A Time for Tone

Buford Youthward
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Shakespeare made an interesting premise: living for emotion is tragic while living for intelligence is folly. Seeking knowledge may seem a validating enterprise but to neglect soul, to forgo warmth, coolness, detachment and attachment is to deny experience. It would be a great loss of color.

Of course no one lives in one sphere alone. We occasionally wake hell bent on seeking growth and other days occupied with seeking release and pleasure. We need that cyclical stimulation. We need control as much as we need desire.

The graff circuit affords a nice mix providing an outlet for our episodic fits of resistance. Resistance in the relationships between us and our things, our issues. Applications of the medium are intense, introspective, exclusive agreements between the world and its agent and other times the applications are inclusive shouts of oneness, acknowledgment. To each his own chorus.

To find your own voice, to shout your chorus, you�ll have to come to terms with tone dynamics. Perhaps when critics speak of �voice� they really mean tone. Tone of temperament. Tone of taste.

The tone of graffiti is often neglected or overlooked by many. Fusing senses sometimes helps in making sense. We are familiar with the term tone-deaf, are we capable of being tone-blind as well? Can graffiti enable us to see what is not there? How true to the life you find yourself living are you capable of exhibiting? Do you hit more or miss less the world you render?

For those that think, life may be a comedy and for those that feel, life may be a tragedy. Stoicism, sacrifice, selfishness and selflessness all merge in blurred places. In our heart, in our head, somewhere just within touch of ourselves.

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