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Photo reblogged from NPR Fresh Air
How Dogs Evolved Into Our Best Friends: “There’s something about them that makes us friends with them. There are people who dislike dogs for sure. But dogs also have an uncanny ability … to walk in a room and pick out the one or two who seem to dislike dogs the most and make friends with them. It’s happened to me with some of my dogs on numerous occasions. I think there’s a deep — some people call it love, I call it a ‘deep empathy’ between these two species — that resonates with each other in a way that makes them comprehensible to each other even though they don’t speak the same language.”
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Truly compelling art touches our souls, and we know this because it makes us feel briefly immortal. We can feel this chain of consciousness; a sort of spirit in all of us that makes us more than mere animal. Care, sacrifice, hope, and purity, or jealousy, rage, and hurt; they all swirl within us. Art touches those human essences and says “I do, too.” But it doesn’t merely tell you-it shows you, and it shows you through you, because everyone feels it through the lens of their own experiences. Good art also makes an artist out of all of us. For once the partaker knows how she feels, she is able to tell her own story that much more articulately. The benefits are contagious. Pass it on.
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We need art now more than ever. We are a distracted bunch these days-too distracted to know who we are or to care why we are. Everything seems to be about getting to the answers now. A question is input in a blank box at our fingertips. Instant. On Demand. All Access…and before we have pondered the question ourselves, we have a plethora of choices. And yet, asking questions has never been solely about obtaining an answer, if a definitive answer could even be settled upon.
My fear is that the future will be so destination oriented that we may cease to ramble, ponder, travel, consider, wonder, second guess, or stumble upon.
But as long as art exists (and I believe it always will, even if it ceases to make the artists a living, and we can argue it already has), there will be reasons and ways to stop and ask “who am I?” and “why am I?” because invariably someone will be saying with their art, “I am…this paint splatter!…or this chord! or that melody!” and you will either resonate with this and say, “hey, I was that color yesterday!” or you may say “my mother is that melody!” I really believe that because of this, art makes us more than just animals getting from a starting point to a destination (whether that be travel, or finding food, or whatever other biological need). And yes, I think we express our spirituality through art as well because of course that is another main discrimination between humans and other animals. But the fact that we have these indescribables…these indiscretes…and that we can take pigment and show it to another or create a harmony and strike a certain chord and share these otherwise ineffable truths about what it means to be human…I think that makes art of immeasurable importance. Don’t you?
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Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls…are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.James Patterson (via atomos)
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We chose to take a looser understanding of the term “private beach”. They really are better.
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![scipsy:
Drunk on books
“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.” […] (via Nerdosità/Alchemico)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkd3weYFLN1qb3iw0o1_500.png)
“Lignin, the stuff that prevents all trees from adopting the weeping habit, is a polymer made up of units that are closely related to vanillin. When made into paper and stored for years, it breaks down and smells good. Which is how divine providence has arranged for secondhand bookstores to smell like good quality vanilla absolute, subliminally stoking a hunger for knowledge in all of us.” […] (via Nerdosità/Alchemico)
