This post is about the grity and tity (I have the mind of a child).
I talk a lot about identity, both in this blog and in my songwriting. What is the role of the artist? What are you about in four words or less? The first song I wrote said, "Do you know who I am / because I don't."
After reading Seth Godin, I've been trying to find ways to be "remarkable," as he says (see his presentation for Google). Today I revisited an old friend who offers a fantastic counterweight to Seth.
The book is Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. Here is a very fitting excerpt:
Many poets are not poets for the same reason that man religious men are not
saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being
the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by
God.
They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet,
some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are
obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in
circumstances utterly alien to their own.
There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular--and too lazy to think of anything better (1949 p51).
It's a good time to get after some Merton. He has a lot of wisdom to offer to the artist. I'm going to chew over this for a few posts, so stay tuned for updates.
|