The Unknown Greats In To The Great Unknown
There’s a phrase that my digital native son uses; “lost media”. It’s daunting to think about all of the artwork; paintings, symphonies, books etc. that have disappeared in to the nothingness. Great works by unknowns.
How about the notion that every single performance by a virtuoso musician, that did not occur within the last 120 years or so, and hence wasn’t recorded, does not exist.
I have a theory that the finest thinkers alive right now are unknowns. Same with artists of all stripe. There is just so much stuff that goes under the radar. However, in this age, the media need not ever be lost.
It may be a thousand years until some random people stumble on to the greatest minds of your generation.
The Mystic
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true artand science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonderand stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
– Albert Einstein
Regardless of technology and science the mystical will always be.
Linear vs Cyclical
Around twenty years ago, a Marxist friend accused me of “linear thinking”.
I am coming around to understanding what I think he meant…it takes me a while sometimes.
I think that a person can view history either as a linear progression or a series of cycles in which civilizations are formed, mature and decline and return to barbarism.
Thinking back, I was thinking linear. Not so much anymore.
Big Box
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
– Isaiah 55:2
Lost In The Stars
Just a gorgeous piece of music.
Nightshade
“No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.”from Ode on Melancholy by John Keats
I feel like I have given poetry short shrift. I don’t know much about Keats. I see him as a mystic, a knower of things that are from beyond.
Embrace the melancholy. All beauty contains melancholy.
Maybe, it’s possible to somewhat bypass fear and anger by embracing the melancholy…let it in.
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