(no subject)
there are moments - indeed, days, weeks, or even years on end - in some people's lives where there is a sense that all activity is valueless. perhaps waking up one hopeful, sunny morning, we feel the innocent child within us reanimate, a feeling only to be shortly dispelled by the masked lie of adulthood staring back at us in the bathroom mirror. or perhaps someone has just let us know that we are not, after all, the companion that they thought we were, and asked us not to visit, or telephone, or share their sheets anymore, and that we also please, at the earliest possible opportunity, stop by to claim our remaining personal belongings. or perhaps the grandparent for whom we always felt the purest degree of love, who showed us that life could be made tolerable and joyous by simply saying the right words, or by telling the right story, or by complimenting just the right thing, has fallen into that state of being wherein the least amount of life is left in the body for its maintenance, perhaps even transforming or cruelly inverting that once luminous, generous personality into a mean, spiteful doppleganger who may not even recognize us. or perhaps one has simply sat naked in an easy chair in one's living room in the middle of the night, and, quite unsuspectingly, been siezed by the horrible gnawing sense of all that has led up to this one point in their life, the hopefullness of their childhood, the friends lost, the trysts unrealized, the hearts broken, and has cried out to whomever might listen for an end to it all, a solution, a termination of the program before it goes even one minute further.
in such times, and many others left undescribed, many of us may seek out some form of pageantry to provide distraction, or solace. we might visit the corner cinema, or turn to the moving picture box, or eat a cake, in hopes of finding something that will either tickle us, or more preferably, and much more rarely, provide some sense of sympathetic resonance with our personal situation, either via particulars, or by general philisophic principle. in all cases, the success of such a venture is predicated primarily upon the quality of the skit, sitcom, or dainty consumed, and whether or not its authors are empathetic to this buisness of life, or mere profiteers from it. in the latter case, it is likely that the main fabric of the experience may be identified by a fundamental intention of the author to distract, or amuse; the former, a desire by the author to make everybody else feel as bad as he does. as such, the thinking person would have to conclude that, in general, the seeking of emotional empathy in art is essentially a foolhardy pursuit, better left to the intellectually weak, or to the ugly, for they have nothing else with which to occupy themselves. besides it is unsightly to feel sorry for oneself, and such "unfortuante times" eventually pass, anyway.
in such times, and many others left undescribed, many of us may seek out some form of pageantry to provide distraction, or solace. we might visit the corner cinema, or turn to the moving picture box, or eat a cake, in hopes of finding something that will either tickle us, or more preferably, and much more rarely, provide some sense of sympathetic resonance with our personal situation, either via particulars, or by general philisophic principle. in all cases, the success of such a venture is predicated primarily upon the quality of the skit, sitcom, or dainty consumed, and whether or not its authors are empathetic to this buisness of life, or mere profiteers from it. in the latter case, it is likely that the main fabric of the experience may be identified by a fundamental intention of the author to distract, or amuse; the former, a desire by the author to make everybody else feel as bad as he does. as such, the thinking person would have to conclude that, in general, the seeking of emotional empathy in art is essentially a foolhardy pursuit, better left to the intellectually weak, or to the ugly, for they have nothing else with which to occupy themselves. besides it is unsightly to feel sorry for oneself, and such "unfortuante times" eventually pass, anyway.