“If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining splendour of beauty of with which I was in love would one day flood back into my heart, there to ignite a flame that would torture me without end, how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.” ~ Michelangelo
Mythology is rife with imaginative portraits of humans whose quest for glory leads them to dire ends – Icarus, Narcissus and Prometheus come to mind. There are also Biblical stories where humans’ ingenuity and intelligence sparks an unexpected triumph, such as in David and Goliath. (Figures that sort of hubris would come from the Bible. Are we deities or not? Are we divine or merely human?) I’ve been happy to be merely mortal – a human with hubris, haughtiness, and hell sometimes in my heart – and I contain all the folly that every human has contained since we were created. That means I’ve had the vanity and self-deception to assume that a personal blog could become a work of art.
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” ~ Michelangelo
Making a blog into a work of art is perhaps a silly notion. When I consider the great works of art that have survived the centuries, a blog is unlikely to ever be counted as one of them. To that end, I have failed miserably, and will continue to fail in that quest. Making myself into a living work of art is also a ridiculous endeavor. I will fail at that too.
Yet in the effort, I hope you will find some shred of nobility. In the trying, may you see the striving. In the attempt, may you find the hope. If Icarus never fell, how would we know we could fly? If Prometheus hadn’t dared to capture fire, how would we learn to burn? If David hadn’t stepped forward to face Goliath, how would we muster the nerve to try?
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. ” ~ Michelangelo
For all of the twenty years this website has been in existence, I have striven to find myself – the man I truly was, the one beneath all of the fluster and bluster. Chipping away at our own thick stone to reveal the tender interior is not only the province of sculptors and artists, but the quest of every human being remotely interested in getting to know themselves. In certain ways, that is the purpose of life. Some may call it vanity, some may call it self-obsession, some might deride it as ego – and all of those play their necessary part – but only when we discover and know ourselves can we look into the soul of another human and possibly hope to see what is truly there.
“The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.” ~ Michelangelo
Admittedly, I am no David. Nor am I Goliath, or Prometheus, or Icarus. Far too afraid for far too often to be any of those characters, and far too flawed to have achieved what they did in spite of their folly, I’m only beginning to learn to be comfortable in my own skin. Such a lesson takes longer than twenty years, and the few things I know now at 47 wouldn’t have been dreamed or designed when I was 27. That’s why I’m still doing this. There is so much more to know. The two decades encapsulated on this website are the merest wisp of my life. You think I’ve revealed everything? You haven’t seen anything. We’re just getting started.
“To know each other is the best way to understand each other. To understand each other is the only way to love each other.” ~ Michelangelo
And so we journey onward – and I use ‘we’ with deliberate care and import. Somewhere along the way of the last twenty years I understood that this adventure would never, could never, and should never be done entirely on one’s own. My most thrilling moments here – the ones I enjoy reading even after I’ve written them – are those which involve my friends and family. Their stories are the often-invisible threads that hold this narrative together, weaving a life’s work into something that approaches art.
That which we love is always beautiful, and that which is beautiful is always art.
