Friday, November 10, 2006

Genes & Memes / Blogging -Har Har! (laughter)

I read a lot. Always have. I do it these days in the dark hours before dawn. I wake up and head to the john..(this being the 2nd, maybe the 3rd time)... go back, lie down, shut my eyes. I savor the part of the dream I'd interrupted, attempt emptying my mind so I'd get a smidgen more sleep.

Failing that, I am sitting here at my Powerbook G4, assemble, put together strands -pearls that pop into my head, words, mostly...
'Art"
"Porn"
"Outrage"
"Shame' "Anger" "Guilt",
"Grief"
"Horny"

ART and PORN are Memes. The other words denote states of being, states such as one doesn't even need to be conscious of. I came across this word MEME in a 'Sciences' magazine. I found it in my doctor's office. It's a kind of idea. Very special, the idea that is -once you get its full meaning it changes you. You become a different person. The guy whose article it was, was saying that memes get passed along, We teach memes to our children, we should be teaching memes in school,,, And, like DNA, like genes in the cells of our bodies, memes are passed along from generation to generation.

Porn and Art are memes.

When I was in my middle forties, the word 'Art', the word 'Pornography' were defined as to have meanings that were mutually exclusionary -contradictory. Where you had Art, you could not have Porn. Where you are making porn, no way could you be also making Art.


I didn't like that supposition -that 'definition' given then as to those two words. I beleived that is the artist making art who denotes what art is and what is not Art. My thinking then was "The artist is the source. He's The Man." My thinking was a page out of Marcel DuChamp's book. I wanted to make real art and also realio-trulio pornography. Besides, as my work progressed, I did make pornography! And I came face to face actualizing my drawings as works of relio-trulio Art with a captial A. Those meanings I was supposedly meant to be guided by didn't happen, didn't really work in my own case.



So "Porn,' (the meme of it) and Art (and that meme) were redefined for me. And my work was the offer of my evidence as to it contradicting the veracity of those dictionaries and those writers who held forth on what was art and pornography.

I see 'my Art-as-Porn works and my Porn-as-Art works documenting, giving evidence as to those attributes contained in what is today percieved as Porn and Art. I fully realize that this is still very controversial.



ART / PORN can be subject for controversy and argumentation even as is 'EVOLUTION' and 'CREATIONISM'. Both are offered up as memes of diverse points of view. 'God' (whatever one's religion is) is that kind of meme.

Memes, Genes: We can learn them or ignore them. Memes we acquire, genes we are born with, we inherit biologically. Our very singularities - uniquenesses -our individualities are both outcomes of the genes we are born with AND the memes we we choose to process/learn/interact with. Our DNAs and our notions as to what is 'common sense' (the zeitgeist) is who and what we are, become...





In this here and now BLOGGING is itself another manifestation of the meme. The blogsite, and all this technology that makes accessible our memes to those of us who who are literate enough to get at it. There are those of us who choose to be computer literate and then there are others, who by choice or by deprivations as per their circumstances, do not. Ah well.
(I smile but do not laugh. It isn't funny.)

When I first opened this site, it was by chance, (or maybe not) -by serendipity I chose 'artasidentity' as the name for this blogsite. I wasn't at all thinking about 'memes' or 'genes'. There were other words I associated with the making of my 'Porn and Art'. And it wasn't 'LUST!'
There were other words: '
Anger',
'Shame',
'Grief',
'Loneliness,,,
None in and of themselves being memes. They connote feeling states, emotions, touch on my own, but are ones that can be said to be 'Universal', ones all of us know and share.

What do we make of our traumas? Who do we become?

Do we make art or pornography?
Become thieves?
Commit terrorist acts?
Run for political office?
Become bankers, marry for money?
Plan and build low income housing?
Volunteer in a soup kitchen?

Har! Har! (I'M LAUGHING)
to be cont'd.

Maybe I'll go on ranting, go further as to memes -memes that are cliches, stereotypes, myths.... and so on.

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