This time it starts with a chicken

This morning it was reported on the radio that a boy in England had lost his chicken.

There was some twittering and retweeting in between, and then the chicken was found on the other side of the road.

So they had wrung yet more laughs out of an old joke. 

Then I started to think about the one about the chicken and the egg.

Is it the case that talented and creative people become artists? 

Or is it the case that people who do art, however fumbling, in concentrating their attention on how to share their particular truth or sense of wonder in a poem or painting or whatever, release a latent ability to become more aware of their world than non-artists, and then they find new and interesting ways to show what other people overlook simply to get their work noticed? Or merely because it’s more satisfying trying not to bore others – or themselves?

The people who do art are more likely to find something because they are looking for something. And in trying to express what they are discovering, they are forced to look ever more carefully, to analyze and evaluate what is most important in the thing they wish to portray. The more they look, the more they see, the more they see, the more they wish to share it, and the more they try to shape their medium to express their experience and ideas, the more they have to ask whether they are succeeding at their task, and the more they ask, the more they have to look again at what started it all. It’s a virtuous circle.

Perhaps, the more you try to do art, the more talent and creativity you unleash.

Chicken and egg.

Of course, as with everything else, some people are better at doing some things (that is, all the various pieces of a particular artistic process) than others. Call them good artists.

But why do some people look, and so many people overlook?

Why did that chicken cross the road?