Subject: Re: "How can anyone from our generation..."
Matthew_Stevenson@BAYLOR.EDU
Date: Thu Mar 06 1997 - 05:32:28 GMT
On Wed, 05 Mar 1997 23:21:03 -0800 bananafish@cassatt.Mass-USR.COM wrote:
>"How can anyone from our generation ever compete with the likes of Walt
>Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Jack
>Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Georgia O'Keefe, Tennessee Williams, Martin
>Scorsese..."
>
>Sorry to go back to this, but it's been on my mind and I thought I'd respond.
>
>Competition doesn't have anything to do with it. These giants simply expressed
themselves as fully as they could. Gave 100% soul. You, too, can have the best
there is, but it's gonna cost you all of your love. You won't get it for money.
Emily Dickinson never wanted to be published. She was quite happy to live out
her days as an agoraphobic spinster up in New England. (To toss in another
giant, the only reason Kafka has the name and stature he has today is because
his best friend betrayed his dying wish of burning all of his work).
>
I agree that achieving the heights that these giants did requires 100% of your
soul, but i think that competition has something to do with it. As an artist
you must expect that your work will be compared to others in your field. This
should not alter your art except to make you more aware of the value of giving
each attempt a 100% effort. You will be lucky if your work even gets compared
to these greats, but the driving force should be to add something new to the
world, something that's never been seen or that's never been done so well. An
artist should strive to not only put forth their own art, but to make sure their
art compares favorably with past masters. Otherwise, why bother? If what you
have to offer isn't as good as what the world already has, does the world need
your offering?
I can already hear the painful invectives being formed against me so I'd like to
point out that I am talking here about serious, devoted artists, not dilletantes
such as myself who may write a poem here and there when the mood strikes but
never devote the time and soul towards becoming a poet. I am referring to the
artists who _must_ produce art to be complete human beings. I am referring to
the artists who live out the tragic lives of the world's greatest literature. I
am referring to those who have something new and worthwhile to offer the world,
but may not live up to the call of the muse. They may decide to live a white
collar banker's life somewhere in middle America and deprive the world of that
which it desperately needs: new ideas, new directions, new visions, new voices.
Only true artists will be able to provide these ideas, visions, etc., and these
ideas will have to compete with the present ideas provided by Dylan, Hemingway,
Faulkner, Dickinson, van Gogh, et al. Thus, at least indirectly, artists must
compete with all the artists who have gone before.
wishing to be a dead cat,
matt stevenson
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