We should all aspire to be great
Buddy J. Thompson
Issue date: 11/25/09 Section: Opinion
I have a pet peeve. (Big surprise, right?) But it's not your traditional people-who-don't-flush pet peeve. No, no. It's much more consequential than that. It's the "Genius Standard."
Shakespeare, Mozart, Hemingway, Da Vinci, Madonna (OK, not really Madonna. I was just seeing if you were paying attention.) The list goes on containing people who have achieved such a level of artistic genius that they will be forever revered as "the Greats." This is not my pet peeve. In fact, I admire the Greats myself and believe that all intentional artists should aspire to their standards. But that, I feel, is not the view of our society. Our society is not that…encouraging.
To our society, as far as I can tell, the Genius Standard is unachievable. It is not a standard toward which one should strive, but rather that one should always be aware he or she will remain under. The Greats have come and gone, their works left to us like some sort of gifts that we should feel obliged to fawn over for all the rest of time. I mean, is this not what high school English courses were? "Read this, read that, and by the way, you'll never achieve this."
None of my teachers ever actually said this, and, frankly, my English teachers have always been my favorites and have encouraged me to write. However, there seems to be a general social and scholarly attitude that the Greats cannot be outdone. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. You might as well claim the ship won't sail then blow a hole in it. Aspiring athletes don't put up with this crap.
They're told that if you work hard and practice hard, you can be great. I guess that's why district budgets flood their athletic programs and leave their art departments parched. Well, even though I fear that the wrath of all things collegiate will come crashing down on me, I'm going to say it: the Greats can be outdone. Genius artists though they were, they were still human, and they probably had teachers who told them that the Greats before them weren't even matchable, let alone beatable.
Shakespeare, Mozart, Hemingway, Da Vinci, Madonna (OK, not really Madonna. I was just seeing if you were paying attention.) The list goes on containing people who have achieved such a level of artistic genius that they will be forever revered as "the Greats." This is not my pet peeve. In fact, I admire the Greats myself and believe that all intentional artists should aspire to their standards. But that, I feel, is not the view of our society. Our society is not that…encouraging.
To our society, as far as I can tell, the Genius Standard is unachievable. It is not a standard toward which one should strive, but rather that one should always be aware he or she will remain under. The Greats have come and gone, their works left to us like some sort of gifts that we should feel obliged to fawn over for all the rest of time. I mean, is this not what high school English courses were? "Read this, read that, and by the way, you'll never achieve this."
None of my teachers ever actually said this, and, frankly, my English teachers have always been my favorites and have encouraged me to write. However, there seems to be a general social and scholarly attitude that the Greats cannot be outdone. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. You might as well claim the ship won't sail then blow a hole in it. Aspiring athletes don't put up with this crap.
They're told that if you work hard and practice hard, you can be great. I guess that's why district budgets flood their athletic programs and leave their art departments parched. Well, even though I fear that the wrath of all things collegiate will come crashing down on me, I'm going to say it: the Greats can be outdone. Genius artists though they were, they were still human, and they probably had teachers who told them that the Greats before them weren't even matchable, let alone beatable.
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