It’s only a coincidence that, in yesterday’s entry, I dabbled with the thought of becoming a master portraiturist, and then, in order to whip up an image to accompany today’s diary text, when I turned to the next available page in the book of 666 DRAWING PROMPTS! that my in-laws gifted me last month for Jesus-mas, the demand (in the top left corner) was “Your reflection.” I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to indicate the artist or the viewer, so I ended up painting us both. I’m calling it a flop. I don’t like this one or my last. I’ve got to stop using so much vulgar collage material; it’s old-hat, routine: I’m resorting to it as a crutch. ...But actually I don’t care, now that I think more about it – these pictures are only meant to head off a blog post: “fail fast and flee” shall be my motto; for we’re riding this train called finance to the end of the line. And by way of further excusing myself of all sin, I want to add that this marks my third attempt at such clownery: it’s only the second page of the book; rather the backside of the first page (which is split by a line through its middle and contains the first two prompts): that’s why there’s bleed-thru and assorted staples here in the lower half. The asking price is two point four million dollars.
Dear diary,
I’m no scholar, so, when I make observations like the following, just take it the same way that you’d take the babblings of a child. When we hear Plato or Aristotle talk about slavery, I wonder how much that term has in common with the twenty-first century U.S. citizen’s idea of slavery. It’s a Greek word that these guys are using, right? Maybe someplace in their writings there exists a passage that defines the term in detail, and their English translators conclude that these scenarios that describe the phenomenon match our modern concept of “slave.” But say there’s a dearth of context – in this case, we might better translate the term as “wage laborer” or “hired hand” or “indentured servant” or even “adopted family member,” etc...
Earlier today I heard a radio interview with a journalist who remarked that “We United Statesians have abolished slavery, although Aristotle believed that slavery was necessary for a civilization to persist.” Of the umpteen thoughts that came to my mind after hearing this, I’ll share just two:
First, I thought: We United Statesians have NOT abolished slavery, for slavery still exists elsewhere in the world, not to mention here in our prisons, and U.S. corporations happily snatch up the fruits of the labors of modern slaves; therefore perhaps Aristotle was right, or at least we haven’t been distinguished enough as a culture to prove wrong his assumption that slavery is the wellspring of civilization.
Second, I thought: What if Aristotle’s idea of civilization was actually more compassionate than our modern version (I hate Aristotle, by the way – my purpose isn’t to doll up his disheveled statement; I’m only trying to fill the space of this blog) – what if a more accurate translation of his words would yield a proposition like “A labor market is the necessary base of any civilization” or even “A voluntarily industrious substratum of cooperative individuals offsets the detrimental tendencies of a civilization’s manager class: without the former, the latter would certainly drive any country to ruin.” A lot depends on how one defines that term “slave.”
I find this interesting, though: A fruit tastes the same no matter who works to produce it. I mean, on the most basic level, a tree produces its fruit; the people only help the tree to grow and later pick the fruit from its branch, then they store it in a climate-controlled compartment of their dune buggy and transport the fruit to the king. Let’s say I’m the king. Let’s say you blindfold me and allow two harlequins to approach the crystal sphere where I reside, and each of these harlequins is holding a silver platter on which is displayed a piece of fruit. It is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One of the specimens was “produced” by means of slave labor, and the other was grown and offered voluntarily by a pair of sinless nudists who live in the garden behind the palace. I taste each fruit. They are both very good. Apparently the maltreatment of my staff does not affect the quality of our royal foodstuffs.
Now imagine that I perform the same taste-test, but, rather than using provender, I compare aesthetic endeavors. (I don’t intend to assert that fruit is not art and that art is not edible: if my setup implies this, it’s only a happy fluke.) Say I command two poems to be written: one by the slave and one by my nudist gardeners. Note how the slave’s poem is boring; whereas the first couple’s poem is sublime. This is because the hard conditions of forced labor disallow the slave from composing exuberant text: the slave is constricted in life, and this fact gets refracted into everything he creates. On the other hand, the blissful existence of Lilith and her helpmate imbues the poem that they jointly publish, so that it radiates into the world with beams of beatitude. As poets, we feel they cannot fail: if they ever compose an additional poem, there is no way that the 1st poem would murder its sibling.
Actually I falsified the data that I used in compiling the above report, so as to reach my desired conclusion. What really happened is that the slave composed the far greater poem. I didn’t expect this. I’m not sure that, if I could repeat the experiment daily, for at least twenty-two epochs, the results wouldn’t vary; but let’s assume that what happened is the unalterable truth. How do we make sense of this? Do we say that the slave produced better poetry because that part of his soul that yearns for freedom instilled his words with an “onward and outward” quality, which appealed to ME because I TOO feel a corresponding desire to be more than just the Lord of All Worlds? And my gardeners’ poem turned out dull because they already felt satisfaction in their cushy lifestyle, so they lacked the requisite desire to summon wonder into existence via textual alchemy.
Maybe I should admit that the nudes who tend my pleasure garden are not true humans but robots, and so their freedom is not pure, in that it’s unable to err: it’s pre-programmed. (For I do not allow them to eat of the fruit of my tree.) Their imaginative productions are the result of artificial intelligence, which is to say: natural stupidity.
BENEDICTION
The words of Gilbert, from part 2 of The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde:
From time to time the world cries out against some charming artistic poet, because, to use its hackneyed and silly phrase, he has ‘nothing to say’. But if he had something to say, he would probably say it, and the result would be tedious. It is just because he has no new message, that he can do beautiful work. He gains his inspiration from form, and from form purely, as an artist should. A real passion would ruin him. Whatever actually occurs is spoiled for art. All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
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