"You've Got to Admire Them All for Their Courage"

I don’t know if it’s stupid or beautiful, but so many people in this crazy city have yet to give up hope. They audition, draw, write, dance, sing, day after day and yet, even when there is no response, even when no one is around to see or feel their work, they press on. These people, they choose a life of uncertainty. They decide at some point “I will devote a certain amount of my life (sometimes a year, sometimes 12, sometimes a lifetime) to pursuing this dream that digs at my soul.” They choose, most often knowingly, to lose the closeness of loved ones, to risk having to give up everything, to chance the “other side” of life being lost to them. The “other side” being the husband/wife, picket fence, happy dog and steady paycheck. All of this is secondary to the “dream”. For some the dream is fame, for some the dream is insane fortune. These are the people that fade out. The people that give up for something more “realistic”. For most of us, however, the dream is producing something that we recognize as art. The dream is being able to skillfully take the ideals that we believe in so fiercely and turn them into a story, a picture, a play. To “smash the mirror” as Pinter would say, as show society what it really looks like. The desire is to communicate these things to both an intrigued and knowledgable audience as well as an unconcerned and unknowing public. To open eyes. To teach each other. To be energized and invigorated by our work because we are changing the world. Even if it’s our own little microcosm. And we are, or should I say we will, change the world.  

Here’s a beautiful poem by Bukowski, that explains these sentiments much better than I ever could:

A Sickness? Charles Bukowski

yes, I'm a Romantic, overly sentimental,

something of a hero worshipper,

and I do

not apologize for this.

instead, I revere Hemingway,

at the end of his endurance,

sticking the

barrel of the gun into his trembling

mouth;

and I think

of Van Gogh slicing off part of his ear

for a whore

and then blasting himself away in the

cornfield;

then there was Chatterton drinking rat

poison (an extremely painful way to die

even if you are a 

plagiarist);

and Ezra Pound dragged through

the dusty streets of Italy in a cage

and later confined to a 

madhouse;

Celine robbed, hooted at, tormented by

the French;

Fitzergald who finally quit drinking only to drop dead

soon thereafter;

Mozart in a pauper's grave;

Beethoven deaf;

Bierce vanishing into the wastelands of Mexico;

Hart Crane leaping over the ship's rail and

into the propeller;

Tolstoy accepting Christ and giving all his

possessions to the

poor;

T. Lautree

with his short, deformed

body

and perfectly developed

spirit,

drawing everything he

saw

and more;

D.H. Lawrence

dying of TB

and preparing his own Ship of Death

while writing his

last 

great poems;

Li Po

setting his poems

on fire

and sailing them down the

river;

Sherwood Anderson dying

of peritonitis

after swallowing a

toothpick

(he was at a party

drinking

martinis

when

the olive went in,

toothpick and

all);

Wilfred Owens killed

in the first Great War

while

saving the world for

Democracy;

Socrates drinking

hemlock with a

smile;

Nietzsche gone mad;

De Quincey addicted to opium;

Dostoevsky standing blindfolded before a 

firing squad;

Hamsun eating his own

flesh;

Harry Crosby commiting

suicide hand in hand with his

whore;

Tchaikovsky trying to

evade his homosexuality

by marrying a female

opera star;

Henry Miller, in his old

age, obsessed with

young Oriental

girls;

John Dos Passos going

from fervent left-winger

to ultraconservative

Republican;

Aldous Huxley taking

visionary

drugs and

reaping imaginary

riches;

Brahms in his youth,

working on ways

to build a powerful

body

because he felt that

the mind

was not

enough;

Villon barred from Paris,

not for his ideas

but rather because he was a 

thief;

Thomas Wolfe who felt he couldn't

go home again

until

he was

famous;

and Faulkner:

when he got his morning mail.

he'd hold the envelope up

to the light

and if he couldn't see

a check in there

he'd throw it

away;

William Borroughs who shot and

killed his

wife

(he missed the apple

perched

on her

head);

Norman Mailer knifing his

wife; no apple

involved;

Salinger not believing

the world was worth writing

for;

Jean Julius Christian Sibelius,

a proud and beautiful man

composer of powerful music

who after his 40th year

went into hiding and was seldom

seen

again;

nobody is sure who 

Shakespeare

was;

nightlife killed Truman

Capote;

Allen Ginsberg becoming a 

college

professor;

William Saroyan marrying the

same woman twice

(but

by then

he wasn't going anywhere

anyhow);

John Fante being sliced away

bit by bit

by the surgeon's knife

before my very

eyes;

Robinson Jeffers

(the proudest poet of them all)

writing

beggin letters to those in power.

of course, there's more

to tell

and I could go

on and on

but even I

(the Romantic)

begin to

tire.

still, these men and women

--past and present--

have created and are creating

new worlds for

the rest of us,

despite the fire and despite the ice,

despite the

hostility of governments,

despite the ingrown distrust of the masses,

only to die

single 

and usually

alone

.

you've got to admire them all

for the courage,

for the effort,

for their best and their

worst.

some gang!

they are a source of light!

they are a source of joy!

all of them

heroes you can be

grateful for

and admire from afar

as you wake up

from your ordinary dreams

each morning.