Philly is a great city to walk around in when it’s nice outside. It’s a people-watcher’s paradise, full of interesting sights.

The blue pill?

I’m gonna show the whole world that I have nothing to prove.

I don’t know if this is something particular to the human species, but we have a very strong attraction to patterns and what is familiar. I don’t even know if “attraction” is the right word. In many ways it’s like a deer-in-headlights kind of attraction – patterns fascinate and mesmerize us.

Considering this, it makes a lot of sense that pattern is one of the most basic and essential parts of art. When we see paintings, the ones with identifiable patterns or recognizable images tend to draw our eyes. Our favorite music is packed with repeating hooks that we remember even if we forget every other part of the songs. Of course making good art is not as simple as making a good pattern. The problem with pattern is intrinsic – patterns are predictable. The challenge to the artist is to exploit the attractive powers of pattern while creating something that is new and original.

This is both not as hard as it sounds and harder than it sounds. It is not as hard as it sounds because of the particular way our attraction to pattern works. If you make a sound in a silent room, it will stand out and draw attention much more than if you were to make a sound in a noisy room. Likewise, if you throw something new and unfamiliar in the middle of a pattern it will stand out and draw attention. We can use the pull of pattern to draw attention to the unfamiliar and unique. It is harder than it sounds because combining the predictable and unpredictable in a way that is coherent to our senses is no easy task. As I write this, I wonder if it is not this contradiction that is at the heart of what we call art and what draws us to it.

I think anyone who is a passable artist applies this idea to some degree, whether or not they have actively considered it in the way I describe it. As it often is, knowledge is power in this case. By being conscious of the effects of the predictable and the unpredictable, the artist is able to manipulate pattern to serve his purposes to an even greater degree. Artists constantly seek to create patterns, but the aware artist will follow up the creation of a pattern by trying to break it. This is something I must constantly remind myself of, for though I know it, it is easy to fall back into old patterns.