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>It's kind of funny to see such a profound and important lesson distilled in to such a kitsch cross-stitch type musing. Yeah, this is definitely one of the asp
by Jimmy 9y ago
>It's kind of funny to see such a profound and important lesson distilled in to such a kitsch cross-stitch type musing.
Yeah, this is definitely one of the aspects of PG's writing that I enjoy and admire the most. Though there is a danger that that kind of simplicity can become misleading. Regardless, I think that there really is an important lesson to be learned here. I work in an artistic field and have been having something of a philosophical crisis over the past week, but this essay (and a few similar ones from other authors) helped pull me out of it. Life is short and getting inducted into the canon of "great works of art" seems to depend mostly on random factors. I'm trying to work myself towards a view now where the only things that matter are a) whether I like my work, and b) whether there's an audience that likes my work, critics and academics be damned.
- 6stringmerc 9y agoThanks for understanding what I was going for, and I'd like to offer just a slight bit of additional encouragement as another creative artist. Just pursue what you want to make, work on it, grow, and either the world will take notice, or, at worst, simply ignore it (baseline result). You're right that being "in the canon" is really a luck-of-circumstance type of thing. Just ask all those dead black guitarists that Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin ripped off over the years. He's in the canon, very few of them are, but what does that mean? It means do what you do, do it the best you can, and when you die, it's something that will live on after you forever. Not a lot of CEOs or Founders can say the same about their life's work.