A Question for Will: What is Art & Its Functions?

Well, I hope to answer as honestly as best I can without being a smart-pants. The first thing asked is: what are the functions of a beating heart, an active brain, an appetite, digestion, or breathing? They all share, critically, in keeping one alive.

Of course, like ‘art’, they aren’t the only functions that allow one to live; especially if you have, and value to have, a wife, kids, and grandkids, and your house, your animals. They keep you alive, too, even if every once in a while you may also think about strangling them. Same’s true for friends, colleagues, team-mates, even enemies. Art feeds one emotionally, contemplatively, intellectually, physically. It offers frustration, stimulation, and challenge, as well as sometimes giving one fits. Fundamentally, it is the drive to follow one’s curiosity, and make things as well as one can. That’s been sustained since paleolithic times, even as we’re now confronting the first generation that’s had to ask why.

WR