imagination, information, art, me! wants to be Free

In Spanish, there are two distinct words for free.

There's free as in liberated, or as in an empty seat that's not taken (libre), from Old French liberté "freedom." And then, free, as in no payment necessary, maybe as in gift (gratis), possibly from M. Latin gratuitas "gift," probably from L. gratuitus "free, freely given."

"Practical imagination may be more in line with having beautiful radiant things, but idle imagination is more in line with being beautiful radiant things. But Being, idleness,and productivity coming together these days." - Steven Suggs' comment on "in praise of idle imagination"

Yes! yes, I write back, and: "I sense that imagination needs FREE rein to be as goofy, outrageously unproductive, uncontrived, boundless as it wants to be. And miracles are actually as efficient, and natural, as it gets."

With the New Orleans Jazz Fest starting today, the Times-Picayune front-paged the article, "YouTubeFest" in the Living section. The article tells you how to catch some of the headliners' acts on YouTube. It's accompanied by the sidebar story "Surfer beware: YouTube is a copyright infringement minefield" (newsprint version headlined thus) warning of "guilty pleasure," as many of the posted concert clips are, "strictly defined, stolen."

"Whatever your naive beliefs about information wanting to be free, Murphy is not being a bad guy by doing so. [In contacting a Japanese TV network to ask them to contact YouTube to pull down a video he produced for said network]." - "Surfer beware: YouTube is a copyright infringement minefield", Times-Picayune, April 27, 2007 (sidebar story on pg 12-13)

I don't think that Murphy is doing anything wrong either. I'd love to see more original & indie content - not cut-and-paste, not television - myself.

Pleeez let's not tarnish words.

Naïve?

Etymology: 1654, from Fr. naïve, fem. of naïf, from O.Fr. naif "naive, natural, just born," from L. nativus "not artificial," also "native, rustic," lit. "born, innate, natural" (see native).

Naïve as in: "Spontaneous. Never Ordinary. Completely Genuine." Those are the title words to a Jazz Appreciation Month (April 2007) poster I saw once (maybe at the Alvar Public Library who knows) put out by the Smithsonian.

Naïve is an amazing way to  live...and free, as in liberty, and quite probably, free, as in gifts too. These words, concepts, dance well together.

I'm reminded of a beautiful passage in Dreams Underfoot, where the character Zinc, a seventeen-year-old performance artist/runaway squatting in a downtown building in a fictional city, is musing to himself, after an exchange with his visual artist friend Jilly:

"You didn't make art by capturing an image on paper, or canvas, or in stone. You didn't make it by writing down stories and poems. Music and dance came closest to what real art was - but only as long as you didn't try to record or film it. Musical notation was only so  much dead ink on paper. Choreography was planning, not art.

You could only make art by setting it free. Anything else was just a memory, no matter how you stored it. On film or paper, sculpted or recorded.

Everything that existed, existed in a captured state. Animate or inanimate, everything wanted to be free.

That's what the lights said; that was their secret. Wild lights in the night skies, and domesticated lights, right here on the street, they all told the same tale. It was so plain to see when you knew how to look. Didn't neon and streetlights yearn to be starlight?

To be free." - Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot

images Star Bright by Art-; Stairway to Heaven by blue_fam; Dream Logic by MontanaRaven; all these Flickr photos found on this most breath-taking must-see spirally inspired collage, Spiral Gallery

Comments

[Stephen Suggs]

The incredible power of freedom! I get it Evelyn. I'm honored and flattered that you chose to quote my comment in your blog. There's plenty more where that came from.

I chose to be a FREE-lance art dealer-- traveling all over the country buying and selling art. In the face of friends and family(tempters) saying "Steve, get a real job."

Now, I'm more settled, I have a home of my own, and I'm paying the bills. There were some bumps along the way, but I knew with the will and power of freedom, the customers(and source for inventory) would magically appear- and they did.

By the way, I'm the one who offered to empowered and be empowered regarding The House and other things. And you replied, you didnt have my contact info. This time I will click on remember personal info. If there's any other way I can give that info to you privately, I will do so. Thanks and blessed be.

[Leechy]

Innovation, marketing, design, "the art of living" do not scream life so much as utilitarianism. Art has no mission. A vision of art that lumps it together with marketing makes me want to scream in horror. And your so-called freedom is bought via the subjugation of how-many-of-them-equal-one-of-us citizens of the world of underprivilege. Wake up, you fecking layabouts!

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Leechy-
AGREED! "Art has no mission." YES yes.

So much woefully out of date in the descriptor and certainly my bio - read the posts for the unfolding.

Do not mean the freedom that wars are fought over but the freedom that can never be bought or fought for.

[solfilm]

In my field art DO have a mission. To work and to affect a certain group. However i work with advertising and marketing so.. ;-)