DON'T GET TOO HIGH FLAUTIN PLEASE

Before we get too high flautin and titter at the indiscretions of a Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, Amadeus Mozart, Vincent Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde (you want more?, how about Isac Newton, Beethoven, Charles Dickens)or that ugly cripple midget Toulouse Lautrec even uglier prostitutes of the Montmartre Quarter of Paris ridiculed and rebuffed but today stands tall in our minds for his pulsating sketches of the kicking Can Can girls of the Moulin Rouge, let's see what no lesser person than Somerset Maugham has to say in his end of career master piece, "The Summing Up"

"The artist is the only free man. Perhaps this is why the world on the whole has had the profound suspicion of him that we know. It is not sure that he can be trusted when he reacts to the common impulses of men so unaccountably. And indeed the artist, to the indignation of mankind, has never felt himself bound by ordinary standards. Why should he? With men in general the primary end of thought and action is to satisfy their needs and preserve their being; but the artist satisfies his needs and preserves his being by the pursuit of art: their pastime is his grim earnest and so his attitude to life can never be the same as theirs. He creates his own values. Men think him cynical because he does not attach importance to the virtues and is not revolted by the vices that move them. He is not cynical. But what they call virtue and what they call vice are not the sort of things that he takes any particular interest in. They are indifferent elements in the scheme of things out of which he constructs his own freedom. Of course common men are quite right to be indignant with him. But that isn't going to do him any good. He is incorrigible."

Seneca, the sage wisely stated: "There is no genius without a touch of madness."

I believe that while some people are endowed with the genius to dazzle the world with their stunning brilliance they are at the same time tormented by demons they never seem able to tame. A dark lining to a otherwise silver cloud.

How comical therefore it is dear friends to find ourselves, non - entities all, who belong to that prosperous breed of middle class mediocrity, we who breathe from dawn to dusk and beyond the vapid odor of quiet conformity and order, of cleanliness and respectable domesticity, given to early rising, attention to duty and detail, friendly family gatherings, pumping iron at the gym favoring brawn to brains and early to bed in the languid embrace of a John Grisham and redux tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow in comfortable monotony for the rest of our (ruled by the tick-ticking of the clock) lives and finally depart, steal away from this world unnoticed, unknown, unlamented, with hardly a recognizable head-stone to point to (Oh he's dead is he?) should condescendingly and contemptuously snicker at these men of incalculable gift who have earned for themselves by universal acclaim a hallowed place in the celestial Hall of Fame.

Remember friends, "Aquila non capitat muscas" - The eagle doesn't capture flies.
May peace be with you. "Pax vobiscum"