Replying to LO26528 --
Dear Organlearners,
Andrew Campbell < ACampnona@aol.com > writes:
>Take it in your pocket to the desert next time you visit.
>Give it to the poorest 'stick man' you come upon. Maybe
>the same one. Tell him it is his. There is a young man in
>Nepal who makes no distinction between 'ink writing and
>buffalo' his name is strange. Man Bahadur. He is a distant
>cousin of the 'stick man'. They are both learning artists of
>the new millennium. Should it be that the stick man needs
>to come to a 'no distinction' between 'ink on paper and buffalo'
>he is most welcome indeed to use the paper as tinder for
>any fire he wishes or can light with it;-)
Greetings dear Andrew,
The reason why the man carried the carved stick in his pocket is because
it was so small. Thick trunks of wood are very rare in the desert.
Furthermore, since the shade which a rare big tree gives in the desert, is
far more valuable than the firewood obtined by chopping it down.
The main reason why I responded to your reply, is something which makes me
sad and deeply worried. Whenever I go into remote rural regions, it
strikes me that when the local people, usually very poor, try to sell
anything to a strange traveller, it is art and not utilities. Now go into
in any of our modern cities and look how much art is selling there? So
what happens? They sell little and thus stay poor. Attemps to export their
art to the cities have also failed time and again.
The poor believe that all art has value and that the rich will buy a lot.
But the rich buy only a few works of art at staggering prices as an
investment. Clearly, the poor and the rich live in two different mental
worlds. Yet they live in one and the same physical world. Somehow there is
an pathetic break in the communication between the poor and the rich. What
does it mean? Is art on the way out for good? Have we reached the stage
where art has no role to play any more in our learning and knowledge?
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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