Artful Dodger
Bob Dylan said art requires both observation and imagination and if one is missing, it’s impossible. Which neatly explains why I can’t write but for vacations. There is no observing going on elsewhere. Suburban tundra ought be flanked by police officers saying, “there’s nothing to see here laddie, move along!”. There is a high in creating art, but art’s a fickle lover. Imagination begs out, pleading the laundry, and observation dies on the vine singing “Give My Regards to Broadway” in a fake accent.
Truly it is hard to see anything, but surely that's self-inflicted. I could read more and see films instead of blogging or watching Chris Matthews or George Will. Blogging and television are marquee exhibits in the Museum of Colossal Wastes of Time. I have but one vote to give my country yet I spend untoward number of hours informing myself. At some point I ought not care about how much discretionary spending went up. I’ll be glad when The Election is over.
But oh to sing like Lileks, and about politics no less! He sings like the song thrush, aka Turdus philomelos ('you could look it up' as Yogi would say), despite dealing in subjects as unpromising as my high school prom dates. He'll write like there’s no tomorrow and he’ll impregnate it with obscure references to things like “bang-sticks” which I prefer not to know about so I can properly appreciate. I ache for a Dying Swan reference of my own but you can’t fake it. Nijinsky schmijinsky. Lileks is the Annie Dillard of politics, too alive by half, with prose as thick as motor oil. You can’t write that densely without having a head for everything you’ve read and saw, and if you misspent your youth playing dodge ball and collecting rocks (without knowing their names – you just wanted one of every color) then you’re out o’ luck. You can’t write that sort of murderous prose without having burnt sienna in your crayolas.
And what of politics after all? Well, how can one not appreciate the self-criticism of the West? It's necessary though it has the scent of Yeats about it: the terrorists full of passionate intensity with the West lacking conviction.
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