#50finethings 36 – 40

Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“your art
is not about how many people
like your work
your art
is about
if your heart likes your work
if your soul likes your work
it’s about how honest
you are with yourself
and you
must never
trade honesty
for relatability”

― Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

Visitors to Dublin storm through the narrow streets, searching for An Experience. 

Sometimes the visitors walk four or five abreast, as if they’re in a row, in a marching band, on St Patrick’s Day.  They do not rest until they have captured the perfect, unique, picture, for their followers.  They race towards the galleries and museums, and when they’re safely inside, they consume art.

Dublin is littered with art:  graffiti, buskers, the clouds, and the sounds of the streets.  The city sings, shouts, swears, and gasps for breath as it tries to adapt to the changes.  Go to an art gallery, then, and ask yourself, “does this art move me, is it memorable, is it honest?”  Listen to the Key Waste rubbish truck, and LUAS bells from the street, as you do.

A photograph of a street scene can be artistic, but how can you photograph homelessness and hunger in a city that sells the craic agus ceol?  There’s nothing as artistic as the food queues outside the GPO every night, or watching a kid eat their dinner on the pavement.  Can you video a street dispute, and film the passion of the anger involved?

Art is a beautiful blue sky sitting on a horizon, or it is human shit at the bus stop, with some stiff, rotting tissue beside it.  Art is love, and jealousy, and integrating death into every smoothie.  Art is watching a young child look terrified.

Observe art, enjoy art, and make art.

Or don’t.

But if you do make art, make it about why the rich never feel shame about their wealth, and make art about grief, and our own insignificance.

Dublin has poets and prose authors, memoir, and postcard writers, and those who send letters to the Irish Times about the high cost of the TV licence.  Dublin has people who publish on social media, and those who invent catchy hashtags.

Dublin has open air opera and drama at the market stalls. Art should be free, and all artists paid.  Capitalism should be sent to the farm in the countryside, with the ageing donkeys, the cat, and that puppy who died.  This earth of ours, has an underlying condition, and capitalism isn’t going to help it feel better.

Art is the wind.

Art is the horror, boredom, and pleasures of our lives.  We’re here and we love, and we’re part of it.

Art fights for and against all sides on all wars.  Artists are heroes, villains and indifferent.  Art is a seven worded text, to tell you someone is dead.  Art is salt water on your face, at sunrise. 

It’s the night before Christmas:  a foghorn that scares you; a whisper; a leaf drop; a home.

36:  go to a FREE art gallery in Dublin.

37:  better still, paint something.  I did, I loved it.

38.  go to an open mic session for Dublin writers, organised by Anne Tannam and Fiona Bolger

39.  do a FREE online creative writing course with Beth Kempton

40.  go to a FREE, lunchtime, open-air opera at Wood Quay, and enjoy a cappuccino with your Puccini.