"In many respects, I think we all dream of being something other than we are. For me, I always dreamed of being an artist. I remember the awed wonder I experienced when I watched another child draw for the very first time. There, in the first or second grade, I watched, full of envy, as that child inscribed images on paper, bringing another world into existence. It was a simple depiction of the space shuttle, but nonetheless I was hooked at that very moment. What could be better, more miraculous, more powerful, more valuable, than this power to bring worlds into being? Oh how deeply I ached to draw, to paint, to write stories, to create poetry. I was hooked. And sadly, I just didn’t seem to be wired in that way. It could even be said that I first pursued philosophy out of a desire to do art… Philosophy, I thought, would allow me to thematize worlds, to create worlds, to create. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out that way, but it could be said that a red thread linking all the philosophers I identify with and work on is aesthetics. My compensation for this creative impotence is ontological: the only universe worth living in and affirming is a creative universe."
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Aesthetics and Ontology « Larval Subjects .
Academic impotence is probably the most laughable variety. Here someone has such an overwrought capacity for verbiage that he or she cannot see the forest for the trees: a desire to be an artist shouldn’t be impeded by an incapacity for meaningful action thereto.
His/her solution, namely to become a philosopher, speaks to the creative drought that exists in the field today. Rather than pursue something truly meaningful that doesn’t require creativity (Farming, Metalwork, Middle Management), our modern bourgeoisie has somehow justified adding more unnecessary theorizing to an already overcrowded field.
