Looking at stuff
Man, it kills me how much it all depends on how you look at stuff. That totally sucks. You’d think something could just be a way and that would be it. But nooooo!
A good example is me. I look at myself and see a svelte, well-mustachioed tango artist with a cute butt. Other people look at me and see an old fat guy. Those bastards, how could they?
Another good example might be what has happened lately with my early forays into the labyrinthine morass of marketing. Not being one to discard my morals lightly, I made sure to start out with something really rather slimy. Modeling myself after the guys who make sandwiches for food commercials, I pretended that something that wasn’t really was. They do it visually, by increasing the width and depth of their burgers by a considerable margin. I do it by lying.
(Lying is not big with us in marketing, at least the word isn’t. We prefer to call it consumer enhancement.)
Stealing someone else’s idea, as is my wont, I decided to make a fake ‘forward’ and include a link to my site in it. I don’t mind lying so much, but out in public like that kind of gave me the creeps. Viral marketing is one thing, flesh-eating bacterial marketing another. It wouldn’t harm anyone, though it may fool many of them, and fooling people is harm of a sort, something I never want to do.
After now, anyway.
I’m way too much of a fool myself to get pleasure from another person’s discomfort or embarrassment. Oh well, another sacrifice that must be made for Art, apparently. One’s morals, or what was left of them.
But it was the response of the people who received my fake forward: The Ten Least Inspirational Quotes of All Time, that led to this post. Some of the people were really depressed by it. I think what happened is that the quotes, most of which are actually very inspiring if you think about them, were taken out of their context in the Extracto, which is packed to brimmin with so many inspirational things – at least for a writer like me – that these quotes might be read in their true light.
Here are three of them:
10. We are all of us failures, at least, the best of us are.
~ James M. Barrie
2. A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
~ Franz Kafka
1. I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.
~ Leonardo da Vinci’s last words
Here’s my response:
James Barrie wrote Peter Pan – the reason he thinks the best of us are failures is because the best of us are always wishing on the farthest star we can see. We can’t help but fail, because we aren’t gods. Yet, like really dumb but loveable heroes, still we try. Boy do we ever try. Man do I love the human race, the Literarium brought that home to me so much. I refound my loving roots in the wise words of our fore-writers, a child’s open heart, that original part of me I almost dis-remembered, the heart that calls everyone You.
The Kafka one is really inspiring to me, as well as being a droll example of black humor, a real knee-bone slapper, in the graveside comedy line. I always thought it was bad when I wanted to die, but no, that is when I began to reach the beginning of my understanding, the true nature of how difficult life is, and how important it is to buck oneself up whenever possible, by whatever means you can, even if it means lying your ass off (in a good way). What artistic soul has never wished to die, asap? All of us have, and now we know that that was the beginning of our understanding, if we have but the courage to see it, as Kafka did.
And then the fact that Leonardo considered his work offensive because it wasn’t good enough. To me that is hugely inspirational. What a magnificent being that man must have been! When I hear those last words, it brings tears to my eyes because it makes me love da Vinci so much. A non genius-of-all-time would be bragging about how great he was. “Come get me God, the world’s greatest human is ready to come home to Papa!” How truly humble da Vinci must have been. Practically a saint. He’s a perfect example of what Barrie was saying, and he was the best of us, or one of them.
Of couse it’s sad he could not value himself at his true worth, and be content with himself and the master works of his life, but to me it’s so much more heroic this way. Since when were human beings born to feel good about ourselves? We were born to yearn.
So there you go, two ways of seeing the same goldurn thing.
Your Director of Consumer Enhancement,
LWIII
Interesting take on the quotes. You see them as inspirational, because you have a positive outlook on life. I see them as positive too,
Ultimately nothing it positive or negative. It just is and it only becomes good or bad, pro or con through how we look at it and how we interpet it.
Thanks Steve! That is so true.