and really what is art?

I have a random thought running through my head right now. Its something I thought about in detail the other night as I was having one of my late night brain blasts. (Normally during such times I have a million thoughts running through my mind. The next day I will try to remember what new revelations I came to but I usually can't recall. The scribblings in my journal sometimes offer help as to what I thought I discovered, but sometimes nothing can be salvaged and all thats left of my amazing new insight is a few floating words on a page that were somehow connected at the time...)

I was pondering about what people in todays day and age really consider art.

The typical responce would be that art is an expression of self, but sometime I feel like art becomes to precise. In some areas a person's use of technique is more important than the product itself, and tends to overshadow the image. In the new millenium we tend to put more emphasis on how well something is done, and not what it means.

I often feel my emotions as if through a magnifying glass. There is no in between for me, and so when I am happy it radiates off of me and when I'm sad its visible to the core. I can feel nothing else. If I don't let it out somehow it just rots there, almost like my feelings are an infection that must leave my body before they make me more ill. When these moments arise for my emotional puking, I just let something out.

Page after page of my journal is filled with nothing more than scribbles that "felt right" when they were put there. I also throw down poorly written stories or poems (or whatever one would call the mass of strange writing that ends up there), that are just terrible when not looked at in that exact moment. I can picture someone like me covering themselves in appropriately colored paint and running full force into a giant canvas to let out how they feel at that moment and actually be able to see it after.

Alot of times I look at what I've written and feel like I can create something "good" out of my mess, as if a reasonable states of mind can improve what I was trying to do. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it just doesn't. But is the pollished, tied together end product really my art, or would it actually be the original, difficult to read, grammatically incorrect rants? Essentially they are the same thing, but are they really?

According to the old sayings, art is an expression of self. I'm not sure if I still think this is true, or if I now art is more focused on perfection and technique. What do people appreciate more? And in th complex realm of art, does that even really matter?

I have no idea, but I am not going to edit what I just wrote. I'm posting it as is, mistakes and all.