Paying Attention

Reading something from Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life (actually a tasty excerpt in Nick Alchin's excellent textbook for Theory of Knowledge) and listening to Copeland's third symphony (closely, over ear-phones) put this idea in my mind: the quality of attention we bring to a work of art, be it a poem, a novel, a song, a painting, a garden, a meal, is vital to the very nature of the work. What we regard as obviously artistic demands such attention so effortlessly we know we should lend it that level of attention, and trust it will repay us through the intensity of the experience rendered. But the world is so remarkable at its core that anything is worth a second look, a closer listen, a finer discrimination in taste, simply on account of its sheer unlikeliness, its simple beauty of being. When it isn't being remarkable it's because we have drained it of significance by taking it for granted, a kind of lack of gratitude. In that sense anything is capable of being seen as a work of art, if we are prepared to regard it as such. (This position being very close to the definition of what makes a work of art in John Carey's What Good Are The Arts?)

This begs many difficult questions, not the least of which is whether one work of art is better than another, and on what grounds, but it helps explain the splendid democratization of the arts we've seen over the last hundred years or so.

And on a more practical note, it's the time of year for the Singapore Food Festival and Noi and I will be heading to our favourite haunt of Bussorah Street, and its abundance of eating places, this afternoon. I'm sure they'll be opportunities to devote my full attention to the delights we are likely to encounter there.