life
February 2008 
Don't get too comfortable...
Will
...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.
...why did Plato say that poets should be chased out of the republic? Precisely because every poet and every artist is an antisocial being. He's not that way because he wants to be; he can't be any other way.... and if he really is an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved, and therefore old hat - worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.
...the right to free expression is something one seizes, not something one is given.... if it does exist, it exists to be used against the established order.... There is absolute opposition between the artist and the state.
So there's only one tactic for the state: kill the seers.
I like this quote. It says something about art, about the nature of power and the state, and about life.
I think we all get too comfortable sometimes in our roles, whatever they may be. We start to think we're figuring things out, we understand the nature of the world, how other people think, how other people should think.
If you believe Picasso, if you take this quote and apply it to your life, it is just when you start to get comfortable with a thing that you most need to take a look at it and criticize it, throw it away for a while.
Thoughts?
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