Put a frame on it and call it art

I have spent most of my life trying to define art. Before you scoff, I challenge you to define art. Go on, try it, I dare you. Is it beauty to you? Is it something that evokes an emotional response? Is it line, shape, color, composition? Is it materials, texture, dimension? Is it sound, movement, light, the absence of light? Do you need any of those things to call something art?

What would you say if you drove around a curve and saw an entire mountain wrapped in orange silk? What if you heard someone singing opera in a subway station? What if you heard of someone who shot himself in the arm in front of an audience? Are those things art?

Does it have to be old to be art? If so, how old? Can it be two seconds old and be art? Do you have to be able to hold it in your hand or hang it on a wall or put it on a pedestal? Does it have to look like something you recognize, such as a man's face, a rearing horse, a naked woman? Is it art if you listen to it from the bleacher seats in a huge stadium with sixty-thousand screaming fans instead of on a vinyl record in your living room? Is it art if it self-destructs ten minutes after you bought it for a million dollars?

See what I mean? It's not that easy to define art. Art is what you say it is. What you say is art might be different from what I say is art.

I have my personal definition of art. Art is what I want to make. What is not art is what other people want me to make. For example, if you say, Hey, Carol, I really like your drawings. Can you draw me a cartoon of my mother riding a unicorn that I can print on a t-shirt to give her for her birthday? Or, maybe, Hey, Carol, you write funny stories. Maybe you should write a story about a specific topic for a magazine. You might even get paid.

I could say yes to both scenarios, but they would be jobs, not art. I'm not against jobs, but at my age, I'm just not that interested. I have chased money with my half-baked art ideas many times in my life and ended up poor and dissatisfied. Now when I make art, I may end up poor, but I am never dissatisfied. Some artists have a clear alignment between the art they make and the art the market wants. I envy them. They are the lucky ones. I have not yet been that lucky.

I'm tired, not thinking clearly. Summer came and went; I blinked and missed it. Tomorrow is the final day of September. The early onset of fall has prompted me to revive my rice-filled foot warmer. My next chore is to put plastic on the inside of all my east-facing windows. It's time to batten down the S.A.D. hatches with the therapeutic light box. The vertigo is ramping up as the temperature drops. I can't quit now, just because the days are growing shorter. My mother still needs me. Here we go into the dark tunnel, going to hell in a hand-basket.