3.10.2011

This Artistic Life.

Two confessions:

1. I am a public radio addict. Morning Edition, Eight Forty-Eight, Fresh Air, All Things Considered, This American Life. Without cable and time, I have limited connections to what is going on in the world. Thanks to public radio, namely WBEZ and NPR, I'm at least tuned in. More than that, I find the sound of their voices comforting, their stories fascinating, and let's not ignore the fact that it has rescued me from the utter dread that is pop music radio.

2. I have taste. I have a deep love for all things artistic and I consider myself an artist of words, images and food. But I often recognize as I write, paint, photograph or cook that while I know the difference between what's good and what isn't, I am just not up to par with others out there. It took me a long time to admit this, and while the thought is somewhat discouraging, it's also inspiring. So the more I see of something that's good, the more I aspire to become good... After all, art and excellence take practice.

Just ask Ira Glass, creator of This American Life.

I dedicate this video to impeccable taste, and to the day when our abilities finally live up to it...






Persist in your art.

3 comments:

Adriana said...

Great post,Bethany!

Heather said...

super inspiring...thanks love!

Moneypenny said...

A gift for you ! ;-)

Elevation of Charles Baudelaire

English translation

Above the valleys and the lakes: beyond
The woods, seas, clouds and mountain-ranges: far
Above the sun, the aethers silver-swanned
With nebulae, and the remotest star,


My spirit! with agility you move
Like a strong swimmer with the seas to fight,
Through the blue vastness furrowing your groove
With an ineffable and male delight.


Far from these foetid marshes, be made pure
In the pure air of the superior sky,
And drink, like some most exquisite liqueur,
The fire that fills the lucid realms on high.


Beyond where cares or boredom hold dominion,
Which charge our fogged existence with their spleen,
Happy is he who with a stalwart pinion
Can seek those fields so shining and serene:


Whose thoughts, like larks, rise on the freshening breeze
Who fans the morning with his tameless wings,
Skims over life, and understands with ease
The speech of flowers and other voiceless things.


— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

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