There's kind of a curious divide. For example, artists and musicians, even poets, often don't have a lot to say about their respective arts. They undoubtedly have a lot of insight, but somehow this insight is locked on the other side of a divide. It cannot be brought over, whether through a lack of effort or an outright incapacity.
Then there are critics who haven't really been on the other side of the wall, and only have a vague notion of what might be there. They can talk about various art forms, and seem to know what they are talking about (if you don't look too closely) but they haven't really been that curious about the other side. I don't really believe in ineffability: you can really talk about what's really significant, but it's extremely difficult.
There are a small number of people who not only have the insight but can actually express it in meaningful ways to those on the other side. You know when you are in the zone of insight; it's unmistakable.
Of course, once I put this model in writing it no longer seems valid to me. That's what blogging is all about.
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The worst students are those who depend most heavily on biography. Are they bad because they depend on biography, or is it that they are already bad and use biography as a crutch?
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This is to let you know that the Hitchhiker Team wrote about your blog yesterday. You can check it out here:
http://hgttb.blogspot.com/2006/10/bemsha-swing.html
Enjoy!
In middlin' America, home of the Self and land of the Self, biographies tend to be much more popular than works by the biographers' subjects, and biography's the method closest at hand for avoiding aesthetic, philosophical, political, etc., insight. Maybe in some other context, some other crippling-crutch would be more popular -- scoring for religious orthodoxy, for example.
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