What is art?

I'm excited for my Arts in Context class, even if it is an 8AM Monday morning kind of deal. I ran into a kid I knew from fall quarter and we chatted a bit, though I'm not sure how much we have in common. It was nice to sit next to somebody who wasn't a complete stranger, though.

I am already six different kinds of in love with our instructor, Graduate Student Assistant Josh Moon... call him Josh (eh, it was funny in class, at 8 in the morning with 20oz of coffee and two hours of sleep to go off of). He loves what he's teaching us - the philosophy and context of art. I am very excited for this class, even if it does have 175 students.

Our assignment today was to answer the question, "What is art?" on a class-wide blog. It's interesting reading other peoples' answers. Some of them are pretty thoughtless; others come very clearly from intelligent, passionate people. It's fun. Here's mine (and I don't know if mine falls into the 'thoughtlessly snobby' category or the 'intelligent, passionate' category because I am too tired to actually focus on what I wrote):

Art is a method of acknowledging perception. It is the varying impressions that language, visual imagery, the auditory, or perhaps even physical stimulus have on the human ability to think, reason, connect, contrast, and compare. Anything done with the intention of being perceived as something other than what it is, as a metaphor or simile, is art. Anything that is perceived as art is art. The awareness of symbolism or double meanings is entirely a human concept, and it's that awareness which makes music meaningful, paintings beautiful, and stories enthralling.