art

18 Dec

Thought for The Day: Yancey on "Negative Capability"

Posted by Carolyn in art, Faith, John Keats, Musings [thoughts in process], Negative Capability, Philip Yancey
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I'm reading a brilliant Philip Yancey article from FIRST THINGS Magazine entitled "What Art Can and Can't Do".  (Thanks to Spencer Capier for sending me the link.)

These lines in particular struck me:

Keats said that literature sometimes demands of us Negative Capability:  the ability to accept multiplicity, mystery and doubt without reaching out for the illusory comforts of certainty and fact.  Faith, too, demands a kind of Negative Capability, and that does not always sit well with many of the folk who distribute Christian art and many of the folk who consume it.

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16 Nov

Street Sweepers and Bookkeepers (Thx to MLK)

Posted by Carolyn in art, Martin Luther King, Musings [thoughts in process], vocation, work
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Tonight I am surrounded by numbers, papers, files, boxes, and all manner of things I don't care for.  I am doing the books for my parents' restaurant.  Frankly, I've been feeling just a touch sorry for myself, trapped here doing paperwork when I should be MAKING ART.  (You have to imagine that last bit delivered dramatically, possibly with an imitation English accent.)
 
Fortunately, my pity party has been cut short by Martin Luther King, who can always be relied upon for a little perspective.  Here's what he just told me:
 
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”- MLK
 
And so, I will do the books as artfully as I can.  Which, frankly, isn't much.  But it's something.
 
That's All,
CA