Something to ponder

[Cyxeris]

I am a fan of Orson Scott Card's. I like his writing, I adore his commentary, and in reading an article of his concerning the Colombia astronauts, I happened across a paragrah that is so relevant to us, as artists, that I am compeled to share it with you all here...

"But private honor counts as well. We are not all soldiers in war or astronauts in space; some die in senseless car wrecks, or are felled by adverse reactions to prescription medicines, or other random ways that life can end. But we can live our lives so that when death catches us, as it will surely catch us all, we died as steadfast soldiers in the quiet struggle to pass civilization on to another generation, or as intrepid explorers of the limits of the human mind and heart. "

I think we, as artists, should ponder this and ask ourselves "is this is the purpose we serve, or not?"

Many artists, including myself, admitedly, have a tendancy to serve ourselves, and presume that to apply our talents and energies to the bennefit of others, the world, is to be construed as "entertainment" as opposed to "art." I am overwhelmingly guilty of this myself, admitedly. Perhaps the above paragraph will assist in lending some degree of perspective to our lives and to the work we so passionately persue.

Who do we serve? Ourselves, or our kind?

[Cyxeris]

"Those young men whose father died in space will feel his absence all their lives; but they will feel his presence also. And the real tragedy is those who die without having given anything to anyone."

"In the constant kampf of civilization, which army do I fight with? Do I build and sustain a good community against the forces of entropy? Have I civilized my children and given them the tools that will help them build their own happiness and pass that gift along to generations yet to come?"

"Well done, you seven astronauts, you seventeen, you hundreds of thousands of soldiers, you millions of good and decent people whose deaths left so much good undone -- but whose lives did so much good before you left."

-Orson Scott Card

[elektro80]

I like his "Ender Saga". I read one book he possibly wrote together with some other guy which was a kinda Tiny Toons version of "The Ender Saga". That one did not do much for me. -But the Ender stuff is very good.

[egw]

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of
intelligent people and the affection of children,to
earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the
betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to
find the best in others, to leave the world a bit
better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or
a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived. This is to
have succeeded.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

[Cyxeris]

Unfortunate that more people, all people, do not approach life with this attitude. How can anything they do make any kind of sense without it?

[play]

"In the nineteen-forties in Nazi-occupied Paris, an artist named Marcel Carne made a movie. He filmed it on location on the Street of Thieves, the old Parisian theater street where at one time there was everything from Shakespearean companies to flea circuses, from grand opera to girlies shows. Carne's film was a period piece and required hundreds of extras in nineteenth-century costume. It required horses and carriages and jugglers and acrobats. The movie turned out to be over three hours long. And Carne made it right under the Nazi's noses. The film is a three-hour affirmation of life and an examination of the strange and sometimes devastating magnetism of love. Romantic? Oh, babe, it's romantic enough to make a travel poster sigh and a sonnet blush. But completely uncompromising. It's a celebration of the human spirit in all its goofy, gentle and grotesque guises. And he made it in the very midst of Nazi occupation, filmed this beauty inside the belly of the beast. He called it Les Enfants du Paradis--Children of Paradise--and forty years later it's still moving audiences around the world. Now, I don't want to take anything away from the French resistance. Its brave raids and acts of sabotage undermined the Germans and helped bring about their downfall. But in many ways Marcel Carne's movie, his Children of Paradise, was more important than the armed resistance. The resisters might have saved the skin of Paris, Carne kept alive its soul."

--Bernard Mickey Wrangle, from Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.

This is my favorite description of the artist as soldier and protector.