I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things *

The artist's brother has learned how to fly. He has since taken his wife up in a plane and he has flown with her, dipping and weaving above the expanse of fielded countryside surrounding the market town where they now live with their delightful young son. I have always thought it must be an incredibly liberating feeling flying a plane. Nothing original to this thought, I know, but true all the same. In fact, getting above myself, I think I view the feat of the pilot pretty much as I view the artist. (The two are not so very different.) The pilot for example must know the magnitude and order of space and choose a direction in which to fly at the same time as soaring with a kind of composed relaxation above the humdrum. Well, the artist is the same. Flight is the process by which an object achieves sustained movement through the air by generating lift or using buoyancy. Well, art is the process by which an idea achieves sustained meaning sometimes on a wall by generating belief through the use of stimulation. Both chart a course, both can loop the loop, some prefer straight lines, while others, not always the most reckless, simply dive-bomb. No, the idea of a flight of fancy existing in real terms is very appealing to me. And I come at this with a kind of creative respect. If I had a plane right now and the freedom to do whatever I wanted with it, with no limit on fuel, a total ability to fly the damn thing, and great navigational skills, I would fly it with the artist in what I suppose would have to be a north-easterly direction and head towards the nearest sunset. We would watch the pinking clouds above the polar ice-cap, avoid throwing the plane into too steep a dive, and draw crazy patterns across the sky. There is a popular piece of software, a kind of virtual globe, which more and more people, especially children, are using as if only a flight simulator. Of course, they should really know that nothing can match the real thing. But they don't. Well ... nothing, that is, except the artist.
* Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)