Both Hated and Loved
Who are they the great men of our time?
Are they loved? Are they hated?
Both I say.
It depends who's doing the reminiscing, a friend or foe.
Throughout history the movers and shakers did just that,
over powered the accepted way and introduced a new way and they were condemned and praised and murdered and talked about, dreamed about, idolized, and crucified.
Hated and loved, this is the way of things.
Van Gogh, a friend of mine informs me, was an asshole.
Really? I say. Yes, he says. The guy was argumentative, moody, opinionated, outrageous behavior, ragged and without good hygiene.
Oh really? I gesticulate. But what about those beautiful paintings of his and all those letters to his brother considered to be one of the greatest literary achievements of the 19th Century?
He was still an asshole, my friend insists.
Well perhaps he was.
Perhaps it couldn't be any other way.
For what drives creativity, but a fire.
And that fire isn't always in control.
Sometimes it burns fast and far, and like a ravenous beast,
it rends everything with it's destruction.
All part of nature, so I've been told.
Part of the ending and the beginning, a cycle of renewal.
Yet to us it appears so unforgivable.
We have so much to learn and will never stop learning.
To all those geniuses, those gifted ones, who struggle against the conventions of the conventional.
To all those wronged for doing right, and those never allowed the opportunity for justice,
I say this.
Be not afraid, the world is full of ominous sounds and sights and terrors of the deep.
But to not try, to not give what you feel burning inside is the worst of all terrors.
To succumb to others mediocrity.
To hold back when creation is bursting forth.
Damn all the doubters, damn them.
And you, my friend, live for the fire that burns within.