Unsurprisingly, someone responded to my ‘i”m not an artist” post yesterday with a comment that ‘art is communication”.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Art can be and is many things. Different people have different understandings of what is and isn”t art.

Note how I phrased my post: I don”t think I”m an artist. It isn”t my intent to create and I don”t, in fact, make art.

Do some people create art in order to communicate? Yes. Sure.

But that isn”t me.

Maybe I should get over how much this bugs me, but it does bug me. I don”t want to be an artist because I”m a philosopher. Yes, some people are both, but I am not. And I don”t have to be.

So whatever your personal views about what is or isn”t art, are pretty much irrelevant to me. I get to decide what I do and what I am, not you. What matters is what my view of what makes an artist.

Its weird. Whenever people tell me they are artists, I take them at their word. And yet… no one will take me at my word that I”m a philosopher and not an artist.

I don”t get why people are so invested in this (and it isn”t just my unnamed interlocuter). It”s something I bump up against all the time.