Bill's Notes

There is no necessary connection between race and culture, IMHO. Thought isn't biologically determined, or biologically limited, and neither is moral value. I'm just saying ...

Another key in Spengler's column is the idea of original versus derivative. Almost all of us derive our ideas from others ... real originality and creativity as Spengler defines it is something wholly different, something singular and a break from what came before.

While I'm a little more relaxed about the whole idea than Spengler, the important point I see that some works are such that had the person never been born, nothing like that ever would have occurred. "I'm lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did." If Barenaked Ladies hadn't written it, it never would have been written. The world would be poorer for it. It's a silly example, but makes the point. As I said, I'm a little more relaxed about the whole thing. Otherwise, you end up as Spengler does ...

I also chill out about what's derivative. And that's because virtually everything we say and think is derivative; it comes from something else. And that's all right. We're in this together -- if you're that afraid of being derivative, the problem could be, as Spengler says, you're self-glorifying.

All that said, I still love modern art. I see something beautiful in cubism or surrealism, and even Jackson Pollock's action paintings. Some are startling and beautiful and expressive.

There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy ... to quote another guy named Bill.

I once wrote a piece on writing as idolatry. Here is Asia Times columnist Spengler with a deeper take on the same subject. (Hat tip: Paul Burgess.)

Bach inscribed each of his works with the motto, "Glory belongs only to God," and insisted (wrongly) that anyone who worked as hard as he did could have achieved results just as good. He was content to be a diligent craftsman in the service of God, and did not seek to be a genius; he simply was one. That is the starting point of the man of faith. One does not set out to be a genius, but rather to be of service; extraordinary gifts are responsibility to be borne with humility. The search for genius began when the service of God no longer interested the artists and scientists.

Here are some paragraphs from the original piece, published June 15, 2003 on my old blogspot blog (since deleted):

Faith Saves, Writing Kills
The danger of excessive fantasies
The writing life is a fantasy and it destroys many people. Harold Bloom calls it the agon, the competition. If not careful, it will shred you to pieces. It nearly did to me. I drank too much and talked too much when drunk and whined too much when sober, resulting in so many broken relationships I could hardly bear to look at myself in the morning. I spent a good deal of my 20s working in journalism, traveling around the world or studying in grad school, doing what I thought I needed to do to become a writer, but actually not building any kind of real life for myself, and worse, I was thrusting myself one time after another into situations where lasting friendships were unlikely ... now it is of course friendship and companionship that I prize more than anything else.

I had wanted to be a writer — I had a burning desire, that call — since I was nine. I assumed that any call that strong was a message that I was "meant" to be a writer. Twenty years later, I realized that I had misinterpreted that calling. I wasn't meant to become a writer: That burning, obsessive call was just a splintered off part of my psyche pushing me to solve a single riddle. That is, I didn't want to become a writer, I wanted to know the ending of a story. The answer to the riddle was painful to learn for me personally, but in terms of its larger significance it was banal and not worthy of publication.

My solving of the riddle occurred ten years ago this month. In June 1993, the dream of the artist died. Good thing, too. It may have killed me. The only reason I still work as a writer is I have not found someone willing to pay me to do anything else at comparable wages. Ironic, huh? I started out the writing path without regard for money, making real and lasting sacrifices for that writing life fantasy, and now I only stay because of the money.

A moral for the story
Give God credit for a sense of humor. His justice is elegant and ironic and graceful — after all, I have violated the First Commandment: "I am the Lord thy God who has brought thee out of Egypt, have no other gods before me." The writing life fantasy, or any other obsessive artistic fantasy, is ultimately idolatry. My less-talented colleague above has never indulged in idolatry, and thus his life is blessed. My more talented friend has indulged in idolatry, like me, and we both have paid a high price. May God have mercy on us all, and may God be merciful when He corrects us.
posted by Bill at 3:57 PM

Here's the best description of the lesson from the VTU shooter I've seen. (Normally, I'd be done with this issue, but this is so good I thought I'd pass it on.)

A discrete subsection of the human race is insane. A larger subsection may not be clinically psychotic but is still sufficiently resentful, vengeful, envious, grandiose and myopically self-pitying to be dangerous. Even if you zapped every gun off the planet, these folks could still get hold of knives, baseball bats, jagged shards of glass or machetes (think of Rwanda). We live in a world of multiple risks -- traffic accidents, lightning bolts, avalanches -- and the biggest risk we live around every day is other people. The unhinged, the angry, the malevolent circulating in our midst amount to social bad weather. Whenever we walk out the door, we take the chance that malice will rain on our heads.

I know there's a lot of talk about anti-Catholic bigotry lately, as the last acceptable prejudice. But I find it difficult to jump on the victimhood bandwagon. In fact, I find it impossible.

Reason: The Roman Catholic Church is the New York Yankees of religion; plus, we're right and we have one in six humans in the club and we were founded by God. Not even the Yankees can say that.

Now the NY Yankees are the most despised team of all time -- everyone hates them. And what is the fans' reaction to a steady stream of opproprium? Do they file Title IX claims? Do they complain? No. Yankee fans ... ignore it. They don't even ignore it obviously, or intentionally, or even think about it; they just ignore it with a true, heartfelt, "who cares?" or "Huh?"

Because Yankee fans know that they've won 26 championships, and there's more where that came from, and maybe you escaped this year and next, but guess what? this year we may be in last place but that'll just tear your heart out more when we win the division or the Wild Card and if not this year, we'll just reload.

Anti-Catholicism: Gates. Hell. Not prevail. Big guy's word for it. Let's keep that in mind.

I asked in this post, based on the movie Stranger than Fiction, are you the king of anything? Someone left a comment last night. The answer was "poooop". Very clever. I wanted to find out who wrote it, so I resolved the IP address, and voila — it's someone from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I thought even an undergrad at JHU could do better than respond, "poop," unless the answer is not a joke, but merely the correct answer.

BTW, apropos of nothing, I've known two JHU undergrads — one was a quiet dude I knew from grad school at Temple, and the other was an absolutely jewel of an individual who's the daughter of a friend of mine. Both had this strange affectation in their speech, and I can only assume it's a Hopkins thing. They stretch sounds out, and it's a way of saying something intelligent without sounding intellectual or pompous. But they do it so much it sounds affected. You'd have to hear it.

I also know a professor of neuroscience there — an old drinking buddy. Great guy. Not naming him. And a former colleague of mine went to grad school there, but he didn't develop that weird accent.

Not going anywhere with this. As you were.