A wayward whale dies and the idea of a boggy, soggy, squitchy picture
Today, as I was working out at JCCC, I was watching the news coverage of the first whale to be spotted in the Thames since 19something...Now, I log back on to find out that the whale died during the rescue attempt. Sad.
But somehow this reminded me of a thought I had after reading Scott's post.
I love the description of the boggy, soggy, squitchy painting in the entry to the Spouter-Inn. It evokes that feeling you have before creation when you have this incredible sense of what you hope to create, and you still have the hope that indeed you'll be able to create it. Of course, in the end, you don't...it's only half-attained if you're lucky, and you realize that once again the glorious, bone-shaking vision you had continues to elude you.... (hmm...somewhat like hunting for a single white whale through the 7 seas...)
No story was ever finished...only abandoned.
The only hope we have really, is that someone else will be interested enough in the boggy, soggy, squitchy pictures we create to take an oath to find out what our creations mean in the end...
"But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze youto it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. "
moby-dick06 (technorati tag)
But somehow this reminded me of a thought I had after reading Scott's post.
I love the description of the boggy, soggy, squitchy painting in the entry to the Spouter-Inn. It evokes that feeling you have before creation when you have this incredible sense of what you hope to create, and you still have the hope that indeed you'll be able to create it. Of course, in the end, you don't...it's only half-attained if you're lucky, and you realize that once again the glorious, bone-shaking vision you had continues to elude you.... (hmm...somewhat like hunting for a single white whale through the 7 seas...)
No story was ever finished...only abandoned.
The only hope we have really, is that someone else will be interested enough in the boggy, soggy, squitchy pictures we create to take an oath to find out what our creations mean in the end...
"But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze youto it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. "
moby-dick06 (technorati tag)
posted by Erica at 8:06 PM
2 Comments:
I hadn't thought of it in the 'creation' sense, but now that you say it, I can totally relate. At the beginning of a project, I'm full of great ideas and visions of what it will end up as, but at the end, it's only a shade of my glorious hopes. I'm glad it's not just me. And, is it possible that we're just so sick of looking at this thing while it's coming together, that it's charm is lost on us?
I would love to think that I'm just so familiar with my creations that the charm is lost, but really, I'm pretty self-indulgent, and I really like snippets of my own creations--I can just never make the whole everything I originally envisioned. And of course, there are levels of my disapointment.
Some of my inability to realize the vision is my laziness. I don't stay with anything until it's REALLY done. But some of it is also that wonderful half-conscious world where you can imagine the edges and some of the feel of what you're trying to create, but it's too dreamy and unattainable to completely grasp. This, to me, is so much about what M-D is about. Melville is the ultimate frusterated artist. Part of what I love about this book is that Melville was totally reaching for his vision, and it's crazy and ambitious and imperfect...
Ah, time, strength, cash and patience!
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