I’m not sure when the update was pushed through, but now, each day, I'm presented with a collection of photos spanning the last 5 years whenever I open my phone and accidentally scroll left. This week, a few photos popped up which made the gears start turning. The first photo was my Dad sitting in an art museum looking at an abstract painting.
I’ve always struggled with art; both the creation and interpretation. It always seemed so esoteric like a club I’d never get in to . But, I think that’s started to change. Whenever I think of art, I’m reminded of past conversations with Ben, one of my best friends for nearly a decade, where we would go back and forth debating what constitutes a piece of art, and upon further digging, what isn’t art when you really think about it. To some, the way they carry themselves day-to-day is in itself an art form. We didn’t talk about art last weekend while we floated down the Kishwaukee, but, for the first time in a long time I felt the urge to once again document my day-to-day life.
I think the beauty of documenting daily life is that the days rarely make sense as they happen. Even more so, strings of days or seasons of your life are nearly incomprehensible, at least to me, while they’re occurring. The act of documentation gives you the opportunity to live now and try to figure it out later. I’m reminded of a section from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast where he talks about not eating and viewing certain pieces of art when hungry; he suggested that some art only made sense to him when he was in this state. For me, my “hungry state” seems to be time. With time, and a little perspective, I’ve started to appreciate the complexity of life and art which, at times, are synonymous.
