SERENDIPITY GONE

Fair to say I had a certain kind of serendipity as a young man. Good fortune seemed to attend me. Things fell into place as if to some benevolent order. At a point though this reversed and whatever forces were at play began to work against me. It felt like a freak metamorphosis had taken hold. Then every attempt at pulling something off would draw a blank. The feeling was and still is that here was something over which I had/have no influence.

BERNARD WILLIAMS

I particularly disliked Williams’ writings on morality when I was reading philosophy. However, I was interested to read his comments recently when summing up his life’s work: “It’s been about spelling out the notion of inner necessity. That someone who has to do something has to live in a certain way to discover what is really him, what he belongs to, what is his destiny - I’m drawn to all that.” Me too.

OPPOSITES

I’ve noticed that public speaking ability and intimacy skills are sometimes polar opposites seldom residing in the same person. Intimacy, if genuine, requires confirmation and needs to be reciprocal. Public performance only requires an audience, preferably attentive but not necessarily.

DEFINING MOMENTS

A relationship, whether personal, professional or whatever, usually has a defining moment. The moment might be a shared event or series of events that define the tenure of the relationship thereafter. It’s like at that point a connection is made, a seed gets planted. If it’s a good relationship then the seed can grow from virtually nothing into something of quality and stature. Perhaps the initial quality of the seed, the connection that’s made in that embryonic moment, is the real determining factor.

MEANINGLESS

At any point most of what’s offered up in pop culture means nothing to most people. It’s a “some of the people some of the time” affair. Put any new work in front of ten people separately with no cues and you’re likely to get ten different responses. Ask them on a different day, different again. Given this, as an artist the chance of any particular person liking what you’ve got unprompted is minimal.