I've been gone for awhile. One of those pauses in life where there isn't any direction - no real drive to do anything. Slept alot, read Foucault's Pendulum, did my taxes, just drifted along.

This seemed to be one of those times when I lost interest in photography - the plateauing, or reassessment of values and other generic artistic angsting.

It turns out it wasn't that at all.

My daughter picked a college. She's leaving in late August, and will be the last of the three to leave home. Her oldest brother graduated from law school a while back and is successful. He's paid back his loans and is quitting a huge NYC partnership to teach high school (also in NYC) at what will be an 86% pay reduction. I'm proud of him.

Number two son is in his first year of school Back East and is doing well. Starting to think about grad school.

The Ex and I have always shared the values we most wanted to pass to the kids. Very high on that list was education. And now I feel like we've done our jobs well. It seems that I've been sitting here smiling so much about how they've done so far, that everything else pales by comparison, including photography.

I know - this doesn't have to do with art. Well, maybe it does. Maybe, for me anyway, it puts it in a kind of perspective. Something that most of the time is my obsession, my consumer of time and resources, and my standard of self-judgement, seems to have little value when compared to the love and pride I feel for my children.

To see if I can salvage some art out of this, maybe it would be of value to explain what part art plays in the broader scenes of our lives.

So, how important is art to you? What is more important? What is less important, but to a "normal" person would be more important? Etc.?

-Don