#WQWWC – The Queen of the Arts

This week, Ronovan is in charge of Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge and he has chosen the theme of:

ARTIST or ART?

When I was a young boy, I was very lucky. I had a scientific father and an artistic mother. My Mum was a concert pianist, a jazz musician, a model and an actress. My Dad was a mathematician and a statistician. As you can imagine, each of them had a very different approach to bed-time stories and the conversations that we’d have as we walked around the countryside. But that is a story for another day.

My Dad always related everything that we saw and heard to maths in some way or other. I learned that everything in the universe can be modeled mathematically. I enjoyed the beauty of it all.

Many years later, I studied for my Bachelor degree a the Open University (OU), the first ever distance learning university. My subjects were mathematics, computing and technology. In those days, all OU degrees were designated as Bachelor of Arts degrees. I felt that my subjects merited a Bachelor of Science degree. Lots of students felt the same way and eventually the change was made. However, my Dad convinced me that mathematics is the Queen of the Arts so the award of a BA was correct.

I am very proud of my BA in maths, computing and technology!
I am an ARTIST and I studied ART!

This has been a very obtuse way of making a case for my favourite quote for this week. It comes from the preface of the book that I am currently reading: The Humans by Matt Haig. It is hilarious but it contains a lot of home truths. The premise is that an alien is sent to Earth on a mission of discovery. He inhabits a human body. The whole book is an account, a report, from the point of  view of the alien. The human to whom our alien is assigned is a Cambridge Professor of Mathematics.

I know it is a very tenuous link, but it allows me to use the following quote. As our alien describes his observations of humankind, he concludes . . .

Oh, and let’s not forget The Things They Do To Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes – shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, writing a semi-autobiographical novel, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old, and harbouring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all.
Matt Haig

This makes you think, doesn’t it? What really matters in life?

Pingback: #WQWWC – Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge – Artist or Art