After the Flood  by Paul Klee

Think of the simplest caricature of a poet, the kind that might be used as a generic figure in a cartoon. Which comes to mind, the forlorn, melancholy, sadly loitering one, suicidal in blue breeches, or the happy eater and drinker, the smeller of roses, the carouser, the gusto-bearing, sun-loving one? In Epicurean atomic theory, “the world functions because from the outset there is a lack of balance.” The French novelist Georges Perec, devoted to mathematical literary forms—he wrote a novel without the letter e in it—speaks of anti-constraints within a system of restraints. He quotes the painter Paul Klee: “Genius is ‘an error in the system.’” (Those of you who have heard lectures on the sonnet may recall that this is often, precisely, the point.) The world functions because of fear, because of the error, the anti-constraint, the anti-perfect, the anti-balance. We stumble. We fall.

The world that we know has been shaped by our fear and failure.

But it would continue to function without either: probably much better.

We respond - especially our artistic impulse responds - to the ongoing tension between fear and non-fear, error and non-error, ugly and non-ugly. The perpetual presence and immediate proximity of these seeming contradictions compel us to respond, to create, and (too) often to choose sides.

Paul Klee also wrote, "Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see."

We respond - artists, bankers, carpenters, designers, electricians, farmers, and most of us respond - to the obvious: the beautiful cliche, the awful decay, dichotomies of desire.  Before we respond, can we see more?