Artists – Anton Martin Smith Writer

By Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Right now it is Autumn – or as the yanks say – “fall”.

The other day I looked at a giant pile of wind curated leaves on my front yard.

The thought appeared –

Each leaf has come from a particular tree, from a particular branch, & from a certain sub-branch,

But as I look at the big seemingly homogenous leaf pile – that information is not available to me personally.

The Physics man tells us in that theory you could somehow still “ID” any one of those leaves.

For the total information content of the universe is always preserved.

I thought that it’s pretty cool that there are trillions of seemingly indistinguishable leaves out there but the universe still knows exactly where they came from.

I also was kinda miffed that I’d never be able to find that info – or so I thought.

A couple of days later, most the leaves had fallen – so there were only a couple of hundred of leaves on each tree.

I watched one of them waggle on the tree, & I could even watch it waggle off from its precise location.

That meant when that leaf hit the big pile of its friends below,

I could know exactly where it used to live – which tree which branch which sub-branch it fell from.

A lot of artists say that science ruins the ‘magic’ of the world – I disagree –

I think both of these ‘where did the leaf live’ situations were interesting in their own right.

The real problem these artists who say science ruins ‘the magic of the world’ is they don’t know any science at all.

If they knew just a little about it, they’d see some of the magic in science too.

But I won’t labour the point –

I mean it’s not my place to once again throw the second law of infodynamics into another artists face.

I’ve been doing that far too much lately & I really must cut down on it.

And in closing If you ask someone be they a leaf, an artist, or a man of science

They will all agree that…

….I’ve got to fucking get out more….

But then again….

Is there really anything wrong with leaves falling in a bored man’s head?...

by Martin Anton Smith

“Hi I need directions”

“Oh, well where are you going?”

Oh, I guess anywhere will do!

“Well then, any road will take you there”.

This is one on the great old movie lines,

So much so,

The late talented songster Mr G. Harrison wrote a song about it.

His variation of the line was

“If you don’t know where your going – any road will take you there”.

There’s a simple beauty to the idea & the sound of that line.

There’s a gentleness to it.

There is no judgement.

It says – it’s ok to not know what the hell you’re doing.

And artists take solace in that –

Because Artists & Writers are famously “woolly-minded”.

Of course, an accountant would hate that line.

It would make them feel, in their own way –

er…let me say….quixotically queasy.

They’d rather rephrase it as

“If you don’t know where you’re going –

well you should have taken that postgrad diploma then,

like I told you when you graduated”.

Some of us are risk adverse,

Some of us like the adventure,

Of not knowing what you’ll do;

Today

Tomorrow

Next Week

Next Year

Next Decade

Next Life.

Now excuse me, I must find that street called ‘any road’ –

Other wise I might not get there.

Alas this was my vaishingly small ode,

To that very much underrated thing,

That those drab-un-joking-careermen fear so much:

Uncertainty.

While us bad Artists, would be Writers, & not quite Quantum Physicists,

Just spread it on our toast each morning.