AG: The question is “What is art?” and why art?… (It’s a big philosophical question)…
Student (1): I’ve been listening to what people have been saying here and stuff..
AG: Stuff?
Student (1): Yeah, stuff, and I think a lot of people are stuck about art and poetics. I just think we’re missing the point. Like, to me, art really is a vehicle for us to explore our world, ourselves, or what is happening around us. You know, it can be selfish. It can be introvert/extrovert, but it’s still exploring. You’re still exploring and thinking. You’re trying to find a new path…
Student (2): A love-affair. A love-affair with the phenomenal world.
AG: Actually, (in) one of our early prose descriptions of the Naropa poetics program, we had this word “probe”? ..(and)…..what was the connection? – “probe into reality” – “probe” was the word we used. (And) that was Gregory’s word, Corso, (who reads his poems as “probes” – “Death” ,“Bomb” “Police”) – to probe all of the possible ideas.
Student (3): I don’t think it matters for the artist, because the work, whatever he does, has got to be exploring something.
Student (4): You have this idea of the the artist as a separate thing from the rest of the world. (the artist lives up there, (outside), his whole life, and records, or something) and that’s totally contradictory with the idea that the art is actually drawn from (the lives of) human beings – The whole idea is a contradiction, I think.
Student (3) : Really?
to be continued
Audio from the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately eighty-eight-and-three- quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately minutes in ninety-and-a-quarter