Day 196

Strike yesterday's entry from you memory, I've changed my mind.

Much like love, an artistic or intellectual acheivement is more a process than it is an end. Every so often I'll be incredibly stressed, or in yesterday's case just plain tired, and I get melanchoy about these great things. For the record, I am nothing short of happy with the decisions I've made, and the things in life I've chosen to pursue. Though at the moment I have a strong desire to pick up a violin and master it (and I will), I doubt I'll ever tire of the piano's ivory keys. Recognition is icing at most and meaningless at the least.

And for love, I do look to experience loving and being loved; this, not in the way that young ones fawn over each other and hop in and out of bed to resolve their transient issues, but the sort that only a years or decades long relationship can create.

Comments

Anonymous said…
It can take decades for authors to create a piece of literature, painters to fill a canvas or composers to create music and though the end product is what the audience takes in I'm sure it is the nights of melancholy, strain and uncertainty that the author, painter or composer takes pride in overcoming.
I could not agree more with this post, especially the portion on love. To experience what it truly means to be human I believe that one must love with conviction, honesty and at great length.
8:13 AM
Max said…
Thank you.

Suday's post was, I think, in part a result of said melancholy and uncertainty. Something happened on saturday that began to wedge my desires in two different directions, and I was having a tough time with that. Still am.

But life is very long when one is young, so I'm going to cross my fingers and ask the Gods to hand it all down in good time.
11:38 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 58

I do fear, sometimes, that the act of pondering aloud has become a cathartic experience and nothing more . It is hard in this town to find a diversity of thought, because we've all been raised in very similar ways with the same norms, experiences, and conventions. I find that the mightiest opinions of some of the the twentysomethings I know are so damningly narrow that they cannot possibly stand to the slightest breeze of doubt. Often the biggest theory is the thinnest. Our shadows grow long and starved moments before they disappear under the sunset. The natural world has cursed us with its indifference, its vaccuum of conscience in which deeds neither good nor evil subsist. I find the urge to view our species of conscious and conscientious beings as alien. It is as though the world we inhabit was never intended for us to inhabit it. In short, this town is a box. This country, political system, individualistic ideology, humanist dogma, faux rebellion against imagined authority; it ...
Read more

Day 212

It is very true that the best people in the world at any discipline, skill, sport, instrument (etc). are never particularly well-rounded people. There should be, as my grandma mentioned over dinner last night, a competition for "well-roundedness" with international competitors. In order to win you'd have to be physically capable, perhaps musical and mathematical, moral and charitable, very learned, and so forth. And that's the interesting thing, the jacks of all trades get absolutely no attention from the peanut gallery. But on the contrary, they typically have the healthiest and happiest and most fulfilling of lives. I can't tell you how many young pianists I've met, for whom piano was the sole self-measure of pride and value. And, like all people who have themselves judged for one thing, they are utterly miserable, feeling highs and lows that appear and fade as quickly as do the passing opinions of strangers. --- On a tangent: some of the most miserable girl...
Read more

Day 168

You hear non-religious people say it all the time: "If only there was a God! That would honestly be great, if there was a supreme moral arbier in the universe looking out for my every action and running the universe with me in mind. It's really too bad there isn't." I used to say that, until I came across a few authors who vehemently claim that such a wish is, in reality, a wish for slavery. When we ask for the comfort of a god (or fantasize for it anyway) were asking for a kind of absolution that only the slave can have. And the price for that is extremely high. And still, there times when I do wish I were this sort of slave, though I no longer say so with a smile.
Read more