In pursuit of greatness? Oct. 25, 1985
He’s at a critical stage, like a patient on an operating
table waiting for a transfusion of blood, without which death is certain.
Michael is struggling with his art, and not in a positive
way, not through trial and error the way most of us must.
The roots of his art are snapping off as he leaps to
something new.
Today he expressed his frustration.
“I’m good at form, but it’s all minor,” he said. “I’m a good
minor poet. That’s all.”
Somehow, he has to advance beyond that, he said, but doesn’t
know how.
Some years ago, I mentioned this same thing to professor,
Dr. Thomas. He couldn’t give me an answer.
But in truth, Michael seems to be a poet with nothing to say.
He has all these forms and templates, but little emotion – like having a bunch
of boxes with nothing to put inside them.
This may well be the fact he came up through academia which
tends to emphasize form over content and is generally out of touch with the
everyday world from which artists need to draw. This is because to this point,
Michael hasn’t had any real experiences, hasn’t done anything, hasn’t seen
anything, or even taken any risks with his life.
All this goes back to a conversation we had at the end of
the summer when he told me he was at a crossroads, and how he wanted to take
off and see the world, yet as so much invested here, he can’t do it.
Michael aches to be great and is so knowledgeable in actually
blocks him.
He says he has nothing to write about. I want to shake him,
telling him there is a whole goddamn world to write about if only he would
embrace it.
For people like me with far less formal education, the
problem is the opposite of his. There is just good much goddamn stuff to write
about and not enough time to do it in. Everything happens too fast to collect
it.
My answer is to document everything in journals like this,
thinking I can get back to it later and reshape it into art. But there’s so
little time.
Michael seems to have traded poetry for music as a possible
answer to his dilemma, which is similar to poetry, but comes with its own set
of problems. If he expects to achieve greatness there, then he has to deal with
to social, political and economic games people need to play in order to advance
in the music industry, the intense jealousy, the greedy producers, and vicious
business agents.
Michael seems to be banking on more popular success with his
band than he could achieve with his poetry, and the instant gratification he gets
when performing before a live audience.
“What do you get from poetry anyway?” he asked me once rhetorically, then went on to
list the methods of finding success as a poet, of being discovered (like a
movie star from some film in the 1940s), getting published, finding some wealthy
patron. And I asked, “Discovered? What’s that have to do with creativity?”
Where are the metaphors and emotions? Where is the word play
and the struggle to get better? What do sponsors have to do with shaping a narrative?
But I do agree Michael is at a cross roads, a point in his career
where he will have to make a choice between art and success.
We all want to be great. But some seek greatness while
others have it thrust upon them, while still others spend their lives fighting the
small battles that ultimately build greatness, putting together words like
bricks until they have constructed something worthy enough to be called great.
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