Life, death and unity

As I began reading “Water Closet” I found myself lost and frustrated as I often do when reading this book. To be honest I couldn’t really connect or follow it until about half way through the chapter. I began to understand and even enjoy the reading when I started to understand the ideas of entropy, unity and death. The author quotes Bataille saying “essentially all beings are only one.” I really like this because it communicates the way that people, and indeed art as well, are all connected in life as in death. Not only do humans live and die but so can art and other non-living things. They also quote Jean Arp where a beautiful image is created where decomposition and death create new life and continuity in a new way. Arp talks about how imperfections in art showing the process of the art, or decomposition of the art can be viewed as something beautiful rather than imperfections and deaths of art.
When the authors begin talking about the idea of cutting paper into unique strips and claiming it is special in it’s process, I can not relate. I think I understand what they are saying, the process of doing something, for example cutting paper, is unique to one experience, moment and time. When the moment is later remembered by looking at the art it can not be re-experienced only viewed and remembered. I think they are saying that the experience is sacred if for no other reason that it can not be recreated at any other point in time. To me this is easy to understand, but I find it boring and even a little inconsequential. Why dwell on a moment that can not be relived? Certainly every moment is unique, but how you capture that could be more interesting that cutting paper in my opinion. Maybe what I can gather from this is that my own experiences can be unique and more interesting if I share them in other ways. Maybe it is a challenge to me rather than inconsequential nonsensical blabber.
Mcollum’s talks about the beauty in nature is fascinating to me. I really like the idea of emphasizing, duplicating or recreating nature in art pieces. Nature is the purest and most interesting form of art to me because it is everywhere and in no way created by anyone. I like the innate beauty that nature offers. The display of fossils and dinosaur tracks is beautiful because it recreates life and nature millions of years ago. I really respect this recreation of life long after it died and decomposed and is now being burned in my car as fuel. I see a connection between this idea of recreating life from long ago and this entropic idea of decomposition and unity. I like the connection between life and death and the display of both.

-sean