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Can you say there aren't trolls in the walls that grant us creativity? Can you assume that genius still happens in a vacuum? Can you hope to describe these thin
by tel 17y ago
Can you say there aren't trolls in the walls that grant us creativity? Can you assume that genius still happens in a vacuum? Can you hope to describe these things fully, attribute it to humanism? Perhaps the human achievement is in becoming an antenna for the inspiration of our chaotic world?
I mean, no. I don't advocate intentional blindness to problems in our world. I would even go so far as to actually advocate a greater awareness of the weight of our impact in the world. We can learn something from knowing more what the impact of a dollar is.
But humans are nothing if not machines for selective attention. If every time I bought my lunch I thought about the fertilizers dripping into the ocean causing immense algal blooms full of asphyxiated fish and oh the smell! I'd probably starve.
If your life, the thing that puts you closest to your own understanding of divinity, is being creative; if you honestly have to face the idea of never being able to communicate like you did that one time not so long ago; if you have to keep going in face of that, well, I know what I'm not going to expend my attention toward.
But even so, the speech wasn't about finding ways to ignore some nasty personal tragedy. It's about finding an interpretation on the charity and capriciousness of the creative process. What really is the best way to contextualize the immense amount of discipline and work and training that goes into creation that can all amount to precisely nothing without something widely considered to be external to us?
Genius is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. Even when we can assume the sweat, we're still might end up short one spark. What gives?
(I apologize for the waxing here, but god this is such a fascinating philosophical question.)