“Is this Art” by Hoppy Merryweather
“Perception is deception,” Leonardo da Vinci allegedly wrote back during the Italian Renaissance. “Yeah,” everyone else in shallow depths where water runs fast asks, “but what is art? What the hell is this supposed to mean? Is the artist a weirdo?”
Then again art therapist Scott Michael Brooks while addressing a Seattle-area mythopoetic men’s gathering back in the mid to late 2000s declared two things:
- “One does not BEAT the drum. One PLAYS the drum.”
- “We all have our points of view, but only God has View.”
So consider such matters as one sits upon a bench gazing out across still waters contemplating the nature of reality and the reality of sociocultural conditioning, genetics, and Non-Human Intelligences. And who or what is this Hoppy Merryweather guy? An avatar of some sort descended onto the terrestrial surface of Planet Earth from the lights above or into a living, bipedal mammalian body? A pseudonym? Or an alias? An alias for an alien? A character brought to light or into the darkness with giddy glee? Consciousness continues to conceal its mysteries.
Regardless of what answers may exist hidden like forgotten underwear kicked down into rumpled bedsheets and blankets, remember the smell of the lemongrass next to the peppermint as you fly eastward over the mountains and prairies and those big, wide rivers and then more mountains all the way to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Our planet rotates towards the Sun as it revolves around its star as our solar system in turn circulates around the center of our galaxy. And even the galaxy moves in chaotic concert with billions of others in just our one universe alone. For they’re only $3.00 USD today, each one of those 4 ounce bars of lemongrass soap found by happenstance in the Columbia City PCC grocery store in south-central Seattle. The current, combined state, county, and city sales tax in the City of Seattle, however, is 10.35%, 10.00% in Shoreline, 10.50% in Edmonds, 8.80% up in Mt. Vernon, and only 8.00% over in Pullman, Washington.
What, however, is the intrinsic value of art? What is the true value of the trees in a hectare of forest, beyond any mere quantity and quality of lumber? The forest provides shelter to the life living there, recycles the dead, protects all below from both sun and storms, secures the soil, retains water, exchanges gases above and minerals below, weaves together both physical and spiritual connections, and inspires awe, worship, and art. What is value anyway? We Earth Humans live in our oceans of language as fish live in the sea and birds in the air, yes? Does love have value, and, if so, what is the value of love? Quick, go love before it’s too late!
William Dudley Bass
Monday 21 July 2025
Tuesday 22 July 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.