Quote: (10-14-2017 11:44 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:
I want to produce, to generate, to create. It's just a personality-driven thing.
Does art need an audience or is the creation all that matters?
I went to a Funeral last week. A good mate's Grandfather died at Ninety-One, leaving behind his wife of
Seventy-Four years. My mate is Forty, and has never experienced Known Loss before, so I was ready to catch him in his grief.
After the Funeral and the Wake, in a quiet moment, he commented to me that he'd spent a lot of time with his grandfather over the last few years, and because of that, he wasn't sad about his passing, because the man was genuinely-happy with the life he'd lived.
He'd had a conversation with him about two weeks ago where the grandfather laid it all out for him. He had eight children, twenty-grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. He and his wife had lasted almost three quarters of a century together, and despite ups and downs, still loved each other deeply. He told my friend he had no real regrets, and there wasn't anything left he felt he needed to do.
"I think he knew he didn't have long," my mate said, "... and he wasn't scared or unhappy. So, I'm not sad for him."
I've seen other people near their end, and have seen the fear and regret that can set in, so I understood what he mean.
My mate continued: "It's funny, I was looking around at my family here. It's the first time all of us have been together in a long while..."
They're very spread out across the entire country.
"... and it struck me that, my family are
good people, and how lucky I am for that. I mean..."
He motioned silently to me, knowing my family history on all sides was full of criminals, narcissists, psychopaths, drug addicts, child abusers, shut-ins and, on my mother's side, genius-level women whose genuine high intelligence (not 'modern uni degree intelligence') should have set them at odds with society, but they flourished. (My great-grandmother was a Doctor, with her own Practice - not a Nurse - in 1912, even though third-wave Feminists would tell me that 'couldn't be true' because 'everyone knows' all women were trapped at home until the 70's).
I nodded, taking no offense in his implication.
He continued: "I mean, my sister has her issues, but we all care for each other. Even my Dad..."
...currently in Jail...
"... he can be useless at times, but he
does try."
I've always seen his father's sins as recognizably-human ones, and easily-forgivable, and it seems healthy that his children can overlook his repeated fuckups, rather than carrying long-term grudges about them, (aside from the Lesbian sister, who would find an unforgivable offense in a blank sheet of paper).
As such, are the familial bonds of compassion and care any less of an Art than the traditional considerations of Art? If an Intelligent Person chases their personal desires for glory and praise to the neglect of their own familial connections, whom then scatter and have little to do with them as they eventually die alone, isn't it, in its own way, a failed work of creation? A misshapen statue. An ugly, out-of-perspective painting, A song no-one wants to sing along with.
----------
Quote:Quote:
But think about this: even if Langan's great ability does not "produce" anything, perhaps that very lack of production is a thing of beauty in itself.
I really need to send you one of the outtakes from my last album, mate. You'll
get the song.
When I originally approached my collaborator, I'd completed the music for a good eighteen tracks by myself. I hired him as a paid singer and producer, and was quite blunt about what I was doing. I said, I didn't care if anyone else heard it, and genuinely-meant it. I've done the Music Game. This was just, finally, for me.
When I started, it was still cheap to press vinyl, because the resurgence hadn't yet happened. I laid out my plan. I was going to pay two grand and get two hundred copies made, and then, whenever I traveled in the world, I intended to take a copy or two on each trip, and drop them into a second-hand record store, so they could sit unnoticed amongst the Plastic Bertrand, Fairfield Parlour and Bananarama records, until, eventually, someone would chance it for two bucks, take him home, and, hopefully, their jaw would drop over how good it was, and they'd wonder how they'd never heard of this band.
Then they'd go to the internet, look it up, and... nothing. No-one would know who did it. No-one would know anything about it. It would be their own discovery, a private universe, unbeknownst to everyone else.
The idea took me back to my childhood, when your favourite album was an identity that separated you from others, especially if no-one else knew about the band. I said, 'Somewhere out there, there's a teenager who feels out of place for his intelligence, and the accidental discovery of this album could be his refuge.'
The idea simply struck me as both pure and beautiful.
The problem, of course, being I was always serious in my intention, whereas my collaborator, not understanding that someone could attempt to create something great only for it to be thrown away, though he could talk me out of it, seeing dollar signs, personal praise and career advancement for himself, none of which could ever hope to fill the void I've since seen yawning in his soul.
In the end, I relented, just hoping it would get the work done faster, but I still stand by my original idea. Sometimes beauty is a private thing, and exists without the gaze of an observer.
-------------
One night recently, I woke up in the middle of the night and walked out onto the balcony of my new property, and saw how the pale moonlight threw the fields into sharp relief. I ended up taking a walk in the quiet night air down to the mailbox. There's an short avenue of trees flanking the end of the drive, the filtered light falling through them was beautiful.
I wondered on how many nights that beauty had existed, but was unobserved by human eyes.
--------------
I used to jog in the summer evenings with a mate along the steeper streets across the valley in my last town. All the big houses were there: large and pretentious, where you could see people had enough excess money to start furnishing their front yards, like they were rooms. There was a fire trail behind the highest ones, and the views there at sunset were incredible, and would take my breath away.
Evening after evening, the pair of us would comment on the sunset, and the view across the valley, and how stunning it was.
Evening after evening, the balconies and entertaining areas of these big houses that faced the valley were completely empty.
After a while, I commented on how it seemed like such a shame that the occupants were missing the beauty in front of them. That town always had incredible sunsets.
My mate grunted. "They're probably still stuck at work, so they can afford to pay for their damn houses. We get the same view, and all it costs us is a little sweat."
-------------
I have had stillness on my mind, since my first post. As usual, if I ask for information, it is delivered. There's a
direct indirectness to this pattern, so I know when something seems small and insignificant it's worth looking closer.
Cleaning out some old boxes from the barn, I found an old book of devotional sayings, and it fell open on a page as I flipped it. Broken spine probably. A common thing for books.
I looked at the page.
It was a quote from Exodus 14:14: "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."
![[Image: potd.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/new/potd.gif)
