What we know about ourselves:
We are geniuses, neglected by others. No praise is ever high enough.
AND
We are frauds. All praise we get is on false pretences. The one who praises me is my friend, or has low standards, or is only being nice not to hurt my feelings.
There is no happy medium between these two self-perceptions; instead, they are at constant war.
4 comentarios:
Spiritual wisdom on a poetry blog. Who knew?
Jonathan, is this taken from the science article in the Times recently about men's brains??
Something to the effect that men, in particular, tend to run to extremes of skill & incompetence.
I just caught the end of it, on the radio, that's all i know..
too bad poetry isn't like chess where, as a matter of course, i know i can do pretty well against most players of a certain level & sometimes succeed against those at a higher--but have no hope at all against those at a higher still...
ratings aside, i think there are still poetic skills to be learned & which give their possessor a reasonably accurate perception of the skillfullness of others. the trouble is, there are so many schools with mutually incompatible sets of skills they value & proclaim.
and without naming them, call the whole game "poetry".
I believe that in the presentation of self there is a negotiation that ensues - en lieu of a battle - (which in part is contingent on the social interaction that takes places) between the two competing self-perceptions of identity. Situational self-identification is hopefully not dominated by either one of the objectifications of self that you note.
--Nick Bruno
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