A Picture of Dorian Gray: Preface
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde
QotD XLI
“What makes Republicans and Democrats any different than Bloods and Crips?
Absolutely positively nothin.
Bloods wear red, Republicans have red states
Crips wear blue, while Democrats have blue states
Bloods are right side Repubs are right wing
Crips bang left side Democrats are left wing
Bloods and Crips fight for territory on the streets
Republicans and Democrats fight for territorial seats
It’s goin down if you catch Mr. Clinton in a Texas town
With nothin but Republicans around
He’ll go the way of them people George executed
He should’ve known he was outta bounds
And Snoop aint no safer on 108th and Crenshaw
And they don’t care who invents law
He’ll see them red flags hangin and them black chucks flamin
There aint no difference between these people it’s all gang bangin”
Greydon Square, “Pandora’s Box”
Always Carry a Pen
As an undergraduate I never used a planner, at least nothing beyond the back of my hand or disorganized scribbles in one of my Moleskine notebooks. In my late teens and early twenties I knew everything, and I felt that planners were unnecessary when I could remember everything I needed to do- the important stuff anyway.
A few years after graduating from university, during which time I did very little studying, I found myself working in a corporate environment for the first time. At the end of my first week I attended a seminar hosted by Franklin Covey, a company known for its pricey executive planners and books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective [Insert target demographic here]. The seminar covered how to use their planning system along with tips and inspirational anecdotes about men like Benajmin Franklin (half the company’s namesake) and Albert Einstein.
In an interview with the legendary physicist, a reporter once asked Einstein for his telephone number in case he had any follow up questions before the article was to be published. Einstein responded by walking over to a phone book and looking up his number for the man. The incredulous journalist could not believe that one of the most brilliant men in history did not know something as trivial as his own phone number. When he inquired as to why this was so, Einstein responded that he did not memorize anything he could look up in five minutes. The mind, he asserted, was meant for thinking, not storage.
I was taken aback. This short, arguably insignificant, story completely shifted my perception of the how the mind works. Like all the other kids in school, I was incessantly taught that writing down information helped to recall it later, but now that seemed pointless, even defeatist. If this giant among geniuses didn’t believe in active memorization, then why should I? His brain probably had a few more synapses than mine, but Einstein was still human. Fueled by inspiration and the apprehension that comes with starting a new job, I decided I would try everything I had learned in the seminar for a month and see how things panned out.
I began using my new dictionary-sized planner every day, writing down each notable task and appointment, both in and outside of work, and I quickly saw the difference it made. Not only was I getting more done, but I also started managing my finances better and finally understood why my dad had always pushed my brother and me to keep a schedule. The only downside was I stopped remembering the things I needed to do without my planner, and I felt helpless without it if I was ever asked about my availability. Somewhat ironically, however, I started to remember a lot more information and ideas from things that I would read or hear.
Somewhere between then and now, I began to read a lot more, starting as a way to fill my lunch breaks and eventually growing into a substantial habit, temporally and monetarily. I was never a reader growing up, even throughout my secondary education. But, after a few years of mental lethargy, I discovered that I was free to read about whatever I wanted, which was exciting and inspired my main artistic passion: writing. As I continued reading more and more, I began taking notes in a notebook so I would have a place to reference striking quotes and ideas from the texts I was reading. This has naturally evolved into a kind of ledger or literary journal akin to the practice of marginalia, but which doesn’t antagonize my OCD tendencies.
Nowadays I feel naked without a pen, even more than without my cell phone. I write a lot – to do lists, unknown vocabulary words, spontaneous sparks of diabolical genius – and without a pen to record these things I feel like part of me is missing. If the brain is meant for thinking like a CPU is meant for processing, then a pen and paper make up my hard drive (or at least the RAM), neither of which can do much without the other.
And although any old pen can work, it’s just not the same if it’s not one of my fountain pens, with their distinctive hue of green ink. Like using a stranger’s cell phone, a foreign pen might work, but using it feels a bit dirty, especially if it’s a ball point, but I’ll save that complicated love affair for another post.
QotD XL
`Now Art has lost its mental charms
France shall subdue the world in arms.’
So spoke an Angel at my birth;
Then said `Descend thou upon earth,
Renew the Arts on Britain’s shore,
And France shall fall down and adore.
With works of art their armies meet
And War shall sink beneath thy feet.
But if thy nation Arts refuse,
And if they scorn the immortal Muse,
France shall the arts of peace restore
And save thee from the ungrateful shore.’
Spirit who lov’st Britannia’s Isle
Round which the fiends of commerce smile —
Random Ruminations #2
I think about death a lot. I have no longing for death nor a morbid curiosity about the deceased, but I’ve always liked the optimistic fatalism expressed by Peter Pan in his proclamation that “To die will be an awfully big adventure.” Like an impending vacation or first day at a new school, I can’t help but wonder what’s to come. I’m perfectly willing to accept that death is nothing more than a deep slumber from which one never wakes, but that’s not much fun to think about. Moreover, my own experiences and countless third party accounts suggest that this isn’t the case, so it seems as interesting a topic as any to indulge my imagination.
Eight years ago, following the death of my paternal grandmother, I wrote a short piece about the idea of Heaven, in which I proposed the idea that the afterlife is an individualized reflection of what a person believes it should be (to which I will amend that this notion includes the erudite judgment of our own worthiness of such an idealization). For example, in Mormonism, Heaven is divided into three kingdoms, each with varying degrees of glory (which might seem strange, but this is perhaps an oversimplification of the doctrine and not as foreign as the concept might sound when compared to most religions of the world outside of Christianity). So, if you live the best life you can, full of good works and deeds, and die justly proud of your accomplishments, according to the dictates of your beliefs and proclaimed moral code, which in this example would be the Latter-Day Saint gospel, then you would go to the highest kingdom, or whatever your ideal version of Heaven might be. I can proudly say that I came up with this idea all on my own, although I have discovered it is by no means a unique concept. The hip hop artist Greydon Square wrote a song called “Ascension” that beautifully articulates this idea – an idea that does not require a bureaucratic or hierarchical dogma to find peace.
Taking this one step further, I recently started thinking about the transition between life and the possible afterlife, what Buddhists call the bardo. For some death seems peaceful and fits the comparison of going to sleep. For others death is violent and terrifying, like the story I recently heard about Kevin Smith’s father who died screaming. Obviously pain and circumstance of death play a big role in a person’s transition, but I wonder if the experience is also mediated by his or her set, a term commonly used to describe a person’s psychological state including overall mood, sense of fulfillment, state of relationships, etc. If psychedelic and near-death experiences are indeed as similar to death as has been proposed, then this seems quite plausible.
I have been fortunate in my twenty-six years not to have witnessed a death first-hand, excluding of course the part I’ve played in countless indiscriminate deaths of all hexapods and octapods, but I see these merciless battles more akin to the emtionless slaughter of an alien species bent on world destruction in a movie directed by Ridley Scott, rather than the noble and personal death of a Roman general from one of his other movies. Most accounts that I have heard or read, however, whether (psuedo)autobiographical, like those of Steve Jobs or Aldous Huxley, or the portrayal of death in literary and artistic representations, support this idea.
I would not call myself a philosopher. My limited exposure to Classical and modern (Western) philosophy has left me wanting. I find the field a bit too vague and convoluted, albeit that may be just another testament to my ignorance. Nevertheless, I try tirelessly to understand the mind and its relationship to spirit, and more importantly how these relate to human behavior in an age of lost spirituality.
I’ve always been shy, ever since I grew up changing schools and moving at least once a year. Because we moved so often, I always faced the challenge of making new friends, and I was never sure quite how to act in these new and strange environments, so I would study the behavior of other kids before attempting to engage anyone in conversation. I was terrified of being teased and didn’t want to face potential ridicule because I didn’t understand how I was supposed to act. By the time university rolled around I was more confident and a bit more optimistic, despite my ideological struggle with breaking from religion. I naturally became more outgoing and excited about life, but those years have passed, quickly fading behind a fog of failure and disappointment, which has transformed me back to the high school freshman who ate lunch by himself for the first two weeks of school. I suppose I’m an idealist, which has naturally turned me into a cynical pessimist. We live in a hateful world, full of gruesome violence and abuse of the innocent by rich and fat gluttons and their odious ideologies. And yet I remain an idealist, clinging to hope that people might one day achieve the clarity of ego-loss, in a world of unity, equality, and empathy. In a world like that, there would be no knowable difference between life and the afterlife, which is itself a kind of immortality. Of course everyone’s afterlife might differ slightly depending on the little quirks and nuances that makes us all unique little snowflakes. I don’t know if I could ever visit a teen’s version of Heaven. It would probably be my personal version of Hell, like a never-ending loop of MTV reality television with a few video game commercials thrown in for good measure, in case this tangent wasn’t long enough.
Ultimately I am no Plato, Krishnamurti, or McKenna, and I never expect to come infinitesimally close to understanding or predicting the afterlife, but at least it’s something to pass the time, like a daydream in a late-afternoon business meeting.
Next time on Random Ruminations: What came first, language or mathematics? Or maybe I’ll just write about cheese.
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