Less Alone

What is art?

Isn't it interesting to watch how when a question comes to mind, the universe swings around to provide you with all you need to find the answer....


Air travel picks you up by the scruff of the neck, out of one familiar life and plonks you down into a completely fresh environment. It's like someone giving you a second chance.

Here you go, new place, new culture, new people. What are you gonna to do about it?

Can you adapt and mould?

Or does the mind require the external to re-form around IT?

In other words, being somewhere new can shine a light on how stuck you are.

It is fasinating to watch the whole thing going on.

Your external persona as it adapts to the new world it finds itself in. And then to be, at the same time, aware of the parallel reality of the mind. That one that is still playing out old habit patterns.

How much of the mind is affecting your behaviour?

How much is conditioned?

How much is spontaneous?

In the moments of space, of moment to moment, beauty floods in, or should I say out....?

Everything seems to be art.

It could be the way a grubby old silversmith's hat hangs...


It could be the colour of the ropes or the fold of a sail...


It could be the way the frangipani had been placed, just under the pillow...


Or, as Mozambique presents the natural world so easily, the froth of the waves on the seashore...


The shadow hiding in the heel....


The sun lighting up the leaves...


Or edges around a cloud....



Are these things art or merely a subjective observation of the beauty that is around us? A subjectivity that is changing, like a person does, from moment to moment, from day to day, from week to week?

Is photography art or skill?

Does a cushion become an art form if it is framed in a rectangle and 'click', photographed in a particular way?



Art is said to be a vehicle for the expression or communication of emotions or ideas. Perhaps this is the purpose of art?

Krishanmurti suggests, in relation to meditation that, "One sense of the word 'art' is to put everything in its right place, so that there is no confusion."

Van Gogh said, "I did not paint it as I saw it, I drew it as I saw the spirit in it."

And along the same lines, my grandfather once wrote that art is, "a manifestation of God throught he agency of man."

Sitting on the plane, destined for Jo-burg, I was flicking through Time Magazine where I found a definition that made sense to me....


"Art is whatever makes you feel less alone." Meg Ryan

If, indeed, artists communicate the universal spirit, it only follows that when we see that art, we feel more joined, more united and so......less alone.