Maybe it's time for a technological upgrade...then again, maybe it's not!

I was sitting by a reedy estuary near Monterrey the other day, watching the aquatic birds, the grey, foggy light bouncing off the water, the trees bending in the wind, and thinking. I was thinking about art history, and the problem with art history (to make sense, art has to be viewed as a road from A (primitive) to C (advanced) through B (the intermediate)). Once you through out the whole notion of progress as the most important thing about making sense of art, Art History is reduced to what it is, for the most part: trivia about artists. Art Theory is the notion that there is some overriding sense of beauty in art that can be explained (mas o menus), no matter if the painting under discussion is by Giotto, Rembrandt, Rothko, or some unknown folk artist in the back woods of South Carolina. I was also thinking about the consequences of Puritanical views on art and beauty, how that betrays a mistrust of all knowledge that is not immediately practical, how the Puritanical mindset is a bargain with the Devil in which one loses one's soul as well as the thing that one is bargaining for, and, as a result, thinking back to a conversation I had with a friend the evening before walking around Santa Cruz late at night.

It was one of those great, meandering tangles of thought, abruptly changing direction, while rooted to the central idea, and all of that. In short, it was the perfect thing for a blog post. However, I did not have anything to write or pluck out my thoughts. I was walking and thinking and observing and walking and once in a while sitting, but not writing or typing. By the time I got back to the hotel, I had to warm up my hands before I could write anything, and then it was time for dinner. By the time I had a moment to write, it was a reconstruction effort, and that is always a bit tedious, although it is certainly good discipline.

Perhaps, I further mused, if I had one of those little portable devices that people have (I am really not quite sure what they are called, but you see them all the time, where people are writing or typing on a miniature key pad, etc.), perhaps I would have recorded my thoughts and been able to do an edit rather than a reconstruction. However, this sort of technology can quickly consume one's focus. You see the world differently with a camera than without. When you are always at the ready to write, you think (and what's worse, talk) differently.

Sometimes I think that we have the best ideas when we are not able to write simply because by not being able to write, our minds are allowed to associate different things, well, differently. The trick is having the discipline to take those meanderings and to hammer them into an essay later. Ah, discipline, sweet and sour discipline.