On Jun 23, 2008, at 6:03 PM, William Conger wrote:
Yet "the sound of another man's axe" is a useful
metaphor for artistic anxiety and the quest for
innovation and freedo
Oh, God, I can hear some else's No. 7 filbert! Gotta get movin'.
As usual, William speaks with great comprehension and wide reading.
It's always a pleasure to read his comments--it's always a *pleasure*
(an aesthetic experience, as much as an intellectual one) to read
clear, cogent, thoughtful and -provoking comments. It is a pleasure to
read comments written clearly, crisply, in prose that the writer uses
so as to acknowledge the intelligence and competence to his readers.
It's a pleasure, as much as it's a functional tool of information
transmittal. Good intelligent writing is a pleasure; it's not just
some instrumental efficiency.
I'd like to add one small elaboration. We've heard the well-worn
truism that when we're in high school, we think our folks are so
ignorant of life, but that when we finish college (or get married, or
have children), we're surprised by how much they've learned in the
intervening years.
Young adults have to master their skills, face their cultural
opportunities, and clear out the old guard who are already there ahead
of them, sitting in their seats, eating their food, doing their work.
Acculturation is a constantly wobbling equilibrium between honoring
and preserving traditions and throwing off the old, tired, unworking
methods.
Freud calls it killing your father (of course, he was speaking of
youth grabbing sexual opportunities.) But as much as we might, in some
deep subterranean way, want to bed our mothers, the waking thought is
repellent. We want to woo and win the girl or woman our own age, the
one who will sit with us, and eat with us ... and sleep with us. Not
our parents, not our father and his Oldsmobile, not the vibrant life
of fifty, or twenty, or five years ago!
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Michael Brady
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
