Vale Road

The long way back.

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Paul B. Sears on Being a Great Artist.

"I have always thought that to be a truly great artist one must first of all be a truly great person, not wholly the victim of the contemporary scene, but gifted with hope and vision for the future. As the role of science is to minimize the range of uncertainties, so I view the role of the arts as a charge to comprehend, interpret, and dramatize the certainties and their promise. Where there is no vision the people perish. Science has enormously enlarged our vision, but it will become our common heritage only as it is made manifest by the creative artist."    -Paul B. Sears, from Edge of Awareness

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Priorities.

"The artist concerned to do nothing but express himself is not necessarily a criminal, but he shares that quality with the criminal."

   -Paul B. Sears quoting a French architect

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Arthur Rimbaud on being a poet.

"The first study of a man who wants to be a poet is his self-knowledge, complete; he looks for his own soul, he inspects it, he tests it, learns it. As soon as he knows it, he must cultivate it. That seems simple: in every mind a natural development takes place. So many egoists proclaim themselves authors; there are many others who attribute their intellectual progress to themselves! But the soul has to be made monstrous: after the fashion of the comprachicos, if you like! Imagine a man planting and cultivating warts on his face."    -Arthur Rimbaud

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Sunrise.

I want to see the sunrise this morning. It has been years since I last waited for it in the cold of my Washington air. I remember it was 2008, and I had been dreaming of the day I would lose my father to the inevitable mortality we all face. I lost a lot of sleep that year because of those dreams, but this one had been vivid. I could taste the hospital air and see its ugly carpet. So I went outside and shivered to pass the time until the sun came up. Back then we had a broken, green van in our yard. It was filled with boxes, a tool box so heavy I could barely move it, and an old, brown rug that I used to run around on as a toddler. Before, when I was little, I remember day dreaming during trips to see grandparents in that van. Half-asleep, huddled on a tire in the back because it had no seats, I imagined loving people that would never love me back. I was the hero though, and I didn't care. I only needed to protect them, and that was good enough. For a small while then, I think I could have become the good guy. Life doesn't always trickle out the way we think. I watched the sun come up and mingle with the fog as I sat on top of that old van. Everything was wet, and I was making an uncomfortable indent in the metal roof. It made me feel like a stranger, in a place he shouldn't be, and I felt some peace. My mind imagined the day I would lose my father, and dismissed it as an impossible thing. And for a moment, it felt like I was close to being the good guy. After a year of little sleep and dreams I didn't want to see, 2009 came and the impossible happened. I tasted hospital air and stared for hours at ugly carpet. I watched a fish tank and, though I'm sure it was full of life, I couldn't see a single fish. Eventually, I saw the hero of this story cry a tear and go whiter than I'd ever seen skin go. The wrong world won, the hero lost, and without him I became just another stranger This morning, when I see the sunrise, and feel the cold Washington air, I won't be thinking of bad dreams. Bad dreams are for the good guy, and that's not me anymore. When a hero dies, we see the thing that a wrong world needs, and it has nothing to do with goodness.

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Poets.

"Behind every answer, they must see a question; behind every light, they must see a shadow."    -Carol Morrison

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I am not famous; does it matter? Poets are all brothers.

Arthur Rimbaud

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What is important?

There are two things of vital importance that every young man and woman should endeavor to acquire: kindness, and an intelligent mind.

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Desperation.

The last time I felt desperate was when I was telling myself my dad was going to be ok. I don't think I'll ever feel that way again, however much I want to. It's funny to me now, how hopeful I was in that special waiting room. It was the kind of place made for bad news, and I should have known better.

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Highlights.

I envy those who can suck in the letters of a sentence so perfectly and so easily with a line of unnatural, inhuman yellow. How sure they are in capturing words, neatly spotlighting them in a sick glow. Like an ancient mosquito frozen in sap and collected later. My brush strokes are never this sure about a sentence, ending up violent and disordered as they try to surround the words. A sudden blitzkrieg of inelegance, possessing only a lack of confidence and a murderous hunger. I want to eat them, especially the beautiful ones. How could I ever gather them gently? I suppose that is a reflection of who and what I am.

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"Myth: Free verse is simply chopped-up sentences strung along a page."    -Carol Morrison, How to Build a Long-Lasting Fire

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It seems to me that when we approach the arts we are all too likely to be self-conscious and on the defensive, forgetting that it is they that are trying to please us and not we who are trying to please them. There is nothing we can do to a work of art by either ignoring it or glaring at it, but there is a great deal it would like to do for us if we would give it half a chance. Art does not set out to be mysterious but, rather, to reveal mysteries; it does not seek to lock doors against us but to open them. We are likely to think that to appreciate the arts we must carry a pocketful of keys and a headful of historical knowledge. The trouble with this is that no matter how many keys we may carry the one we need is as likely as not to be missing, and historical knowledge, while it can enhance one's pleasure in the arts, cannot initiate it.

Russell Lynes

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My rage is an autonomous animal, wild and ravenous.

The Crow