'Interest'

Taken from 'The Debt to Pleasure', written by John Lanchester.

'I'm not sure how interested we should be in the idea of interest. It's such a secular category of mental activity - it implies such an emptying out of content. One can't imagine Dante or Pascal being "interested" in something. Pascal's interest in roulette was a terrifying confrontation with the omnipresent immanence of his creator, a face-to-face interview with God. You would no more ask him if it was "interesting" than you would ask a matador if he was "interested" in bulls, a man in a crow's nest on a windjammer during a gale whether he was "interested" in reefs, a ballet dancer at the apogee of his leap whether he is "interested" in gravity, a whore checking the balance of her savings account whether she is "interested" in men. It's a condition of our banality that we are so interested in things; that we assume that the idea of interest has any force. None of the most important events in our life are "interesting" - birth, copulation, death. A man standing on the edge of the abyss has passed beyond interest in the void. Abyssum abyssum vocat. '

Despite awareness of the overuse of the word 'interest' and its apparent demeaning nature I will hasten to say I intend to use this blog as an area in which to express and explore my current 'interests'. As a first year Fine Art degree student, I feel as though I have only just begun to be properly introduced to 'art' and also 'the arts' as a wider context. Thus to refer to a subject which can be involved within one of these categories as an 'interest' appears to be wholly appropriate; for I am not established in anyway, I can only hope to learn as much as possible through my own motivations and determination as and when opportunities arise. I'd like to record my own findings and where appropriate expand on them. Sometimes these 'findings' may develop into ideas for work, sometimes they may be realisations in themselves, sometimes they may be but thoughts that I have had on any given subject which move in and out of relevance.One thing is certain at least, which is that I am at the beginning of my artistic journey, with many avenues to explore.