August 7, 2010: Nina Simone - Images

Nina Simone - Images: youtube.com/watch?v=f89C3uIEXZU

"Writers are made, for anybody who isn't illiterate can write; but geniuses of the writing art...are born. Let's examine the word 'genius.' It doesn't mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive 'talent.'...A genius is simply a person who originates something never known before. Nobody but Melville could have written Moby Dick, not even Whitman or Shakespeare."

Which is more important to the artist: To achieve a level of genius? Or to live a life unhindered? Are these necessarily exclusive?

Though I agree that the genius is born and not made, that talent is something to be achieved by even the most lost, by those whose frame borders genius, I think genius is something one can pursue. One may never truly achieve it but the act of pursuit is important. Why would one contribute to any art form unless they have something important to say?

But genius seems to hold a heavy burden. Those geniuses I've read, studied, shared drinks with, they relate everything, everything, to their specific genius. I know a drummer who relates everything from food to sex to driving and streetlights to drum patterns. It consumes him. I've studied a writer whose life was, arguably, so much about relating his life in writing that the two became inexorably entwined; the writing became life and the life writing. But does this hinder the life of the genius? I know geniuses of living, who create an art form out of experiencing life, whose lives seem hindered by this same form of genius, who almost become caricatures of themselves and cannot escape their specific form of genius.

I pursue genius. I know I am not of the ranks of the greatest but I move around its circle, at least, touching the outside wall for some sake of osmosis. But I do not have the drive, the discipline to spend every moment relating my world back to one prime element. That is a lie to a degree, but as close to the truth as I can relate.

To pursue anything without the full movement of yourself is to be vain and foolish. Every pursuit, if done with any other intent, can be seen and disregarded. It terrifies me that I pursue such things for I never truly know my own intentions, I just move with an instinct, directed by colour. I hope it's some form of genius but I doubt it.

I once told an artist friend about my embarrassment at first meeting a cute girl, how she asked me what I did that day and I had to tell her that I started compiling a book of poems. She asked why that was so embarrassing, I said because it sounds like something some young pseudo-sensitive man would say to get a girl into bed. She said, "Well, isn't creating art about having sex with other people? Aren't we creating pieces of beauty so that others can share in the beauty we experience? And isn't it natural for some to want to pursue that beauty in the form of sex with the artist?"