Something Elon and bin Salman Can't Have
Not for Sale and Non-Transferable
Pungent Oak (Elon is a Bible name meaning “oak” and musk means “strong-smelling” or pungent) is said to be the wealthiest man in the world. “One of,” anyway.
Prince bin Salman of Soddy Arabia is apparently allowed to get away with being an accomplice to murder. “bin” means “son of” in Arabic, so I think of him as “the son of a fish formally known as a prince.”
Those dudes have a lot of money and power (they both have both). But there’s something P.O. and soaffkaap can’t have, or do, regardless of how much money or power they have.
What is that?
They have no artistic talent. Which is priceless. Money can’t buy it; it can’t be extorted or coerced from someone. It’s non-transferable, and I don’t think any who have it in abundance would sell it at any price, anyway, even if that were possible. Those who have attained it are in reality far richer than those two cats mentioned above.
Some think that artistic talent is inborn, but really, to paraphrase Thomas Edison (he of the 1,093 patents), “Artistic talent is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”
Of course, it helps to have native ability. In fact, some natural talent, at least, must be present. Certainly Edison was smarter (and innately more inventive) than the average bear (or even human).
But talent alone is not enough; it must be developed. Work, or perspiration, as Edison put it, is involved. In his poem Go, Lovely, Rose, with which Edmund Waller (1606-1687) was attempting to “woo a maiden,” he pleaded to her:
Small is the worthOf beauty from the light retired;Similarly, talent without hard work to increase skills and abilities is of little value. If allowed to lay dormant, it is simply dissipated. For example, when Eric Clapton first tried to learn to play the guitar, he got frustrated with his lack of quick progress and put it down for a couple of years. He thereafter felt the urge again and renewed the assault with greater focus and energy; the rest is musical history.
Imagine if the incomparable musical geniuses J.S. Bach or Wolfgang Mozart had not assiduously developed their skills. Or if Stephen Foster, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Taylor Swift, et al, had not honed their songwriting abilities. Their contributions to the world would have never been heard by anyone. As Waller put it, their talents “must have uncommended died.”
Consider other types of artistic expression: fiction writing, painting, photography, and poetry.
Do you think any of the best practitioners of these art forms would divest themselves (at any price) of the joy of creation and satisfaction in accomplishment they get from producing their artifacts, even if they could? Most of them say that they would still pursue their art even if it paid them nothing, or even if they had to pay for the privilege of continuing at it — which, in effect, most do (as most self-directed “creatives” are, indeed, “starving artists” at least in terms of how much literal income their artistic efforts generate).
I cannot imagine that many — if any — true artists (as opposed to charlatans), if told they must cease their creative endeavors, would reply any differently than Martin Luther did when called on the carpet, namely, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”
Can you really envisage Shakespeare or Ansel Adams or Van Gogh trading their skills and expressive ability for … anything? And what about the wildly inventive poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955): did he need to write poetry? Stevens was a top executive for a large insurance corporation. Financially, he was “well off.” It wasn’t as if he wasn’t already busy, either. Stevens didn’t wax poetic for the money or because he had “too much time on his hands”; he simply yielded to a strong urge to do it. Creating his art filled an inner need that could not be satisfied by the machinery of money-making or within the power-mad world of politics.
I could be wrong; maybe Pungent Oak can paint a heralded landscape or delight us with an impressive kazoo solo the likes of which have not been heard since Del Shannon’s Runaway. But I highly doubt it. Perhaps soaffkaap could best Travis Baker in a drum-off or pen a Pulitzer-prize-winning novel that would invoke the envy of a Cormac McCarthy. But I would be shocked beyond measure if either happened. In other words, true artists possess something those duffers never can. As the Eagles sang in Victim of Love: “I could be wrong, but I’m not.”
By the way, there is no nepotism at work in the reference to Del Shannon (1934-1990) above. We were not closely related. His real name was Charles Westover.Read or download free PDFs of my other writings here.