And For What?

Years ago, someone told me I needed to go see this. Today, I went. I got on a bus, I worked my way through a couple of these on the drive so I didn't get bad bus-thoughts, and I went and saw The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. I recommend it! You should go!

It is great, of course. I am curious about whether there was anything exceptional about the artist, other than his determination and persistence. Is that the thing that sets some people apart? If I can get back on the blogging bus, and keep this up for thirty years, will people look back and say, "that crazy guy, he was crazy, but he really did something! His blog was stupid, but he believed in it!"

If there had been an internet for James Hampton, would he have turned his solitude into something so beautiful? Would he have had a blog? Would we think he was less crazy, or more crazy? 

Other people have obsessions, of course. This fellow has written 14,000 songs! He wrote this song, which is great!!! 

I was talking to this girl at the museum, and I told her how much I like folk art. I like Grandma Moses, and I like Edward Hicks. She asked why I thought this stuff was so great, it could of been made by a 6th grader, and I said I don't necessarily think it's great, I just like it. I think that's a reasonable distinction. Everything in a museum is not put there for the same reasons. And if somebody worked in their garage for 40 years, making amateur paintings, pretty soon they would have an impressive body of work, like James Hampton. And maybe 50 years from now, somebody will be reading this, and they will say, "Curt! What a wild guy! He just kept going!" 

Maybe that's where I'm headed. Like boats against the current. Tending to my garden. A Cathedral of the mind. Vanity of Vanities.

Fear not!