You know, it doesn't matter if there are witnesses. Doesn't matter if there was no picture taken, no record of it, no eyes present to see it or understand it or a mind capable of comprehending the sacrifice and ingenuity that it took to accomplish it.
It is still a great work.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Tantus Labor Non Sit Cassus
On Sunday night with a pair of good friends, I watched a children's movie, The Secret of Kells. It's a story about the mythical creation of the Irish national treasure, the Book of Kells, a gloriously illuminated text from the 9th century.
It really affected me.
It wasn't just the marvelous watercolor scenes or the unusual animation, or even those things combined with the lovely and magical music.
Information completely overwhelms us nowadays. It interrupts us, inhibits our social skills, destroys conversations and work ethics, distracts us from other information that is more important in a given moment. It's cheap - almost free - for most of the Western world. It has become a convenient pest.
A thousand years ago and more, knowledge was a priceless treasure. A single book could be worth a war, and it would contain the life's work of hundreds of people crafting at the height of their skill. Is there an analogy of such a thing today, other than these treasures that are locked in sealed vacuums, forever of the past? Even the continued existence of what once was priceless is now cheap, a bittersweet memory, for it can be reproduced, restored, shared. Anyone can see and make and create. A great number of us possess more knowledge than an entire century of wise men from a thousand years ago before we reach our fourth decades. There are so many great works now that the meaning of "great work" has become irrelevant. Every day there is a new great work being showcased, soon forgotten for a new, equally novel creation, and another, and another. They march past, similar in their complete lack of similarity.
I feel like such a selfish beast to say it, but the idea of 7.114 billion humans walking upon the earth is just utterly depressing. Maybe our planet is a jewel of rarity floating in unfathomably empty hollowness, but from down here, it is a brilliant, filthy place of clamoring geniuses searching for their recognition as they stand on the backs of the impoverished.
The notion of knowledge and skill as a rarity sounds so romantic only because I know I'd be one of the few, the wise. Ha. That's funny. Nobody writes about the paupers because they lived short, backbreaking lives and died illiterate, nothing interesting about their lives, no. That's what I am now, basically. A common serf, an ignorant prodigy. Or maybe just a common serf who is average. Maybe if there were a few less of us, I'd be special.
Or maybe I am a coward. Too afraid to actualize my great work because so many others before me have successfully done so. It's not hip to be a success - everybody's doing it.
Why do I feel so abashed to be privileged? So certain that I'm supposed to be unhappy in the name of equity? It was an accident, I swear, all of it. I am not privileged, at least not like the Zo'e people of the Amazon rainforest, who have no concept of "stress" because their lives are exactly how human lives should be. Everyone contributing to the greater good in starkly visible ways, every single day. What did you do today that immediately benefited the greater good? How did you touch 200 people around you? Can you? Can you love and know 200 people and be willing to live your entire life with them, supporting them and being supported by them?
Nobody would die alone.
Who the fuck am I? Will I ever find out before I die? Does it even matter?
If not, then at least there is another soul, among the billions of us, who loves and feels and cries for all of us. Sometimes selfishly, sometimes not.
It really affected me.
It wasn't just the marvelous watercolor scenes or the unusual animation, or even those things combined with the lovely and magical music.
Information completely overwhelms us nowadays. It interrupts us, inhibits our social skills, destroys conversations and work ethics, distracts us from other information that is more important in a given moment. It's cheap - almost free - for most of the Western world. It has become a convenient pest.
A thousand years ago and more, knowledge was a priceless treasure. A single book could be worth a war, and it would contain the life's work of hundreds of people crafting at the height of their skill. Is there an analogy of such a thing today, other than these treasures that are locked in sealed vacuums, forever of the past? Even the continued existence of what once was priceless is now cheap, a bittersweet memory, for it can be reproduced, restored, shared. Anyone can see and make and create. A great number of us possess more knowledge than an entire century of wise men from a thousand years ago before we reach our fourth decades. There are so many great works now that the meaning of "great work" has become irrelevant. Every day there is a new great work being showcased, soon forgotten for a new, equally novel creation, and another, and another. They march past, similar in their complete lack of similarity.
I feel like such a selfish beast to say it, but the idea of 7.114 billion humans walking upon the earth is just utterly depressing. Maybe our planet is a jewel of rarity floating in unfathomably empty hollowness, but from down here, it is a brilliant, filthy place of clamoring geniuses searching for their recognition as they stand on the backs of the impoverished.
The notion of knowledge and skill as a rarity sounds so romantic only because I know I'd be one of the few, the wise. Ha. That's funny. Nobody writes about the paupers because they lived short, backbreaking lives and died illiterate, nothing interesting about their lives, no. That's what I am now, basically. A common serf, an ignorant prodigy. Or maybe just a common serf who is average. Maybe if there were a few less of us, I'd be special.
Or maybe I am a coward. Too afraid to actualize my great work because so many others before me have successfully done so. It's not hip to be a success - everybody's doing it.
Why do I feel so abashed to be privileged? So certain that I'm supposed to be unhappy in the name of equity? It was an accident, I swear, all of it. I am not privileged, at least not like the Zo'e people of the Amazon rainforest, who have no concept of "stress" because their lives are exactly how human lives should be. Everyone contributing to the greater good in starkly visible ways, every single day. What did you do today that immediately benefited the greater good? How did you touch 200 people around you? Can you? Can you love and know 200 people and be willing to live your entire life with them, supporting them and being supported by them?
Nobody would die alone.
Who the fuck am I? Will I ever find out before I die? Does it even matter?
If not, then at least there is another soul, among the billions of us, who loves and feels and cries for all of us. Sometimes selfishly, sometimes not.
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