Dimly Lit

I stumbled across this today:

“I think I would love to be an artist.”
“No, no you’re not artist material.”
“Well, that may be, but I would like to be one anyway.”
“You can’t be an artist, for a number of reasons: You can’t support yourself and be an artist. You can’t possibly take time away from all of life’s responsibilities to just sit and play with art. And you can’t just go around calling yourself an artist. You must be deemed one.”
“Hmmmm, I hadn’t thought of all that.”
“Yeah, I didn’t figure.”
“Did I mention that creating makes me come alive?”
“Did I mention that creating makes you go broke and is a silly waste of time?”
“Yes, yes, you did make that point. And I suppose it’s a good one.”
“Of course it is.”
“But what’s the bit about you have to be deemed an artist…what does that mean?”
“Well, it means you can’t just out of the blue wake up one morning and say, ‘Hey, I’m an artist now.’ “
“You can’t?”
“No, you have to be good. And someone else has to think so too. In fact several someones.”
“Oh, well that’s too bad. I couldn’t even get into Grad school. Wasn’t good enough.”
“I know.”
“And I didn’t go to school for art.”
“I know.”
“I should have. But I took a safer approach.”
“I know. Artists aren’t safe. Your safe.”
“I suppose I am.”

I must admit that I’ve only read a very little John McPhee. Oddly though, what I have read continues to rattle around in my head more than nearly any other author. Certainly when I think of great writers his name is at the top of the list. By writer, I am not just meaning someone who puts words on a page (or blog as the case may be). I mean someone who clearly has a love of sentences and packs meaning and emotion into a minimum of words.

This article over at Bookslut expresses very well what I mean.

Bob Castilly, creator of the City Museum in St. Louis is at it again, this time in a run down old cement factory just north of the Arch. He gets a great write-up in the New York Times and I, for one, look forward to going to Cementland.

One of the truly great storytellers of our time died Thursday, September 7.

“Why does anybody tell a story?” she once asked, even though she knew the answer.“It
does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the
universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant,
that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”