Toil and moil

I have never bothered or asked in what way I was useful to society as a whole. I contented myself with expressing what I recognized as good and true. That has certainly been useful in a wide circle; but that was not the aim; it was the necessary result."
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1830

The German painter, novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist, philosopher and chief minister of state at Weimar died in 1832. The quote is found in Josef Pieper's essay, Musse und Kult (Leisure the Basis of Culture) which makes a case for 'a contemplative attitude, a receptive attitude... the capacity for steeping oneself in the whole of creation.' If you would drink this holy brew, try silence:

Only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear. Silence, as it is used in this context, does not mean 'dumbness' or 'noiselessness'; it means more nearly that the soul's power to 'answer' to the reality of the world is left undisturbed."

Pieper's 1950's world is enamored with work. Rational thought is king. Action and effort are gods. The essay lays out a society's frenetic absorption in accomplishing goals to the point of... sadness. Cognitive striving rooted in a person's 'despairing refusal to be oneself.' (Kierkegaard)

Metaphysically and theologically... a man does not, in the last resort, give the consent of his will to his own being... Behind or beneath the dynamic activity of his existence, he is still not one with himself, or, as the medieval writers would have said, face to face with the divine good within him, he is prey to sadness.

From Hemingway to Cobain to (your name here), artists have a leaning toward sadness. My theory, that hypersensitivity to the groanings of reality gnaws at the artist heart, is upended by Pieper, who pairs sadness with a profound lack of sensitivity, a driven hyper insensitivity to that divine good inside you. Prozac according to Pieper: be quiet and listen up.

It is in these silent and receptive moments that the soul of man is sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together, only for a moment, perhaps, and the lightening vision of his intuition has to be recaptured and rediscovered in hard work.

And here, it seems, perfectionism finds a worthy companion to her unrelenting mad devotion.