the problem of love for the truly creative
Tonight I had this thought: If I were a composer, would I love a woman who had no ear for music?
If I were a painter, how would I love a woman blind to color and texture?
It is an intriguing problem.
I have always seen myself as some kind of creative genius but without a well defined medium. I used to think of my medium as life, generally, and my life, my social life, specifically.
However, I am now and these past many months, engaged in a creative endeavor of some minor and lasting import within a slightly more concrete medium.
I have created a thing of beauty. Many people enjoy it without comprehension. Some people get it, and when they do, it gives me great pleasure. But none can comprehend the whole of the work. That is my role and mine alone, I guess. Precious few women my age or younger have any idea what it is I am doing or why it is so important. I mean, not the slightest.
I know one older woman who is a poet and professor of classics. It occurs to me that I should go to see her soon, just for that communion we might obtain.
The fruit of my labor will be easy enough to appreciate some day but who will know the root of it? Who will comprehend the substance? Who will understand this inspired design realized through application of principle? Yes, I long for that Dagny Taggart character. It still comes back to her, the character who won my heart in a book when I was nineteen.
Once in a while I have had a lover who for a time seemed to see that special thing in me. And then it passes, as all hormone-inspired passion must.
Who is my muse now? Once I knew...
They say, the really interesting thing about a man of some accomplishment is not the woman he manages to wed but the one who got away, for she is the true source of his inspiration. Perfect in imagination, she can embody the greatness of love his soul requires without the dreary day to day mechanics of actually living together.
It has been such a long time. Perhaps I only feel the distance.
If I were a painter, how would I love a woman blind to color and texture?
It is an intriguing problem.
I have always seen myself as some kind of creative genius but without a well defined medium. I used to think of my medium as life, generally, and my life, my social life, specifically.
However, I am now and these past many months, engaged in a creative endeavor of some minor and lasting import within a slightly more concrete medium.
I have created a thing of beauty. Many people enjoy it without comprehension. Some people get it, and when they do, it gives me great pleasure. But none can comprehend the whole of the work. That is my role and mine alone, I guess. Precious few women my age or younger have any idea what it is I am doing or why it is so important. I mean, not the slightest.
I know one older woman who is a poet and professor of classics. It occurs to me that I should go to see her soon, just for that communion we might obtain.
The fruit of my labor will be easy enough to appreciate some day but who will know the root of it? Who will comprehend the substance? Who will understand this inspired design realized through application of principle? Yes, I long for that Dagny Taggart character. It still comes back to her, the character who won my heart in a book when I was nineteen.
Once in a while I have had a lover who for a time seemed to see that special thing in me. And then it passes, as all hormone-inspired passion must.
Who is my muse now? Once I knew...
They say, the really interesting thing about a man of some accomplishment is not the woman he manages to wed but the one who got away, for she is the true source of his inspiration. Perfect in imagination, she can embody the greatness of love his soul requires without the dreary day to day mechanics of actually living together.
It has been such a long time. Perhaps I only feel the distance.