“Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.” --Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
In thought, word or deed, I seek genius such as discovered in Robert Herman; the most gifted photographer witnessed in decades.
Life is not a foot race, one-against-another, but with one’s self. In that sense we compete with God. . . .The race continues beyond death--infinite.
As child and man I am aware the several gifts of my father’s reverence for genius in others: musicians and authors. But more so in his final act bankrupting me the bequest due my life long slavish quest for his love. The gift is in knowing the truth of my love for he who abandoned me, abandoning me still, a pure alloy refined in pain a grief suffered no more.
There is trauma involved. Witnessing Herman’s vision is for me comparable to impalement; final vision an ice pick thrust blindness self-inflicted. Is this not true of a beauty once seen, entered and remembered as a blinding excellence rendering all else ashen? Rumi and T. S. Elliot, Bach, Mozart and Billy Holiday. In awe I’ve died many times before and arisen anew born child.
Hyperbolic? Perhaps yet to know me, as I know myself as known by God. To see is to possess and be embossed with the other carried in this gyred womb, this cosmos, a prayer of supplication, petition and awe; unanswered questions flung like cancer cells against the starry, starry night.
The image I stole to illustrate my discovery and discernment is reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno & Comedy not fully read but illustrated in a magical subway car illuminated by divine light populated by ennui; “are we there yet?” Reprised endlessly in other Herman captures of light odd in their nearly lurid color arising from an ashen tradition of documentary Black & White.
His eyes stiletto punctuating a world dominated by slippery suppositories of political no-speak. As in the feminine eye of God is not orgasmic but catholic: embryo, child, desire and crone; binary and vital. So too with his other images: http://www.robertherman.com/#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=0&p=2&a=0&at=0
I gorge upon his vision/version of life as I do W. Eugene Smith, Eugene Richards, Minor White to name but a few upon the altar, my pantheon, now expanded by one several orders of magnitude greater.
I think my father fell short in his reverence for genius never acknowledging his own. Instead he left me with this closing thought: Bix Biterbeck would finish his night by sitting in on a club session invariably leading the resident trumpeter to slip out crushing his horn beneath the wheels of his car before departing. If I have achieved nothing, at least I have known the joy of creation regardless acclaim or reward and joined the love of The Creator and Robert albeit only in my imagining.
120110 10:00 Coda
A truism: Great work is worthy of reprise, each a surprise. An accolade for too few: Happily I reside in the same cosmos as you. For in this instance you make it anew.
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