Listening to words about Henry Kissinger and by Robin Dunbar, it’s easy to feel ambitious. Ambitious to know exactly how one is “supposed to” use commas, to develop a theory of power or social relations and have things named after me, to be appreciated. Lincoln’s mission, to gain esteem, is a busted one though. Both by the opposing forces it creates (sometimes deadly) and by the facts of the mission and its process. Scoring points by adding up the approval of other people is as arbitrary as collecting rocks from down by the river. Except one of those two projects is heavier and more annoying. I’ll be down by The River today, I’ll keep my eyes open for good rocks.
History is a thing that can whisper whatever you want into your ear, I’ve found. Want to believe that people are fundamentally good? Or that diplomacy can only be done if you’re in the process of wielding a stick somewhere? Or that getting out of the way is the only way? You’ll find plenty of interpretations of the past that will lead you to whatever conclusions you like. The key is to find enough interpretations that each interpretation overbalances the other, creating the sense not that nothing can happen and you’re powerless, but that everything will happen in lots of ways and you’ll be around and a part of some of it. A fine cocktail, that gets you a little drunk, a little sober, a little sleepy, a little awake; all depending on which part of your brain you’re currently inhabiting.
I have spent very little time around people who appreciate and make art. So little that I don’t even know what art is, and I don’t much have the instinct to value it highly. “Basket weaving” isn’t going to make any notches on the bank account or that Protestant GDP, from what I’ve been taught. Assuming they’re decorative as opposed to useful baskets, of course. Fortunately, valuing is a thing that is trainable, from what I can tell. See you at the museum.
Could this be becoming a journal? I keep one of those separately, so no. Right? Perhaps I should take every chapter and introduce a Kafka-ish unreality, a Gogolian strangeness, to make it less clear what’s real and what’s fake. So that you, the reader, have no idea where my mind begins and my imagination ends; where my reality middles and my farce extends. Maybe after I have a better working definition of art, that’s where this will go. “A vague representation of something that is meant to convey something that’s a little personal and little universal.” Seems close.
Roman Ryan 