we are limited to the abstractions of ancient man sounds harsh but simply put the foundations of this is as such. Both in ancient man creating both abstractions and ourselves making interpretations of them but truth be told we are not living in a society where the wilderness of the world is the greatest threat to man rather we have become our own nightmares.