Your comments have inspired me to comment

It's funny, after my roomate read my last blog, he laughed at the dichotomy of the paragraph on Achilles and then furniture. Bob Jingle (aka Brantley, aka Boob Jingle) also seemed bewildered of my comparison, but of film and furniture.

Allow me to elaborate, if I may ( and I will.) There are many forms of artistic expression in our culture, and have been since the beginning of man. Cave drawings for example, still exist today. Isn't that amazing, that even before man developed a spoken language, he was already communicating and leaving his mark. However simple they may be, Neanderthal man still had something to say. Cave paintings are like, on page one, of my art history book. That's where this art thing all started. It's about communication and expression, self understanding and understanding others.

Now, let us skip way ahead. The Greeks made a lot of beautiful pottery, we've all seen it in a photo or museum. But pottery, while a beautiful and lovely art, isn't a medium that lasts very long through the ages. Neither is papyrus. I only recall seeing a few scrolls, and I believe, and I'm totally guessing, that the circumstances of their survival was always out of the ordinary. Like they were hidden in a pot that was sealed in a tomb, that was buried under the earth, protected from the bad for art but good for human's element, oxygen.

Anything glass is tough to preserve over the years, unless it's well looked after, and behind more glass, or on the inside of a building such as the Met. And as in my example, Theatre has no stay power at all. Sure we can film a live piece and throw it on a DVD and bury THAT in the ground, but it's not the same thing. Dance is totally lost, just like theatre.

Film actually isn't probably one either...yet....but I know Martin Scorsese and his team is working on it. Restoring old prints and preserving the ones we have. I don't believe I'm making any stretch when I say that the preservation of film will always be moving forward and extending the life of this wonderful medium. I'm sure one day we'll have computers the size of marbles that contain all the info of the human race, like a big Encyclopedia, that we just hold in our hands and enjoy.

And furniture is a great medium as well. For some reason I can't link stuff when I type these out on my mac laptop, but I'll try to hop on here when I get home and link some examples of all this stuff. I love furniture, as an art form and as an heirloom. Someone made that 13th century writing desk. They made it with their hands, with hand tools. They probably labored for months on that piece, and when they were done, it was probably either sold to the wealthy, or presented as a gift to a family member. And over the centuries, like one of my favorite movies of all time, The Red Violin, that desk had adventures. And that desk is siiting in front of me.....and I'm looking at it...and thinking of all this stuff and sayin to myself, "yeah....now isn't that cool? I want to make something that will last like that!"

Which was the point of the whole thing. I want to make something that will last. Something that other people in the far distant future will get to see and appreciate. Anything is possible. I made a pretty nice bureau once, took me 8 days. I'm pretty sure it won't last, I didn't use glue in case I ever had to dissasemble it for moving.

I think I'll do a chair next.