Masters, Slaves and Artists

Musician quote of the day:
“Something’s lost but something’s gained, in living every day.”
--Joni Mitchell

Movie critic quote of the day:
“Art, perhaps unfortunately, is not the sphere of good intentions.”
--Pauline Kael

Actor quote of the day:
“I came to a place of agreement between my ambitions and limitations.”
--Glenn Ford

Novelist quote of the day:
“Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios,cars, and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of life, made it impossible for them to learn a language which could have taught them to speak of what was in theirs or others’ hearts. The words of their souls were the syllables of popular songs.”
--Richard Wright

We are at the climax of a political season, a good time to ponder power. It’s been said there are two sides to power: the desire of the strong to be masters and the desire of the weak to be slaves. In our culture, we are endlessly preached at to “take power over our lives,” to be “masters of our destiny.”

The problem is that, while some of us (often irritatingly) delight in behaving like master-hood is the only option, others of us not only don’t want to be masters, we do want to be slaves.