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SHINING_MUSE

                                                June 14, 2011

                                             ALL_THINGS_SHINING


Dreyfus & Kelly discuss a Ted talk by
a writer named Elizabeth Gilbert.  She        Elizabeth Gilbert is the
discusses the psychological burden on         author of "Eat Pray Love",
a writer trying to succeed again, and         which was made into a movie
argues that the older view of being           where Julia Roberts rides a
receptive to the Muses is a saner way         bicycle through Ubud with a
of approaching things, and makes about        beatific expression on her
as much sense as anything else.               face (miraculously, undrenched
                                              in sweat and uneaten by
                                              mosquitoes).

                                                              EXPAT_PATHOS
From Dreyfus & Kelly, p. 56,
"David Foster Wallace's Nihilism":

   "But there are disadvantages to Gilbert's pure
   receptivity view as well.  For if the poem is
   a purely external force that rumbles through
   us-- if the sacred and the divine and the
   meaningful can't be earned but depend on God's
   inscrutable grace-- then this receptive view
   is just as incapacitating as Wallace's kind of      By "Nietzschean
   Nietzschean nihilism.  Whereas Wallace gives        nihilism"
   us an unachievable task, Gilbert gives us no        they mean
   task at all."                                       existential
                                                       self-creation.
      Dreyfus & Kelly are reacting to
      a very short Ted lecture by                        SHINING_EXISTENTIALISM
      Elizabeth Gilbert and it's easy
      enough for most of you to go
      listen to it yourselves.

          [ref]

          There's an mp4 download:
          [ref]

          And a summary over at Wired:
          [ref]


I don't think Dreyfus & Kelly
have fairly represented what          Actually it's Dreyfus & Kelly's
Elizabeth Gilbert was saying          that push passivity (p.221):
(p.57):
                                           "There is no _reason_ why one
    "On her [ Gilbert's ]                  ought to hear or respond to
    account we are purely                  the call of the gods: callings
    passive recipients of God's            just demand to be heard and
    divine will, nothing but               obeyed."
    receptacles for the grace he
    may choose to offer.  Is                             SHINING_FASCISTS
    there anything in between?"

She does not advise passively awaiting
inspiration, in fact she's saying that
you're better off if you forget about              Ala Laurence Olivier's
being Inspired and just buckle-down                advice to Dustin Hoffman:
and do the work.                                   "Never try to be great.
                                                   Just play the scene."
   Elizabeth Gilbert presents a point she
   attributes to Tom Waits: you can talk
   back to your muses, tell them to get
   lost when you're not ready for them.         Gilbert:
   I.e. you're not their slave.                 "Don't be afraid,
                                                don't be daunted,
       She talks of creativity as a             just do your job."
       "... collaboration and
       conversation between Tom
       and the strange external        [ref]
       genius that was not Tom"


       I would say that Elizabeth
       Gilbert is essentially
       talking about is a set of
       mental dodges, where you
       map internal qualities to
       external agencies that you
       on some level really do
       know aren't really there.

       If you drop the mystical
       and romantic claptrap
       and just look at what
       you really are, things
       like "the muses" or "the
       grace of god" have to be
       taken as a kind of
       short-hand, as aliases        THOUGHT_ACTION_DISCONNECT
       for complex phenomena.
                                                            BOTTLE

          Then there are some concrete
          things you can say to a writer:
          you need to write for others,        Though sometimes
          and you need to write from           "yourself" can be
          others.                              an alias for
                                               "the other".
          And if writing is a matter
          of communication, then you
          need to know something to
          communicate.

               Writing then is not central.

               "Being A Writer" may be
               besides the point.

               Being someone who has
               something to write is key.



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