Labor

I've been participating in the center's Facilities Training program for the second day now, as an additional bit of training for my soon-to-be-new position, and I have to say there's something liberating about it. I remember working at this movie theater and I'd mop the floors between each show, wipe everything down, sweep the theaters, take care of everything by myself, really. There's real freedom in this kind of work. There's real pride you can take from elevating something to its best possible level of presentation. I think there's some parallel to be made there between good, honest labor and art, attempting to reach some state of perfection. Perhaps a connection between this kind of work, this "janitorial" labor, and an art form, and a following connection between an art form and "art" itself... as long as there's a demarcation between the two.

As there most certainly is a rift between the idea of something being "an art," and something being "art." A friend of mine would argue with me to the death that Martial Arts (for purposes of self-fulfilling nomenclature, we'll say KUNG-FU!) was art, or at least a form of art. Simply put, Martial Arts could be an art, just as anything could be an art, but it could never be simply art. You can strive for perfection in anything, and by deriving from that a cultivated system of knowledge (the perfect way to punch the hell out of someone) you can make it "an art," but that's not "art," it's just not what art is. People rarely make the distinction.

Nor do people make distinctions between the floor of a movie theater and the floor of a slaughterhouse/sewage-treatment-facility. That's the other thing I've been reminded of lately from my days as a cinema employee .

Anyway, I'm at work right now. I just wanted to update from here. The wonders of modern technology.

More on this later.

I still owe you porn bingo, I know. I'm working on it. It's tough to fill up twenty-five squares.