Gray Haired Art Professors. Guitar Strings & Self Endings. The Sparrow's Fall

In a Art History Class the Gray Bearded Professor said,

“ Someone once asked me how do I become a artist. I told him to paint two hundred paintings and than to throw them all away. After you have thrown them all away, start painting again and than you will be a artist.”

Every time that I pick up a guitar my fingers go to the first chord that I ever learned. I know few chords, I am not a guitar player. I have a list of chords sitting on my dresser, a page full of lines and dots that are symbols of potential new sounds. Still, I have settled at this point in life to play the chords I know. The question I am asking is, when you reach the end of your personal expression, will the depth of knowing yourself be strong enough for you yourself to begin again. There is a debate about the act of creating Art and the making or doing Craft. A Craft is the ability to repeat a action, to be rewarded with a mirrored result of your previous action. Wood working is known as a craft, a wood worker is judged by his ability in his craft if his furniture matches itself. Artwork than is not a craft, because the process is unique each time. Still, a artist artwork can be reduced or summed into a expressed thought. A book author is judged by how consistent his books feel to his other works. Did the author deliver that same sense of justice that we first fell in love with in the first book we read of his? Artwork is not a Craft, but in a sense it is still trapped by a haunted presences of Craft. Because at some point we (the artist) are going to find all the chords we know on our instrument of artistic expression, and although we could easily learn more, we don't. When you reach the end of your expression, will the depth of knowing yourself be strong enough for you yourself to begin again

We wonder if we can face tomorrow. We wonder if we can ever find the strength to ask for forgiveness. We wonder if we have it inside of ourselves. In the black womb, you were given eyes to see though you knew nothing of sight. In the black womb you were given fingers to grasp, though you knew not what your occupation would be. In the black womb you were given legs to stand, though you had not yet met the opposition of earth.