Here's another in the occasional (and long believed cancelled) series in which I pretend that anybody has the slightest interest in my melancholic invective.
Today I finished reading Art Spiegelman's 'Maus' and at one point he quotes to his shrink something Beckett once said: "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness". Not for the first time it seems to me Mr B has captured succinctly everything I feel about the creative process. Is there really any point in doing anything? In the cosmic scheme of things its nothing more than an arbitrary gesture. What vanity and conceit is it that makes people pretend otherwise?
And yet for all that I can't shake the feelings of guilt I feel at not making more of an effort. There's a fundamental ambivalence at work, although in my case it seems to be a reversal of the norm: the Freudian death drive (or desire to return to a state of entropy) appears prevalent over the wish to engage with life. Whilst I feel a morbidity that transcends the merely suicidal (which in many instances is just melodramatic posturing) on account that the life or death of one person is completely irrelevant, conversely one can't completely dismiss the possibility, however remote, that there might be something more. I suppose this sentiment is Pascal's Gambit in all but name; only stripped of all metaphysical pretension or anthropological constructs.
Today I finished reading Art Spiegelman's 'Maus' and at one point he quotes to his shrink something Beckett once said: "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness". Not for the first time it seems to me Mr B has captured succinctly everything I feel about the creative process. Is there really any point in doing anything? In the cosmic scheme of things its nothing more than an arbitrary gesture. What vanity and conceit is it that makes people pretend otherwise?
And yet for all that I can't shake the feelings of guilt I feel at not making more of an effort. There's a fundamental ambivalence at work, although in my case it seems to be a reversal of the norm: the Freudian death drive (or desire to return to a state of entropy) appears prevalent over the wish to engage with life. Whilst I feel a morbidity that transcends the merely suicidal (which in many instances is just melodramatic posturing) on account that the life or death of one person is completely irrelevant, conversely one can't completely dismiss the possibility, however remote, that there might be something more. I suppose this sentiment is Pascal's Gambit in all but name; only stripped of all metaphysical pretension or anthropological constructs.
poppystrike:
Glad you came back. Haven't you ever found joy in something other than silence and nothingness? That's the point of the creative process.
poppystrike:
Have you disappeared again? x