I'd come to think our brains needed help transforming from trash compactors into microscopes, and that's where art comes in: a way to fight our instincts to truncate and elide, and, in so doing, to notice more, appreciate more, empathize more. Which is all to say, to experience more. If our lives are the set of experiences that we collect, then art

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Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail. Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention onto details (for instance, the excruciatingly beautiful curve of a lost lover’s neck). Art may seem to involve

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