New Year, New Blog Theme

Or just a theme, since I never really had one before, for my blog. Been feeling the need to give my blog more focus, so that it's not so random (although I do like the randomness of it sometimes, I wonder if you, dear reader, do?). Looking back on the past year and a half or so of my blog, I think some of my best entries intertwined my reflection on two of my favorite topics: art and politics. So that's what my blog will focus on from now on (at least until I get bored): art & politics, the intersections thereof, and what we can learn from particularly stellar examples of political art or artistic politics (hm, that doesn't quite sound right, does it? Politics can be creative, though, I swear!). And while I maintain that art and politics have very distinct functions in our lives and our world and don't believe in social realist propaganda as 'art', I also think that art can have a political function whether its creator(s) intend it to or not, and that function can range from sparking interesting cafe conversations between strangers to launching whole new social movements that transform society on many levels (can anyone say hip hop?).

My first example is THE BEST MOVIE of the year. I'm going to blog about this more later, but if you haven't gone already, you NEED to go see Brokeback Mountain, the so-called 'gay cowboy' movie directed by Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall. It's a gorgeous, haunting, sensual film, folks, so bring some hankies and a non-homophobic person to accompany you.

Happy new year!