Just as last year was beginning to close its eyes for the last time, in exploratory artistic project mode, I decided to (attempt) to follow:

Thus, I have clarified my world view, and picked my platform personality, (steps one and two) and as I’d already started a blog etc (steps three and four), and have no intention of trying to cajole people into signing up to an email list (step five), I was able to fixate on step six. To write and publish a manifesto. I had to remind myself what a manifesto looked like and, thanks to Scarlet, spent several happy hours reading those of various art movements. Most of them were too bonkers to help really, and this from Wikipedia only seemed to confuse me more:

Before the early 20th century, the manifesto was almost exclusively a declaration with political aims. The intention of artists adopting the form, therefore, is to indicate that they are employing art as a political tool.

The art manifesto has two main goals. The first is to define and criticize a paradigm in contemporary art or culture; the second is to define a set of aesthetic values to counter this paradigm. Often, manifestos aspire to be works of art in their own right; for instance, many manifesto writers intend for their texts to be performed.

But a break from normality during the holiday hurrah found me picking at the genre until I cracked. Ergo, I present

Curious-Authentic: A Manifesto

All is equal in the eyes of the Curious-Authentic Artist.
The biscuit is equal to the banquet.
The mountain is equal to the ditch.
The storm? It is equal to the limpid pool; and that slant of sunshine bouncing off a clean spot on a rusty bicycle  is equal to a melting snowman in the garden of a dying librarian.
Different than does not mean less than.
The burnt crust is equal to the moist cake, thick with chocolate frosting.
The shoe is equal to the trouser.
We need them both, though some have neither.
We need them too.
The newborn and the octogenarian with a broken toe are commensurate.
Your laughter rising from a tiny point in the depths of your intestine is equal to the tears you shed when the cat died.
Draba is equal to rose.
The pothole at the end of the street that could house a giant pike is as valuable as a fleet of Mercedes sparkling in the lot.
For the solution to be found the question must present.
The discarded ring pull is equal to the beer.
The refugee fleeing from war, is equal to the star hiding from the tabloid hack.
The spanner collector’s unending monologue is as useful to the writer as a professor’s lecture on Kafka, though more tiring. 
I heard of a woman who paints chillies over and over again, her house is filled with these canvases. There is a man who thinks his car is more important than his wife, though, when queried, is quick to deny it. Some people like jam, others like Marmite, still others eschew all pleasures in their personal quests for salvation. 

The Curious-Authentic Artist will step into a lift with any of them, grateful for the material.

I seem to be channelling Walt Whitman, but hey…

Header image from: Widewalls Ltd, which is well worth a browse.