Congrats on being in the final stretch of the novel! I was reading a book on tarot by Rachel Pollack that mentions how a lot of artists say that the work they imagined was never the work they created, and that’s because when you create something, you have to make decisions, and that removes that sense of potentiality that is so alluring. It’s what makes writing / completing something so hard. I guess wanting posthumous success is a way of holding on to that potentiality / delusion of grandeur (which is necessary if you’re a writer, imo — why else would you put in all thar labor?).
Lately I’ve been thinking the sweet spot is fame on the level of an excellent cult classic band that cluster of people really love but you kind of have do discover it, i.e. Nurse With Wound or Cocteau Twins
This is somewhat tangential, but are you familiar with Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George? It's a great musical in its own right, but it's a really interesting companion piece to Amadeus. The first act is about the (real) painter Georges Seurat obsessively working on his ahead-of-its-time masterpiece and losing his chance at love in the process; the second act jumps to the "present day" (the 1980s) where Seurat's (fictional) great-grandson is a popular/successful yuppie who makes vapid installation art for Manhattan scenesters. It's a very strange premise for a musical, with almost no plot to speak of, and yet it works - in part because the music is exactly as gorgeous as you would expect a musical about the pursuit of beauty to be, but also because it really isn't a *happy* show at all, all about life unlived in the pursuit of art that'll outlive you. Feel like you might be really into it!
Oh is that what that show is about? I'd always assumed it was a straight-up biopic of Seurat. Sounds really interesting. I should finally watch it (somehow).
As with any Sondheim work, you can get a lot just by listening to the music! Despite getting his start as a librettist, he was a composer first and foremost, and the word painting he uses in Sunday in the Park is incredible.
I saw a college-level production of it last year which was surprisingly great! It's not the kind of play that gets staged at the amateur level all that often (not really a crowd-pleaser and the music/sets are kind of intense) but I feel like it gets revived off-Broadway every other year with some big star or other as George(s). (Jake Gyllenhaal did it recently, I think????)
Aww, I like this! Have been thinking a lot myself about whether I still have grand writing ambitions or not.
In truth, telling ourselves we would rather be remembered by posterity is just a cope for unsuccessful people! Most people who are remembered by history were also quite successful during their lifetime. But it's nice that sometimes that isn't true, and people who were failures in life are remembered later. It's that lottery ticket quality to fame that keeps people working.
This is not that compelling a question for me, unfortunately. I've found that the spur to working as a writer lies precisely in that uncertainty. The fact that you don't know whether your work will be received well or not. If that uncertainty was gone and I was guaranteed any form of success, whether in the present or in the eyes of posterity, then my work would become extremely self-indulgent, either way, and it's hard to imagine it would be any good.
I often catch bits of Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart's podcast, and the most surprising thing of all to me is how boring Josh's (very lucky) friend is! Don't get me wrong, I love Jalen and Josh, but they're pretty dull on mic. To be even more boring is an impressive feat. It's like, the lucky friend is so boring that he came out the other end and has become a sort of mystical, fascinating figure in my eyes. "What will he say, and why won't it contribute anything at all to the topic at hand," I find myself wondering.
If I knew it would happen I would pick posthumous fame pretty happily. I'd still have a good life but be relieved of a certain anxiety. Of course it could be a monkey's paw sort of thing where I'm remembered for hundreds of years after my death but only because I died in a particularly funny way that gets pointed out to tourists, like that guy who got killed by the clock in Venice.…
A cool twist would be that you have to make the choice before you're even born, but you won't remember your choice. So your life will still be full of uncertainty, though your fate has been sealed pre-birth.
Still, in this world where such an outcome is certain, I would… choose posthumous fame. It's not even a difficult choice for me honestly. I don't know if I would call this Mozart mindset… probably more like Bach mindset.
Worth considering that the bar for being given the “mozart treatment” goes down over time. There are surely dozens of incredible authors from antiquity we’ve lost, but even merely decent authors from modernity are studied and discussed by a few people.
(Unless of course you want the “remembered as one of the greatest of all time” part of mozart’s legacy - if you have to wonder…)
Assuming nothing existential happens, a far-future society many magnitudes larger than our own may converge on a history discipline where every person alive today has their own set of specialised scholars.
So saving all your stuff on a magnetic hard drive in Markdown might be a good investment. Easier than getting published, and maybe some computing substrate in Tau Ceti will appreciate it.
Congrats on being in the final stretch of the novel! I was reading a book on tarot by Rachel Pollack that mentions how a lot of artists say that the work they imagined was never the work they created, and that’s because when you create something, you have to make decisions, and that removes that sense of potentiality that is so alluring. It’s what makes writing / completing something so hard. I guess wanting posthumous success is a way of holding on to that potentiality / delusion of grandeur (which is necessary if you’re a writer, imo — why else would you put in all thar labor?).
Lately I’ve been thinking the sweet spot is fame on the level of an excellent cult classic band that cluster of people really love but you kind of have do discover it, i.e. Nurse With Wound or Cocteau Twins
This is somewhat tangential, but are you familiar with Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George? It's a great musical in its own right, but it's a really interesting companion piece to Amadeus. The first act is about the (real) painter Georges Seurat obsessively working on his ahead-of-its-time masterpiece and losing his chance at love in the process; the second act jumps to the "present day" (the 1980s) where Seurat's (fictional) great-grandson is a popular/successful yuppie who makes vapid installation art for Manhattan scenesters. It's a very strange premise for a musical, with almost no plot to speak of, and yet it works - in part because the music is exactly as gorgeous as you would expect a musical about the pursuit of beauty to be, but also because it really isn't a *happy* show at all, all about life unlived in the pursuit of art that'll outlive you. Feel like you might be really into it!
Oh is that what that show is about? I'd always assumed it was a straight-up biopic of Seurat. Sounds really interesting. I should finally watch it (somehow).
As with any Sondheim work, you can get a lot just by listening to the music! Despite getting his start as a librettist, he was a composer first and foremost, and the word painting he uses in Sunday in the Park is incredible.
I saw a college-level production of it last year which was surprisingly great! It's not the kind of play that gets staged at the amateur level all that often (not really a crowd-pleaser and the music/sets are kind of intense) but I feel like it gets revived off-Broadway every other year with some big star or other as George(s). (Jake Gyllenhaal did it recently, I think????)
Aww, I like this! Have been thinking a lot myself about whether I still have grand writing ambitions or not.
In truth, telling ourselves we would rather be remembered by posterity is just a cope for unsuccessful people! Most people who are remembered by history were also quite successful during their lifetime. But it's nice that sometimes that isn't true, and people who were failures in life are remembered later. It's that lottery ticket quality to fame that keeps people working.
Yes, but given the 2 extreme situations posed in this piece, which one would you choose?
This is not that compelling a question for me, unfortunately. I've found that the spur to working as a writer lies precisely in that uncertainty. The fact that you don't know whether your work will be received well or not. If that uncertainty was gone and I was guaranteed any form of success, whether in the present or in the eyes of posterity, then my work would become extremely self-indulgent, either way, and it's hard to imagine it would be any good.
I often catch bits of Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart's podcast, and the most surprising thing of all to me is how boring Josh's (very lucky) friend is! Don't get me wrong, I love Jalen and Josh, but they're pretty dull on mic. To be even more boring is an impressive feat. It's like, the lucky friend is so boring that he came out the other end and has become a sort of mystical, fascinating figure in my eyes. "What will he say, and why won't it contribute anything at all to the topic at hand," I find myself wondering.
So unprofound he becomes profound, like Chance the Gardener!
So the podcast are the 2 NBA players, and their random boring friend? And the whole trio's really boring? lol
Yes, exactly! It's called Roommates and I don't recommend it, but also it's like eating those veggie straws at a party. For some reason, I can't stop.
If I knew it would happen I would pick posthumous fame pretty happily. I'd still have a good life but be relieved of a certain anxiety. Of course it could be a monkey's paw sort of thing where I'm remembered for hundreds of years after my death but only because I died in a particularly funny way that gets pointed out to tourists, like that guy who got killed by the clock in Venice.…
A cool twist would be that you have to make the choice before you're even born, but you won't remember your choice. So your life will still be full of uncertainty, though your fate has been sealed pre-birth.
Still, in this world where such an outcome is certain, I would… choose posthumous fame. It's not even a difficult choice for me honestly. I don't know if I would call this Mozart mindset… probably more like Bach mindset.
Worth considering that the bar for being given the “mozart treatment” goes down over time. There are surely dozens of incredible authors from antiquity we’ve lost, but even merely decent authors from modernity are studied and discussed by a few people.
(Unless of course you want the “remembered as one of the greatest of all time” part of mozart’s legacy - if you have to wonder…)
Assuming nothing existential happens, a far-future society many magnitudes larger than our own may converge on a history discipline where every person alive today has their own set of specialised scholars.
So saving all your stuff on a magnetic hard drive in Markdown might be a good investment. Easier than getting published, and maybe some computing substrate in Tau Ceti will appreciate it.
Get those posthumous Substack likes from Tau Cetians!