Sunday Scribblings: Simple

But nothing ever is simple, is it? Even death is, one way or another, not simple. Certainly life, and the questions of life, are not.

Art at its best is anything but simple - and yet it may look deceivingly simple once done. It may feel deceivingly simple in the process, if the steps of that process have been learned until they are bone-deep intuition. But if you try to break it down and explain, not merely the technical parts, but how you select each element...it starts to look very, very complex.

I sometimes say I want my life to be simpler. But I don't, not really. I treasure the daily complexity that surrounds me, the machinery, the intricacies of a picture, the interplay of people, the sometimes-fickle attentions of my cats. None of these things are particularly simple.

And to simplify them would be to take the heart out of them. I don't want my life to be simpler. I guess I want it to be easier, but even that, not at the price of losing the precious details.