One Thousand Raids on the Inarticulate
Well, here it is: Art & Argument blog post number one thousand! All one thousand are essentially the same thing: a record of what I'm thinking about on a daily basis as I walk around, drive around, read stuff online, listen to music of every type, do laundry, take a shower, kill time, and so on. I have found that for me it is more interesting and fruitful to think about art, music, and general life philosophy than it is to obsess about myself and my problems. So what you will find here is a chronicle of things I love, punctuated by some mini-rants (preferably leavened with irony or satire) about stuff that I hate. Mostly, I like to employ my brain to think about what makes a poem or a painting or a song succeed, and then to think of good ways to say it or explain it.
Often, I will have the blog post composed in my head before I sit down at the keyboard. I'll have gone through the process that characterizes all writing, which is to figure how to get from here to there, what to leave in and take out, and how to arrange and express ideas so they are as felicitous and flowing as possible. Naturally, I fall short sometimes, something Eliot expressed in the "East Coker" section of his late masterpiece, Four Quartets. After you engage with the Eliot passage below, please spend some time looking around the site. The archives can be accessed through the site menu. You can also search using labels.
If I have learned anything through this years-long endeavor, it is that the beauty in our world is inexhaustible, and that if I have pointed even a few of you in the direction of that beauty, then I have succeeded. Oh, and in the process, I have also internalized Eliot's conclusion about writing and the human condition: "For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."
Excerpt from Verse 5 of the "East Coker" section of Four Quartets
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Often, I will have the blog post composed in my head before I sit down at the keyboard. I'll have gone through the process that characterizes all writing, which is to figure how to get from here to there, what to leave in and take out, and how to arrange and express ideas so they are as felicitous and flowing as possible. Naturally, I fall short sometimes, something Eliot expressed in the "East Coker" section of his late masterpiece, Four Quartets. After you engage with the Eliot passage below, please spend some time looking around the site. The archives can be accessed through the site menu. You can also search using labels.
If I have learned anything through this years-long endeavor, it is that the beauty in our world is inexhaustible, and that if I have pointed even a few of you in the direction of that beauty, then I have succeeded. Oh, and in the process, I have also internalized Eliot's conclusion about writing and the human condition: "For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."
Excerpt from Verse 5 of the "East Coker" section of Four Quartets
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
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