The Sublime Roundabout

I recently attended an art crawl sponsored by our local community. They do this every first Friday of the month, and apparently it's very well attended. The weather here in the Pacific Northwest has turned cool and damp, which means that it's not as well attended as it is when it's warmer. But there were still plenty of people walking about and enjoying the evening. I went with a couple of friends, and one of them and I stopped in front of a particular piece of art. I forget which, and it's kind of irrelevant. But I asked her - what do you think of this piece? She said she didn't like it. I pursued - what is it about this piece that you don't like? She said she wasn't sure, but that she just didn't like it. She was obviously a little uncomfortable and worried about sounding silly or being offensive. I pointed out that the artist was 40 years in her grave, and wouldn't be offended. I also encouraged her to share what she felt as a result of lookin...

So today's Google doodle is about those ink blot test images. It is interesting to me to consider these things, because it would appear that there is much about the human condition that remains a mystery. For example, the cards may be rotated 90 degrees, at which point something completely different may appear. The question is, why does anything appear at all? Our brains would appear to be conditioned to look for the familiar in what we see. We look for faces in clouds, we see horse heads in nebulae, and we see the Virgin Mary in a tortilla chip. In a way, it's comforting I guess to see patterns in the world around us. It helps us make sense of things. It helps us cope with the vast amount of information that is constantly (!) entering our minds. But the human condition is one that is inherently complex. The complexity is wonderful, beautiful, and absolutely essential. With over 7.2 billion of us here on this planet, we can rest assured that there are people who are similar...