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Why Do Writers, Painters, and Other Artists Bloom Late?

The thing is to never give up.

davidjrogersftw

deep pink proteaAlthough talent in the arts most often shows itself early, because it takes so many years to develop their talent and become highly proficient in the arts, people who will become expert musicians, painters, performers, and writers can expect to be late bloomers. Artists who perform at a high level do not demonstrate remarkable talent in short order.  They are not usually in their twenties or thirties, but in their forties, fifties, and sixties. All spend many years developing the knowledge, attitudes, and skills that will eventually enable them to be recognized for their mastery. All arts involve learning form and the art’s devices, and the need for control, craft, revisions, and structure–time consuming efforts.  All begin by imitating existing techniques they have studied.

Harriet Doerr’s first novel was published when she was seventy three, and won the National Book Award.  Playwright George Bernard Shaw and novelists Sherwood Anderson and…

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Francois de Fleury: the Most Badass Engineer of the American Revolution:

A great read.

The Angry Staff Officer

Hey, Army Engineer community, pull up a chair, we need to have a little chat about how we talk about our own history. Somehow, we always let the infantry, armor, and field artillery take center stage when it comes to talking about badass historical figures. We just sort of sit back and mutter, “Well, we built the roads you all use,” and get silently drunk in the corner. As usual. We’re like the Hufflepuffs of the Army, if Hufflepuffs were alcoholics with a severe predilection for explosives and heavy equipment. It’s almost as if we’re reluctant to get excited about our own profession. Suffice to say, we don’t talk about our own heroes enough. And oh boy, have we got a badass engineer to talk about today.

François-Louis Teissèdre de Fleury, born in 1749 in Provence, France. He arrives in America in March of 1777 with a contingent of other…

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12 Steps to a spiritual awakening

WOW

Words from Walden

I hope this series teaches you something about yourself. It helped me re-learn what I already knew, but had escaped me for some time.

After ” Waking up ” my existence was set in a whole new world. I felt like Aladdin peaking at what life inside the kingdom had to offer. The difference was that I was now living in a kingdom of my own creation.

After I realized I was not actually dreaming or flying on a magic carpet I started to research and explore exactly what was happening to me and why. What I found were many different books, articles and, posts about the 7, 10, or 12 steps of a spiritual awakening.

The most fascinating aspect of these symptomatic steps was that the majority of them had actually happened to me. What I once would have dismissed as Woo-woo or Pollyanna was no longer just someone…

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The Rise and Fall of the French Royal Mistress

I love this kind of history.

Age of Revolutions

By Christine Adams and Tracy Adams

When Louis XV of France elevated Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, later the Marquise de Pompadour, to the position of royal mistress in 1745, courtiers were shocked; the Duke of Luynes wrote that she could only be agalanterie(fling), not a mistress. It was inconceivable that a woman from a bourgeois background, “whose mother is named Mme Poisson” (French for fish) could be the nextmaîtresse déclaréeof the king.[1]But while the tradition of choosing the royal mistress from among aristocratic ladies of the court came to an end with Pompadour’s elevation, she stepped into a position that had, by the eighteenth century, a long genealogy. Rulers throughout the world had always had extra-conjugal sexual partners; history is replete with stories of powerful mistresses and concubines.[2]But only in early modern France did the royal mistress become a tradition, a quasi-institutionalized political position…

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Marvel Trivia: Was Paul Simon’s 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover intended as a Tribute to Marvel Comics?

OK … I am not a comic book person per se … but this is an interesting take on a top forty song that we all know. Had to share.

blackwings666

This is a question that I have been pondering for a while – maybe I have too much time on my hands -However, if you listen to Paul Simon’s hit song from the 1970s – It goes like this: Slip out the back Jack ( JACK KIRBY? ) make a new plan Stan ( STAN LEE? ) no need to be coy Roy ( ROY THOMAS?) Hop on the bus Gus ( PAUL GUSTAVSON ? ) drop off the key Lee ( once again STAN LEE? ) Paul Simon has never mentioned anything about this himself , but it seems to me that he may have intended these lyrics partly as a homage to the writers and artists of Marvel Comics. What do you think?

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Sapphic Stanza Notes

Another one to remember. Sharing so I don’t forget.

About the Jez of It

Consisting of three unrhymed lines of eleven syllables and one of five, the Sapphic Stanza is derived from the ancient Greek verse of Sappho. Each of the three eleven-syllable lines consists of two trochees, one dactyl and two trochees. This line is known as a Sapphic. The fourth line of the stanza consists of a dactyl followed by a trochee and is known as an Adonic.

This gives a stanza pattern of

/. u.. /. u.. /. u.u.. /. u.. /. u..
/. u.. /. u.. /. u.u.. /. u.. /. u..
/. u.. /. u.. /. u.u.. /. u.. /. u..
/. u.u.. /. u..

Example

Haunting Echoes by Jez Farmer

Sappho wrote her poetic metered stanza
Lyrics voices cantillate call of reeling
Flowing songs from long ago haunting echoes
Drifting from Greek isle

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