[Michael]

Greetings, Norland, and than you for helping us launch this new platform!

This piece is a thinker and no mistake, as Sam Gamgee might put it. Personal reflections: As I read along I found myself labeling various popular artists in a kind of program running in the background, sorting out the canned productions from those that seem, at least from my own perception (and that’s a critical point I think), “genuine” or expressions for their own sake.

And then I thought about myself. I recently went through something of a difficult period in which I found myself writing like mad, both prose and poetry. I thought to myself, “Well damn. I’m a crisis writer.” I also thought about who I am at the age I’m at, almost 64, and the lines from Desperado, ” You’re losin’ all your highs and lows/ Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?”; how that seems to be at play as we grow older and the fiery passions of youth fade as we become, as Robin Williams described the Fisher King’s wound in the movie by the same name, “sick with experience.”

One thing seems certain, the Muse won’t be forced to whisper through you.

Anyway… there is one thought I’d like you to discuss a bit further. “Whenever opposites are undialectically torn apart, we are no longer dealing with the reality of true myth but with the alienation of an ideological fantasy.”

I can’t seem to quite wrap my head around that one. lol

 

Cheers,

Michael