Dear H,
My editor (God bless him) rejected the last essay on the grounds that I was unfair to Spike Lee. The fact that Spike Lee is unfair to everyone else is absolutely beside the point if my editor was right; and since I believe a sense of fairness is what separates men like me from Mr. Lee, I've decided to give him an apology -- or something like one.
The point in dispute was that I saw only one of his films and judged the man's whole career based on it. But whose fault is this? I saw Chiraq and it sucked and now I don't want to see any more Spike Lee. But my wife insists Crooklyn and Malcolm X were good films; and beyond this she said it on the same day I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit -- which wasn't only less good than his masterpieces like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but (let's be honest) kinda stupid.
Of course I'd forgotten the sad fact of an aging artist: that his bad art always precedes his good art, and if he lives long enough and keeps creating, bad art usually follows the good stuff. I'm almost happy Kurt Cobain blew his brains out before he became an aging Paul McCartney and followed up a Hey Jude with a Wonderful Christmastime. An artist's worst enemy is probably himself -- aside from drugs, and fame, and probably the scammers he signed a contract with.
Aside from "untimely" deaths, aging should have proved that bad things almost always follow excellent things; and our pride in ourselves and our faith in others both suffer indiscriminately. We expect that both we and others can keep delivering the same quality when we never expected them to give us quality in the first place. Geniuses are almost accidents in many respects, and surprise is almost always followed by disappointment. In almost everything there's a balance, and for everything we receive, there's something to be lost. The moment they make us feel a certain way we expect them to do it again; and when they fail to do it again, we blame them instead of ourselves -- for not doing what they themselves almost can't believe they made*.
Whether this truth applies to Mr. Lee is debatable, since at this moment I can't say whether his early films were good. But if it's true that he was a decent director before becoming a terrible director then I owe him an apology -- not only because I assumed he was always a terrible director, but because I have pity on him for becoming one. The only greater tragedy here is that he was never a great person; and if I retract calling him a shitty director, I still stand by my calling him a serious douchebag.
Yours,
-J
*An artist's best works are almost always an accident, which is why so many people refer to the accidents as inspiration. Anyone who's ever written anything great knows he couldn't do it again if he tried -- and the corollary feeling, that his best works are behind him, is something every great artist feels, excluding the delusional. CS Lewis went through a miserable period right before he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, believing not only that his best writing was behind him, but that nobody was interested in listening to him at all. Almost nobody knows when God has put him out to pasture. All he knows is that he wants to create -- and that he'll keep wanting to create something beautiful until the day that he dies.
Great art is a feeling that strikes almost at random. It can be prepared for with study and practice but rarely summoned. Thus we wait and wait for lightning to strike us, and the more earnestly we wait the less likely we are to get hit. The desire for creativity precludes it -- a jamming up the soul with wishes instead of letting it just flow. And when we stop waiting we create things we wouldn't have expected. It's been said that surprises make us happier, since we never planned on enjoying them. But how horrible is it to wait, day after day, in agony, on something you need -- but can't even imagine?
My editor (God bless him) rejected the last essay on the grounds that I was unfair to Spike Lee. The fact that Spike Lee is unfair to everyone else is absolutely beside the point if my editor was right; and since I believe a sense of fairness is what separates men like me from Mr. Lee, I've decided to give him an apology -- or something like one.
The point in dispute was that I saw only one of his films and judged the man's whole career based on it. But whose fault is this? I saw Chiraq and it sucked and now I don't want to see any more Spike Lee. But my wife insists Crooklyn and Malcolm X were good films; and beyond this she said it on the same day I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit -- which wasn't only less good than his masterpieces like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but (let's be honest) kinda stupid.
Of course I'd forgotten the sad fact of an aging artist: that his bad art always precedes his good art, and if he lives long enough and keeps creating, bad art usually follows the good stuff. I'm almost happy Kurt Cobain blew his brains out before he became an aging Paul McCartney and followed up a Hey Jude with a Wonderful Christmastime. An artist's worst enemy is probably himself -- aside from drugs, and fame, and probably the scammers he signed a contract with.
Aside from "untimely" deaths, aging should have proved that bad things almost always follow excellent things; and our pride in ourselves and our faith in others both suffer indiscriminately. We expect that both we and others can keep delivering the same quality when we never expected them to give us quality in the first place. Geniuses are almost accidents in many respects, and surprise is almost always followed by disappointment. In almost everything there's a balance, and for everything we receive, there's something to be lost. The moment they make us feel a certain way we expect them to do it again; and when they fail to do it again, we blame them instead of ourselves -- for not doing what they themselves almost can't believe they made*.
Whether this truth applies to Mr. Lee is debatable, since at this moment I can't say whether his early films were good. But if it's true that he was a decent director before becoming a terrible director then I owe him an apology -- not only because I assumed he was always a terrible director, but because I have pity on him for becoming one. The only greater tragedy here is that he was never a great person; and if I retract calling him a shitty director, I still stand by my calling him a serious douchebag.
Yours,
-J
*An artist's best works are almost always an accident, which is why so many people refer to the accidents as inspiration. Anyone who's ever written anything great knows he couldn't do it again if he tried -- and the corollary feeling, that his best works are behind him, is something every great artist feels, excluding the delusional. CS Lewis went through a miserable period right before he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, believing not only that his best writing was behind him, but that nobody was interested in listening to him at all. Almost nobody knows when God has put him out to pasture. All he knows is that he wants to create -- and that he'll keep wanting to create something beautiful until the day that he dies.
Great art is a feeling that strikes almost at random. It can be prepared for with study and practice but rarely summoned. Thus we wait and wait for lightning to strike us, and the more earnestly we wait the less likely we are to get hit. The desire for creativity precludes it -- a jamming up the soul with wishes instead of letting it just flow. And when we stop waiting we create things we wouldn't have expected. It's been said that surprises make us happier, since we never planned on enjoying them. But how horrible is it to wait, day after day, in agony, on something you need -- but can't even imagine?
Comments
Post a Comment