Developing a business sense progresses. After a long struggle I've finally grasped an understanding of financial conceptualisation which does not irk me. For those not in the know, I've long held the phrase, "Money makes the world go around," in vehement contempt. It cheapens and demeans the flux of human existence reducing all sense of human exchange to mercantile materialism.

See, money does not make the world go around. Money is merely a consensual, symbolic manifestation of a relative concept of value. It. Is. A. Tool. Money no more makes the world go around than a brush makes a refined painting, or a chisel a realized sculpture.

On a celestial scale, gravity, mass, magnetic fields and inertia + friction define what makes a world "go around". On a more relatable parallel though, sentient ambition is what makes things go. Desire. The craving for something more, something perceived as needed. We go to sleep because we're tired. We eat because we're hungry. We hunt for sex and games and cheaply made glass kitsch ornaments because we perceive them to be aspects of being necessary to a satisfactory, personal story and existence regardless of whether they may be to another person or not.

The allegory of the Goblin Market says it best; "Your heart's desire for ten years of your life!" "I'll trade you a king's fortune for the colour of your eyes!"

We create value. Facilitate the semblance of worth. How much is an hour of your time worth? A day? What can you do in a week that might be worth what another person might be able to do in a week?

How much is an hour of your creative time worth? What about that same amount of time spent manufacturing something you don't have to think about or invest your personal perspective and innovation in? It may be more efficient to mass produce the machined industry. And yet, the potential to produce, to create something that no one else has seen before, that no one else has thought of or made manifest in such a way as you might be able to, that could transcend the centuries and in its own way extend your legacy beyond the bearing of death and our own mortal coils -- what is that thing worth? How much value should we place on human potential?

They dug up a leather dog collar that had been found in Tutankhamun's tomb for over three-thousand years. A silly, decorative lead perfectly preserved for three millennia. Yet that one piece tells so many stories about the art, domestication and personal disposition of a people who lived and died countless generations in our world's past. Beyond the veil of flesh, beyond human limitation it is a time vessel, incarnate in the material an abstraction of sense, value and so much worth. So much more than a green, glittering tool.

AGENDA:

May 29-31 -- Project A-kon: chalking

June 12-14 -- Dallas City Arts Festival: chalking