"In the Spanish number the house was electrified. Everybody sat on the edge of their seat - the drums woke them up. I thought when drums started it would keep up forever. I expected to see people fall out of the boxes or throw their hats away. There was something heroic about it and he could have driven us stark mad, Ravel, if he had wanted to. But that's not Ravel. Suddenly, it all died down. It was as if he remembered, in the midst of his antics, that he had on a cutaway suit. He arrested himself. A great mistake, in my humble opinion. Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end it with dynamite, or TNT. Ravel sacrificed something for form, for a vegetable that people must digest before going to bed." - The Tropic Of Cancer, p.76-77.Henry Miller hit a mark when he observed an error so many of us make - to arrest, to cease, to cut short our efforts. I suggest this not only applies to making "art", as he wrote, but in life too.
Behind the authentic, architecturally significant doors of houses on storybook lanes where I live, where housecleaners and nannies come and go, there's people prudently taking pills to rest, prudently taking pills to make them feel less manic, imprudently starting an early happy hour, squirrelling to a secret spot to take a forbidden toke, escaping to tony shopping destinations sizing each other up using a measurement system of the id. Making shadow puppets of ourselves in our own sparkly sitcom. Staring in the mirror at ourselves, wondering how we got here. While the heart's deepest wishes, for passion, for naturalness, for meaning, for connection, go hungry.
This is my giant YAWP!! to the world (nod to Dead Poets Society). I can't promise anything other than honesty and weirdness here on this site. Wring the same from yourself, dear reader.
If you're out there, if you dare, share your thoughts with me. I would love to hear them.
What have you sacrificed for form?
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