"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
Was he right? Is it all in the experience and the personal impact? Or are there actually tangible evidence of our accomplishments that can be created in our all-to-short time on this planet? What will outlast the centuries? Our architecture? Our scientific research? Our stories (visual, literary, audio)? Our pain? How can any of us make absolutely certain that the ways that we have impacted those around us stay here, long after we are gone? Will a book that I write end up in someone's yardsale box in 65 years? Will Lady Gaga's next album be sampled, and re-sampled over and over until no originals can be found (even throgh bit torrent)? Will the photographs that my peers and I create even get to see all seven continents before they erode and decay with time? How do we young artists, we "...music-makers, we dreamers of dreams..." know which directions to cast our lines that they may stick longer than others? Is there a way to know? Or is the most important thing to keep making work until the bitter end? Is it better to die with unfinished work in your hand than to have retired from success? I leave these questions open...This is a beginning... My beginning... Our beginning, my dear friends... I wish us all well.... Come back soon, won't you, and share more of my musings?Love Always,
Stewart A.
P.S. Ive attached the full poem Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy, from which Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) took the quote about music-makers and dreamers....its awesome! Share it with your friends!
from Ode
by Arthur O'Shaughnessy [1844-1881]
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
