Take the golden middle road, they say. But everytime I do it, I feel the urgent, alarming heaviness of both extremes pressing against my power of judgment. I couldn’t acquit of my existential and professional obligations with walking the middle path. As I work almost continuously these days, I am often pulled to one extreme side.
There’s nothing static or regular or “average” about writing or painting. The spectrum of failure borders on infinity, and there’s nothing you can do for you, as an “author”, to secure your creative “business”. There’s actually a cold war going on between your imagination and your intelligence that, occasionally, erupts into a full scale conflict. Either way, you end up a prisoner. A miserable slave of either your brain or your heart. In time, you learn to take this tyranny as a mark of existential competence that every now and then turns into a moment of creative bliss. That you can use. And that only.
As for the peaceful middle road where everyone feels at ease, I’d take it as a mark of pleasant nothingness and decadent “democracy”. That’s where strategy is mistaken for approval, opinion is mistaken for judgment, emotion is mistaken for poetry, arrogance for wisdom, and Manhattan for art.
PS1: “Spiderman”, ink and pencil on paper.
PS2: Norah Jones. I liked her very first album back in 2002. Somehow it was OK to think about Norah being warm, shy and impersonal, since she didn’t pen the songs on Come Away With Me. Then Not Too Late came out and noticed that somehow, it was already too late: her writing skills were vague, she seemed to have lost the grip. Now, that she tried her hand again with The Fall I have to say I can’t surrender to her music anymore. No thread to follow, no point to stick with. She’s sweet, but unspecific, soft, but not subtle, pleasant, but not imaginative. I have my little favorite though: “Young Blood”.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm and is filed under life 'n art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
You’re blessed, you really are.
Take care of yourself you’re a treasure
Did you ever read Michel Houellebecq? You remind me of him.
very nice, I agree, maybe a bit harsh though. Manhattan IS art after all
+1 from me too, meaning i agree, especially with the third paragraph.
Thank you so! I even feel like dedicating you a great song I just got from a friend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7PxdyEdDw&feature=player_embedded#
And @Ned, I forgot to mention that I haven’t read any of Houellebecq’s books, even though I got one from a friend and flipped through the first pages. I’m not very fond of contemporary literature (except the South American one and some US poetry) and I especially hate the French cynicism/pessimism and skeptical/intellectual views on the world, all that whining about everything, that aggressive nihilism that I find very immature and sterile. I prefer French cuisine.
GREAT SONG here!!!!
“to secure your creative business” – true, you can’t do that. Fortunately……
I see, I don’t agree with you, but I understand your point. I think you’ll have a lot of traffic and a lot of interesting voices around here if you would decide to write reviews and discuss authors the way you sometimes do in comments. You always have a point and critical and interesting ways of seeing art and literature and that’s very appreciated and… almost unusual
Just a thought…
Thank you for your thoughts, Ned, but I’m not sure I want to write reviews online. I have my opinions, yes, but expressing them in blog posts would make no difference. There are so many websites and blogs and electronic papers reviewing and commenting recent works (of art etc.), I don’t think I want to be one of them. I like to approach more general (less obvious but somehow fundamental) issues. This is not a “cultural” blog, but – let’s say – an “existential” one. Something to like or hate, but certainly not something that requires a certain cultural background. I feel very grateful for having readers all over the world, with VERY different interests and very different reasons for coming here. They’re not awfully many, but certainly not just a few. I’ve grown very comfortable with the format of this blog. I hope you will too.