full reaction mode

Do you know how, every once in a while, something catches you, really catches you sideways/unexpectedly, and you react? Just react! You are in full reaction mode. Gotcha.

Well, this happened yesterday and it caught me off-guard. I was so surprised, I didn’t say anything at the time. I just witnessed the conversation and witnessed that, man, inside I was REACTING!

It was simple. One person mentioned trouble getting a good night’s sleep. (i.e. not waking up as rested as usual). I’m thinking someone will mention that it’s spring and that the body has been through many seasons since fresh vegetables, that the body is more acidic. Something along those lines. But no, the suggestion is: to use an app. An app!

So, that’s where I went sideways. I really have a hard time accepting the computer as solution to so much. And, I admit, here I am using one. But remember music? I mentioned that the first app that was engineered is the one that has determined what most consider “music” now… Okay, I’m going off course. Underlying my discomfort is using something that is binary, that is numbers, that measures – that we use now to measure and determine so much of how we think and live – to go into the soft and squishy sides of our lives, too.

I recall when I was in 8th grade, visiting the Smithsonian Museum in DC. My “boyfriend” at the time wanted to be a doctor, so we chose the medical museum where we walked by jars and jars of preserved body parts. Liver after liver after liver. All normal. All so different. Our squishy insides. None like the next.

I think of that whenever I read: this is what you “should” eat. This is how you “should” exercise. This is what good sleep is. Says who?

Taking that into art, the one goal an artist has is to be different. To be him or herself. To make art that is true to himself/herself. That is that art that others – the others who are different from the artist, with different insides and different everything else – are going to love or hate or anything in between. All different.