wilde de profundis
Wilde. He started in flamboyance and ended in humility.
What do you do if you start with humility? Where do you go in order to have a beginning, middle, and end? Must you wait for pride to set in, for the world to change you, for your self corruption? Perhaps it is our fate to sit on stools like patients at a doctor surgery awaiting someone to tell us we are ill, waiting patiently to be overcome by something greater than our strength.
What is the responsibility of a great mind? A depth and intuition? It is not to abuse it for your own benefit. It is the responsibility of viewing your gifts as great responsibilities and not as a product of your own personal brilliance.
I went to an art exhibition opening the other night at First Draft...the artist dealt with issues of personal identity and what combines to make us. One of Kenzee Patterson's works was called 'Piece of White Shit', it was found without a plaque next to it in the corner of the room...the beautiful part of the work the work was that although it was quite literally resembling its title, it was made of porcelain. Here I was touched by someone so openly acknowleging their limitedness and commoness, and yet seeing that even so, it is made of precious things.
This is the sort of attitude that writers, artists, builders, the unemployed, all of us need to assume; we are not so brilliant to think that we are untouchable, and yet even on that base level, we are made of precious things. Let us not forget that we are useable, precious excrement, and let us count eachother accountable to being the 'captains of our souls', while there is still time.
"I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility." Wilde from his prison cell
What do you do if you start with humility? Where do you go in order to have a beginning, middle, and end? Must you wait for pride to set in, for the world to change you, for your self corruption? Perhaps it is our fate to sit on stools like patients at a doctor surgery awaiting someone to tell us we are ill, waiting patiently to be overcome by something greater than our strength.
What is the responsibility of a great mind? A depth and intuition? It is not to abuse it for your own benefit. It is the responsibility of viewing your gifts as great responsibilities and not as a product of your own personal brilliance.
I went to an art exhibition opening the other night at First Draft...the artist dealt with issues of personal identity and what combines to make us. One of Kenzee Patterson's works was called 'Piece of White Shit', it was found without a plaque next to it in the corner of the room...the beautiful part of the work the work was that although it was quite literally resembling its title, it was made of porcelain. Here I was touched by someone so openly acknowleging their limitedness and commoness, and yet seeing that even so, it is made of precious things.
This is the sort of attitude that writers, artists, builders, the unemployed, all of us need to assume; we are not so brilliant to think that we are untouchable, and yet even on that base level, we are made of precious things. Let us not forget that we are useable, precious excrement, and let us count eachother accountable to being the 'captains of our souls', while there is still time.
"I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility." Wilde from his prison cell