[MD] Defining Art (was Churning Point)

[Platt Holden]

Arlo defines art:
> I contend that art, in any of its cultural and sensory guises, is "art" when 
and
> only when it succeeds in freeing the mind of the "witness" from static social
> and intellectual patterns. In this way, it has to always be fresh, to keep the
> metaphor from hardening, and its "artness" does not have anything to do with
> "tune" or "song" or "use of colors" or "dimensionality". It is "art" when FOR
> YOU your static patterns are broken, and you just "are".

So smoking peyote or imbibing in LSD is art? Thanks, but I think your 
definition needs refinement. I define art in a number of ways, but perhaps the 
best definition follows Pirsig's definition of Quality, here expressed by 
George Santayana:

"Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means 
can never be said. To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we 
come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried 
by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, 
a great deal more than any science can hope to be."

Platt