WHY? He Inspired Me.
From the Memoir: I had been thinking for a long time about how Art’s reminiscences would make a book. When he’d told me stories from his life, I thought he was like Othello describing his great battles to Desdemona. That’s how he wooed me. Except in Art’s tales he was rarely the victor. He was often romantically, captivatingly, vanquished.
I’d been thinking Art could tell his his remarkable life in his own extraordinary language through me,
Most people crave personal satisfaction and public recognition, but each of us asks that these things come in idiosyncratically imagined forms. My own amorphous ambitions had always and only to do with artistic achievement. Put simply, I wanted to be Art. But I lacked the natural ability, the inborn genius. Well, what I was beginning to think I might have was a talent for what I’ll call a vital appreciation––a habit, when I was intrigued, of sharpening and narrowing my focus. I’d already expressed that, visually, in my photographs. I thought I also had a gift for recognizing vivid narrative. So at that time I thought I might have finally found a way to satisfy myself, to justify my existence. I would produce something that I could believe was important, and because Art was so charismatic, and his story so sordid, scary, so romantic, and sexy, the world would agree with me.
I’d been thinking Art could tell his his remarkable life in his own extraordinary language through me,
Most people crave personal satisfaction and public recognition, but each of us asks that these things come in idiosyncratically imagined forms. My own amorphous ambitions had always and only to do with artistic achievement. Put simply, I wanted to be Art. But I lacked the natural ability, the inborn genius. Well, what I was beginning to think I might have was a talent for what I’ll call a vital appreciation––a habit, when I was intrigued, of sharpening and narrowing my focus. I’d already expressed that, visually, in my photographs. I thought I also had a gift for recognizing vivid narrative. So at that time I thought I might have finally found a way to satisfy myself, to justify my existence. I would produce something that I could believe was important, and because Art was so charismatic, and his story so sordid, scary, so romantic, and sexy, the world would agree with me.