Thoughts About Art Being More Worth Than A Man's Life

Some afterthoughts I had after seeing Monuments Men, which is good, I think, considering the movie was such a drag. I admit, I was emotionally moved when I saw some of Mankinds greatest art, I even had tears. But I am also emotionally moved when I see a happy child playing loudly; or when seeing newly born kitten, deerkids etc.

So the question is: is art the soul of people, of Mankind, as Monuments Men wants us to think, or just a fleeting remnant which will soon be lost, gone, because everything changes and falls back into quantum particles and then becomes waves again?

And: when I see Hagia Sophia, I don't see art, I see the suffering of human slaves who built this architectural delight. The same goes for other great architectural art, like Taj Mahal, and of course the pyramids.

When I see great movies, with their creators all dead (or very old by now), like The Great Dictator, Arsenic and Old Lace, Bringing Up Baby, Harvey, Ladykillers, To Be Or Not To Be, Rififi, The Third Man, Plein Soleil, Chinatown, The Wild Bunch, The Getaway, Bullitt, Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulvard, From Here To Eternity and so on, I think: What is life? And what is this fleeting moment of some 70 or 80 years in Kali Yuga, when in the Golden Age, like Eastern myths tell us, life of man was thousands of years long?

And then I come to the only conclusion: Life is now, Life is the moment when putting quantum particles into a timefreeze and cherishing that. Yes, I'm a Buddhist of Theravada tradition, and yes, I'm also a Quantum philosopher.

I always begin my day with yoga and other exercises, doing them very consciously (or trying to); and after that, when meditating, I catch a fleeting moment as I freeze a movement in the quantum sea (or Quantum Soup, as one Nobel Prize Winner called it). And when I catch that, I catch the next moment, then the next, and when I am lucky, I can meditate like that for a few seconds or even minutes, then I'm lost again on a train of thoughts. Then I remember, I start anew, and so on. Somehow refreshed I start into the day (whatever that means), I write this sometimes (for me) boring blog, or I rewrite some movie scripts, novels, whatever. And then I look at movies and tv series. Preferably new ones. I'm sometimes astounded, where tv shows go, how broad they paint, how they remind me of Dickensian novels which Dickens coincidentally also wrote in weekly instalments, each one ending in a cliffhanger. He even created something like an episodic writing style, like good modern tv shows do, and he still ends up with a fully structured coherent novel. By small instalments he was able to reach also the poor who could afford these small parts of a big novel.

And after that I mingle. Exchange thoughts. Or read a book, if my neighbour is not too loud.

OK, enough bullshitting, I don't mingle, I'm Viennese and as such I detest people, in Viennese: "Alle Menschen san [sind] ma [mir] zwider [zuwider]." 

OK, my Coffee con Latte is finished and so is this reflection on life, creation and fleeting moments which seem to us as being eternal. Soon you will see one of my creations, intended to make you laugh or get drawn into the story.