Smallblog

Discovered via Jonathan Blow’s talk.

In latter times, I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They are not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being, that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment. Things with which to fill 20 minutes, half an hour while we are waiting to die.

It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed then they wouldn’t be audience, they would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.

Recommended if you have a taste for metaphysics. Topics include morphic resonance, time singularity, and the power of art.

This quote is especially dark, but I appreciate its sentiment, that art can exists outside of time, so its much more powerful than any other force we could wield.

The bardic tradition of magic would place a bard as being much higher and more fearsome than a magician. A magician might curse you. That might make your hens lay funny or you might have a child born with a club foot. If a bard were to place, not a curse upon you, but a satire, then that could destroy you.

If it was a clever satire it might not just destroy you in the eyes of your associates, it would destroy you in the eyes of your family. It would destroy you in your own eyes. And if it was a finely worded, and clever satire, that might survive and be remembered for decades, even centuries, then years after you were dead, people might still be reading it and laughing at you and your wretchedness and your absurdity.

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic.