Behind the Name

Everybody has a view. It can be conservative, liberal, socialist or environmental. It can be biased or balanced. It can be about something big or small. It can be profession or passionate or both. It can be researched or spontaneous. It can be a view from the air or from the ground (if your short, which i am). Animals have views too, from the aforementioned ground and air to inside a cage or in the wilds of the forest or mountains. Birds and bees even have very developed views on sex apparently, but I never knew how that came to be. No matter where you're from, what nationality, race, religious system, sexual orientation or gender your part of everyone has views on something.

The point is, again, everyone has views. That includes, short students from Toronto such as myself. I don't consider my views or opinions to be anywhere near expert, but as a journalism student the belief that issues should be studied from all angles and researched intensely, which I have had faith in since I was a wee lad, has been drilled into me even more in the past year and a half. A lot of the time my opinions on issues are just developing. I have travelled tons and met all kinds of interesting and important people, but really, I have next to no experience in the world.

In one episode of the animated kids show Recess, the character T.J lives as a kindergarten-er for a day and finger paints. He describes how with fingerpainting you can feel the paint and the colours. And its true. there's nothing between you and the paint. Its all connected. It's kind of freeing. However finger painting is often seen as a the least civilized form of painting. I mean most times it's done by kids hopped up on grape juice who can barely string together a few nouns in a row, although I occasionaly like a good finger painting session. Finger painting may be a little crude, at least in grown-ups' eyes, but it is also so natural, so fundamental. I bet Picasso and Van Gogh finger painted. It may not have been Starry Night, but it was the start.

My thoughts are sorta like finger painting. They are not the most developed, but they are passionate, something I like, something that makes sense to me (and sometimes only to me) and the groundworks for something more, something I may be able to build on to help myself and others.

So as I set out on this blogging journey (my first) I hope to smear some paint on the canvas and hope that the picture that is hanged on the kitchen fridge turns into the Mona Lisa somewhere along the way.