Re: Consummations

Subject: Re: Consummations
From: Louise Z. Brooks (invertedforest@angelfire.com)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2000 - 23:41:27 EST

I am not regarding Seymour and Buddy as capital-A artists in this assumption - just as humans. I should have made the distinction clearer, I can see where the problem is. I'm not saying that the creation of good art is necessarily the meaning of life. Let's take that out of the equation. I simply meant that at the crux of that question is `will it be worthwhile for me to stick around for the next fifty years, or would I look back on them and say `Why?' It does not matter whether the times that make that answer `Yes, of course!' involve a great love affair, an adventurous life, or simply being a good parent. Art is simply a more tangible way of expressing this - for those who create art generally regard it to be their lives.

Try to picture it this way. Nabokov's bird is one creature when it heads towards the window - one bird with one intention. Yet when it hits the window, it becomes two beasts, one living, one dead, one spirit and one flesh. One is Buddy, and one is Seymour. 

---
Louise Z. Brooks
"Invention my dear friends is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation and 2% butterscotch ripple." - Willy Wonka

On Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:33:08   AntiUtopia wrote:
>In a message dated 2/17/00 8:10:53 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
>invertedforest@angelfire.com writes:
>
>> Exactly. That's what I mean. Buddy is the `to be', Seymour is the `not to 
>be'.
>>  It's never those who have committed suicide who are around to contemplate 
>> whether or not it was the right decision, but those who didn't. There are 
>> countless artists and other productive people who live out the significant 
>> portion of their lives, then for decades squander in mediocrity. It is they 
>> who must ultimately wonder - was it worth it? Would it have been better if 
>I 
>> had just shuffled off this mortal coil? Like Nabokov's `waxwing slain 
>through 
>> the false azure of the window pane' - slamming into the window in our world 
>> but passing imperceptibly into the next in spirit - Buddy is the one who 
>hit 
>> the window, while Seymour is the one who kept going.
>>  
>>  ---
>>  Louise Z. Brooks
>
>Are you saying that Nabokov, for example, is worthless as a human being (and 
>that is life has no meaning) beyond that which he created?  
>
>Pretty low view of human life and an inflated view of art.  Pretense and hot 
>air.
>
>remember that Seymour's suicide was an insolvable **problem.** :)
>
>Jim
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