Here we go again! It seems that yesterday’s train of thought is not finished. Hang on! There’s a sharp, banked curve just ahead! No apology for the roller coaster metaphor…

The creative act
is a moment of Becoming itself
and thus entails the most intimate unity
of an individual and actuality.

In such a moment,
the creative act
is an instant of fatality,
a determination of what will be.

As such,
artists as value creators
are the engines of Becoming.

The values which inspire and structure art works
are not subjective appendages
to a supposed world of objective fact
but the ground and substance
of those perspectives and interpretations
through which possible experiential worlds become apparent.

Artistic creativity is therefore
the principal determinant of existential possibility.

As Nietzsche declares in Thus Spake Zarathustra,
‘valuing is creating’ (The Thousand and One goals)

Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Introduction by Nicholas Davies XXIV

This morning passing through the vestibule at Starbucks, I pulled the door open, and noticed to my left, Andrew was in the act of stuffing, inserting a large handful of straws into the vertical container. He managed, every single straw inserted for customer use throughout the day to come. To my eye, Andrew is adept at the very large spectrum of activities entailed in the job of shift manager.

The question: Was the mundane task of filling the straw container, an artistic achievement?

I maintain that it was! Judgment was essential, a sense of to-what-extent, how much ‘handful’, would fit, into the container, (all without counting, no measured calculation). Almost as if by instinct Andrew ‘just knew” and swiftly the feat was accomplished. Every piece inserted, none left over! A small quotient of the future was in that split second determined, settled, revealed, made to be!  The “just knowing” is the un-specifiable sense of the matter that is drawn from experience. One never knows how many one has in one’s hand, just that one has enough, – and then proof is demonstrated.

Artist and “the art” are fused in a split second of determination: Maker and made.

Come on, you are thinking to yourself, “How can filling a straw receptacle be art?” Granted the act is mundane. Need art always be ostentatious or the culmination of arduous preparation?

As highlighted in the quotation, the foundation of the future, whatever is to be, is vectored by values that are exercised in every single moment. This moment, now, is that instant of world-creation.

Like you, I have no idea what the future holds for us in the mid West, or or the country for that matter. I do know though – the future is being fashioned in each and every moment. Each of us is an ‘engine of Becoming’, creating to express all that you love and what I despise and what I fear, inscribed into each shimmering moment.

Valuing is creating.

Here is a tune, a classic, Another Brick In The Wall by Pink Floyd. The lyric is a durable refutation that you are really unimportant, just another brick in the wall.