I've been revisiting older blog posts, tucked away in little packets across the Internet or filed in folder upon folder of hidden hard drives. I had a tendency to start any new blog (always a new blog for a new idea, to compartmentalise any new interest I had) with a post called "Ouroboros", or a snake eating its own tail. Just as I thought my forays into blogging would fizzle and perish, somehow life finds a way to continually regenerate itself, beginning again when reaching the end. But this also servers as an apt metaphor for reason for the stops and starts — as my interests changed and broadened, it felt necessary to create different outlets for each.
What I hadn't considered at the time, was how all of these interests linked (although the theme between them may only initially be apparent as 'me', as in, 'these are my interests, so they are all relevant to me'). What I referenced for this was a passage in the essay "Toward More Effective Arts Education" (Gardner)1:In incipient efforts to improve arts education, I've come to anticipate four separate players, or elements, on the scene. They may announce themselves overtly, or they may lurk in the background; but ultimately the must all be taken into account and synthesized if the effort is to succeed. To begin with, there are the philosophical notions of arts education: What is the purpose of teaching the arts, how are the arts construed, how do they relate to the rest of the curriculum and to the rest of society? Next, there are the psychological accounts of learning in the arts: What is the student like, how can teachers work effectively, what are the effects of particular media of instruction, how does one evaluate success or failure? A third component entails the artistic practices of the past: What sorts of things have been done (for whatever reason); which kinds of settings have been favored; who are the masters, the students, the expected audience? And the final component—particularly complex in any industrialized society—is the ecology of the educational system: the assigned curricula, the school administration, processes of certification and licensure, the decision-making processes. (p. 157)
Although Gardner is speaking specifically about arts education in this context, it nicely summarises the interconnectedness of everything. Government influences personal life, personal choices influence a society, societal changes affect technology and art movements, into fashions, and all of these little changes keep adding up and eventually affect what's at the top again, only to trickle back down into this endless process. One topic is not an island unto itself, and once we think we've reached the end, a new beginning starts.
1. Gardner, Perkins. Art, Mind, and Education. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1988-1989.