Musings...

Today on the eve of my birthday I would like to share with you my favorite quote of all time, by the mighty Oscar Wilde

This appears in the preface of my little faux leather book dating somewhere in the 1950's found in a great secondhand bookshop in Derbyshire.

"The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism
is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in
beautiful things are the cultivated. For
these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or
badly written. That is all."

It gets better...

"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless."

When he says useless he is speaking of it being an impractical object and it is enough to simply enjoy it for enjoyments sake. A man after my own heart. All art may be useless in practical terms, but my god it is invaluable in spiritual terms.

And now it's in print

As a serial blooger, my journey to tech-heaven has been as a late-comer to using a computer, let alone an ipad! Yes I succumbed to the slim sexy machine that it is...

Anyway enough salivating for now. Looking back to a time when I didn't have a mobile phone let alone a laptop, my fear of all things high tech was palpable. I felt reassured by books, paper could be held in your hand. It didn't get lost or deleted quite so easily. Writing everything down on paper before typing into a computer seems laborious, but that's how I used to work. It wasn't so much that I was incapable, but that my confidence was low.

I have now learned the only way to find out how to do something is to give it a go! I applaud anyone who has the get-up-and-go to do something for themselves and who invites others to join in. Launched as both an online blog and a paper And now it's in print does just that. The decision to produce a newspaper version as well as an online one is commendable, to draw in a wider audience, spread the word across the mean streets of Melbourne. James Noble headed up the design and production team. As the designer of the gallery website I would recommend him highly.

Having never visited Melbourne, (I will be next year, yippee) this encouraged me to explore the city more as it has come to life through the endeavors of a group of light minded creative individuals- all with great websites of their own - searching their city for others who are doing exiting things too. Curating the site and inviting others to point out great things on their doorstep is an inspiration for us all.

They successfully launched their first edition and it will appear online soon. Why not take a leaf out of their book and point out some great sites to them or do your own....