#shawnwallace

I am House blk!

I've read this many years ago and the overall idea has lingered on my memory ever since. 

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But in the middle of the night I wonder: Can we in the mansion of arts and letters play a part? Could we reduce the destructiveness of the people we know? Could we possibly use the dreams we create to lure our friends in another direction? Because it’s valuable to remember that the feeling of superiority is not the only source of human satisfaction. Imperial dreams are not the only dreams. I’ve known people, for example, who’ve derived satisfaction from collecting seashells. And sometimes I think of a woman I knew a long time ago who seemed to be terribly happy, although her life consisted of not much more than getting up each day, playing with the cat, reading a mystery, eating an agreeable sandwich for lunch, then taking a walk in the afternoon. No wealthy giant eating dishes costing hundreds of dollars could ever have enjoyed a meal more than this woman seemed to enjoy her simple sandwiches—-so what was her secret? And what about Edgar, who gets such pleasure out of working as a nurse, or Tom, who finds such nourishment teaching children in school? Jane’s need for superiority seems fully satisfied if a friend admires one of her drawings. And Edna’s overjoyed if she wins at cards. People can make a life, it seems, out of love—-out of gardening, out of sex, friendships, the company of animals, the search for enlightenment, the enjoyment of beauty. Wait—-isn’t that our particular province?

Beauty can be important in a person’s life. And people beguiled by the beautiful are less dangerous to others than those obsessed by the thought of supremacy. If an afternoon of reading poetry has given me a feeling of profound well-being, I don’t need to go out into the street and seek satisfaction by strangling prostitutes. Art can be central in a person’s life. If the art we create is beautiful enough, will people be so drawn looking at it that they’ll leave behind their quest for power? Beauty really is more enjoyable than power. A poem really is more enjoyable than an empire, because a poem doesn’t hate you. The defense of privilege, the center of our lives for such a long time, is grim, exhausting. We’re exhausted from holding on to things, exhausted from trying not to see those unobtrusive people we’re kicking away, whose suffering is actually unbearable to us.

In the mansion of arts and letters, we live like children, running and playing up and down the hallways all day and all night. We fill room after room with the things we make. After our deaths, we’ll leave behind our poems, drawings, and songs, made for our own pleasure, and we won’t know if they’ll be allowed to help in the making of a better world.

(taken from Essays by Shawn Wallace.)