A start

I spend at least an hour each morning reading after breakfast.  Books of choice usually centre around psychology, human nature and behaviours, the why of all the differences amongst people.  Thanks to a Christmas present of several years ago from my son, I was introduced to Lewis Hyde (www.lewishyde.com), "poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination".   This introduction to the works of Lewis Hyde was appropriately entitled 'The Gift' and started me exploring more deeply the idea of the role of 'art' and 'creative works' in our society.


To speak to the content of the book directly would take far too long.  My random thought today is just to say how much the reading of this book prodded my brain and allowed me to widen my own reflections on the impact any creative process has on its public.  In short though I was caught by Mr. Hyde's clarity where he plays on the word 'gift' where in English, a 'gift, is both a 'talent' and a 'present' and how these two meanings intertwine.


Just a couple of months ago, while browsing in Amazon.ca, I saw another of his books 'Trickster Makes this World'.  I ordered it  and was excited to anticipate spending my morning read over the next couple of weeks with this in hand.   Once again, I was caught by one of its themes, the idea of how the artist allows the spectator to cross boundaries by encouraging him to look at something with a different slant and by doing so, to one degree or another changes and enriches his view on society.  To quote Lewis Hyde in his introduction:


"Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox"    


And then, as I was doing my research for Christmas books (a bit of a tradition in our family - rather than an orange stuffed into the toe of the proverbial Christmas stocking, our now-adult children get a book), I fell upon his most recent publication, 'Common as Air'.   The New York Times Book Review says this about the book:  


'An eloquent and erudite plea for protecting our cultural patrimony from appropriation by commercial interests'


With two kids in the creative business, one a writer, the other in the writing, editing, graphic design in the space of Art, I felt that in reading this book, there would be much fodder for discussion during the Christmas holidays.  Lewis Hyde explains so well the historical significance of 'commons' that which belongs to the people as it pertains to all things with the limitations and benefits.  He then takes the reader into the world of copyright and patents and how this plays into our current context of the digital world, once again outlining the advantages and disadvantages.  


And through this reading, my own vocabulary with regard to my favoured creative expression, embroidery, might become clearer.