Institutions have never been reliable gauges of artistic merit.
People have a knack for being both rather better than you hoped, and perhaps even a shade worse than you feared.
Work which is bad, but which bears the right labeling, will succeed in this environment, where good work which resists easy description is rejected. Rejected even by people who know that, historically, the artists they admire created work which defied easy description in their day.
– Porridger’s Almanack (Breakfast of Ganglions)
No labor-saving machine,
Nor discovery have I made;
Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a hospital or library,
Nor reminiscence of any deed of courage, for America,
Nor literary success, nor intellect—nor book for the book-shelf;
Only a few carols, vibrating through the air, I leave,
For comrades and lovers.
– Walt Whitman
Nine years ago today (tonight), we made Noise in the Library. Which confirms that it is about time I revived the Studies in Impermanence.
And today, in an off-chance which ranks mighty high on the Trippy Scale, I have found (what I was not particularly looking for today) the symphonic band arrangement of the Egyptian Dance from White Nights.
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