The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Romantics
… the paintings of Jean-Martin Roch caught my eye in particular… austere… almost religious in effect… his Portrait of an Adolescent slays me… an alien being from another time and place…
… or his Ruins with Cut Trunk…
Reminded myself that getting your cast iron skillet to the right temperature is crucial in the making of a classic French Omelette.
The wife and I are planning our football adjacent movie marathon for Superbowl Sunday: www.esquire.com/entertain…
Anyone have a favorite to recommend?
Grocery store clerk: “Who do you want to win the Superbowl?”
Me: “can you tell me who’s playing?”
Today the White House called out “some elected officials” for “trying to block the Administration’s effective measures because they would rather keep immigration an issue to campaign on than one to solve. —[Letters from an American, January 30, 2023]((https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-30-2023)
One way to make the reader believe in a thing, whether it be ghosts or a kitchen table, is to show it from deeply inside this narrator’s perspective: use his language, and consent to his restricted, perhaps habitual, view of things. –George Saunders
Really, really good…
From this morning’s walk… #blackandwhite #photography #b&w
When I looked back on my week of attention paid, as represented by what I chose to post to these blog pages, this post by Maria Popova resonated. The title, Against the Cult of Originality, caught my eye.
As I thought about the proposition of a “Cult of Originality” I thought about the number of times I have come across the idea that one had not arrived, could not hope to arrive, as an artist until they had found the unique voice that distinguished them from all others, the voice that made them an “original,” a soloist.
Maria Popova writes this about genius and originality:
The best things in life we don’t choose — they choose us. A great love, a great calling, a great illumination — they happen unto us, like light falling upon that which is lit. We have given a name to these unbidden greatnesses — genius, from the Latin for “spirit,” denoting the spirit of a universe we can only submit to but cannot govern.1
She is talking about the spark of creativity as a gift. Our charge is to become the medium through which the genius of the cosmos is delivered to our species and to take no ego gratification from it. Of course, the very idea of genius in our society is that of the prodigy soloist.
In the paragraph immediately following her declaration above she cites Wordsworth who proclaims that genius does that which hasn’t been done before and is worth doing, well. But wait, isn’t that the same as being unique, qualified as it is by the stipulation that it be done well and in a direction deemed useful? Even while writing against the cult of originality it is hard to free oneself from the adoration of… originality.
But then she gets to the point with Emerson, who has a take on genius more in line with her own thoughts at the beginning:
Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am more in line with this thinking about genius which moves it away from prodigality and in the direction of a gift transmitted through us. This is the Lewis Hyde concept of the creative act2. The idea that we are gifted an ability and set of circumstances that favor a different way of seeing and that we have an obligation to suffer “the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.” In this way of thinking, we are the medium, not the point. We are participating in something larger than ourselves.
As I am writing this I am listening to a recording of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion. I think it was probably my most listened to recording of 2022. I adore choral music. And what I adore most are the passages utilizing the full choir. I understand and appreciate that soloists are important and appreciate their counterpoint to the choir as they deliver whatever piece of information and beauty they have been charged with delivering. But what truly gut punches me every time is the full choir in all its synchronized beauty and power. There is little in this world that is more sublime to me.
Personally, I think we place way too much emphasis on the soloists of the world, as exemplified by our fetishization of genius and originality. We are fascinated by the individual, the celebrated, the notorious. I would guess that most of us harbor the hope, deep within or psyches, that one day the world will discover the wonderful soloists we are capable of being. I know I do. We must all be exceptional at something? Right? But the idea that we should all be soloists is untenable and leads to disappointment in most people’s lives, in addition to being a recipe for a dysfunctional society.
I remember, many years ago, attending an exhibit of space photography in the then named IBM building in Manhattan. The photography was made by the Hubble Space Telescope which had recently launched into orbit. What I saw was the most beautiful art I could imagine and what blew me away was that it was art made by all of us. A choir of engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, politicians, educators, tax payers, and on and on.
We need soloists. But we also need to appreciate that no soloist exists with out a choir. It needs to be ok to be part of the choir and we need to value it as we value our soloists. It requires all of us to receive the gifts of the cosmos and move them out across our collective being.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/01/21/emerson-genius-shakespeare/ ↩︎
See Lewis Hyde, The Gift. https://lewishyde.com/the-gift/ ↩︎
Some visual notes from this morning…
Talking Shakespear with the bullshit machine
… an interesting conversation between ChatGPT and Jonathan M. Katz… see also, my post Nick Cave vs ChatGPT from last week…
The Memphis police killing… black officers beating a black man to death and a black police chief bringing them quickly to justice. Nobody is talking about the difference in speed of justice if the officers were white. Hmmm…
Doing the hampster on the flywheel thing…
From yesterday morning…
Watched Tar Last night. I think I have to watch it again…
Tár Is the Most-Talked-About Movie of the Year. So Why Is Everyone Talking About It All Wrong?
Pro tip: Instead of grilling grilled cheese sandwiches, bake them. 350 degrees, about fifteen minutes, flip halfway through. Best part? You can get sandwiches ready for multiple people all at once. Don’t forget to slather the outside of the sandwiches with butter!
Roasted garlic soup… it’s what’s for dinner! www.epicurious.com And then there’s the grilled gruyere cheese sandwiches…
Been trying out Brave browser. Anyone else using it?
I have now placed three separate photo apps on my opening screen. Each has qualities good for a different type of image. It’s like having a bag of cameras at your fingertips!
Books Reading: Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research by John Steinbeck 📚
And then we thought of what they are, and what we are—products of disease and sorrow and hunger and alcoholism. And suppose some all-powerful mind and will should cure our species so that for a number of generations we would be healthy and happy? We are the products of our disease and suffering. These are factors as powerful as other genetic factors. To cure and feed would be to change the species, and the result would be another animal entirely. We wonder if we would be able to tolerate our own species without a history of syphilis and tuberculosis. We don’t know. —John Steinbeck, Log From The Sea Of Cortez
If we do not attend to the work of projecting delight upon the world, what are we actually doing? If we do not look for joy, search for it, reach deep for it, what are we saying about the world? —Nick Cave,
Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind. –Ralph Waldo Emmerson
What’s a few classified docs amongst friends?
Pro tip, no salt cajun spice is an awesome popcorn flavoring. Add a touch of salt separately.