Maybe it's in my imagination, or my own expectations for myself, but I feel pressure sometimes when I write to come up with something completely new. This leads me to ask myself, what I'm writing for each time I want to begin. Why would someone want to read this? I still haven't got an airtight answer. There's nothing new here except a glimpse into my head, and who really needs that? So many questions I could ask myself in doubt but, do the questions themselves have a basis? Do I need validation from other for this writing to be satisfactory? 

I'm going to write for a minute about why I love this painting, Gateless Gate.

 Anytime I write, it's usually to no 'end' except that of my stream of thoughts. I see or experience something out in the world: a good book, a song, a conversation, looking out on the ocean, my own internal thoughts, just living, and it snowballs into.. this writing. I couldn't be writing to convince anyone of anything because I'm not an authority on any one subject. This affords me the opportunity to just observe, experience, and wonder about whatever it is that's happening in front of me. .

As I write about Alan Watts, or anyone I admire, I want one thing to be perfectly clear: he is still just a man. Obviously he and man being the operatives. What is important is that he, in distinction among his peers, was able to write about the deep mysteries humans perennially face in such an entertaining, engaging way. His 'abstract' or transcendental teaching is what should be lauded and focused on. If you care to, interest yourself in the man himself, get to know the face behind this voice of wisdom, but don't elevate the face to a state of pedestalization. When you do that, people opposed to his view would be justified in using any normal, material and human hang-ups to somehow discredit his extraordinary way of teaching that goes beyond his physical body in his writing and waves of influence. Such it is with art. I'm hesitant in using the word teaching here because he frequently turned away from his guru label; he had nothing to explicitly teach and much more to share. He simply expressed a point of view that he enjoys. "Preachers err, [Joseph Campbell] told me, by trying 'to talk people into belief; better they reveal the radiance of their own discovery.' How he did reveal a joy for learning and living!" Bill Moyers said that in The Power of Myth on Joseph Campbell, and I see it ring very true indeed for Alan Watts.