[MD] Another parallel

[Arlo Bensinger]

[DMB]
This is one more reason I feel so lucky to live in Denver.

[Arlo]
I love Denver. When/if I ever decide to live "urban" again, Denver is 
where I'm a'heading. I think the description you give in your post 
exemplifies the non-distinction between "art" and the daily activity 
of our lives. When we cease making this one artificial distinction, I 
think a lot of other things will fall into place. We should rescue 
the word "craft" from its association with quaint, cliched, antique 
goods and return it to its rightful place as a verb to describe this 
form of high-quality activity.

"Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his 
expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent 
and you'll see the difference. The craftsman isn't ever following a 
single line of instruction. He's making decisions as he goes along. 
For that reason he'll be absorbed and attentive to what he's doing 
even though he doesn't deliberately contrive this. His motions and 
the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn't following any set of 
written instructions because the nature of the material at hand 
determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the 
nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are 
changing together in a progression of changes until his mind's at 
rest at the same time the material's right."

"Sounds like art," the instructor says.

"Well, it is art," I say." (ZMM)

What intrigues me about this Pirsig quote is that his initial 
distinction refers to "labor" (novice workman/craftsman) and sets the 
stage for "art" to be freed from its binding association with 
extra-curricular, superfluous, paint-music-sculpt-dance-etc prison. 
This is a little off-topic, but I do think that Early Hippie Thinking 
got this right.

[DMB]
Tom Wolfe is a bit of a Victorian, though. I'm gonna disagree about 
lumping him in with the poets and pranksters.

[Arlo]
I see Wolfe's ideas on uniting "journalism" and "literature" to 
parallel that of other the whole "rotisserie/sculpture" schism (same 
with Hunter S. Thompson). But to be honest with you, other than his 
earlier stuff I don't pay much attention to the man.