Art is the proper task of life.
Art and nothing but art!
When one wants to play the Hero’s part onstage, he should not think of being in the chorus, he should not even know how to speak in chorus.
Over breakfast this morning, as one does, I got to thinking about Nietzsche, art and blogging. One of Nietzsche’s central themes was that one should live one’s life as art and seek out art in all things. One part of being an artist is having (and usually documenting) a process that is not revealed, it’s the final product that is important. Finally blogging, and maybe I’m thinking more about the life/micro-blogging things like twitter/jaiku/tumbls/FB status’. Are these things in opposition? If you want to live your life as art, should you hide away the artistic process behind your life?
One angle is that exposing the process is not bad. Some art does do this, many conceptual pieces play with the idea of the process and may not have a final artefact. Though that opens a can of worms about whether the documented process is the final artefact.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Another angle is that blogging like this is performance and that it is edited from the process of “real” life. The readers are an audience, like any other performance, even if the blogger doesn’t think that. I’ve heard and also felt that other people are living more interesting and cool lives. Then there is also the confusion between “real” blogs and “fictitious” blogs, lonelygirl15 or Belle de Jour. But then as it’s art who cares. Nietzsche was against the idea of Truth, it’s all a matter of perspective.
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?
I surpised that there isn’t more on Nietzsche and blogging in this line. I’ve only managed to chased up a couple of blog posts. One is interesting in that as he says, blogging works to fracture the nature of truth, so works well with the perspectivist position.
And interestingly at the end, something that has fascinated me. Nietzsche, started as an ancient art critic (philologist) but did he become an artist himself, either in his work or his life?
