Appeal (a world full of cool idiots?)

As an artist what is the point of what you are doing? Who do you care about appealing to or communicating with through your work? Is it people in general or just other likeminded individuals?

If you want to change the quality of people’s lives for the better, do you feel that your art does so? Or is it seen as too highbrow by the majority; who themselves live in ignorance because they were never afforded the opportunity to do anything but?

You can try and create works that appeal, but will they even inspire, insight and invigorate the people who actually get to look at them? Or will they just be weird or pretty or superficially interesting?

Are people too stuck in the bad habit of living small lives in a big world (through no fault of their own) that you are pursuing a lost cause?

Learning to kill

I practice karate and have been doing so for many years now. It struck me yesterday, when I used an Iaitō (metal sword) for the first time, that I am learning what would have once, in some form, been imperative to being able to stay alive.

I don’t really have to worry about that in my life (although knowing such things could come in handy in a sticky situation). But I find it incredible to imagine that there was once a world where knowing how to kill and how to do so efficiently was actually a practical skill to have.

Of course so much must go on behind the scenes; like the anti-terror squads and not to mention the soldiers who are killing people on a daily basis. But those are things that I could very easily turn a blind eye to in my world (until they happen to me of course).

In my world killing is wrong; not only because of the law but because it also feels wrong in my bones. I have been taught that life is sacred and, although I am atheist now, the moral teachings of my childhood still ring true.

Did the men who were trained to kill feel the same? Did they view life as sacred like I do now? Where does the idea of life being sacred come from?