Do You Wanna Know A Secret?

[poliphilo]

Seems I'm an expert on the Beatles.

Channel 5 screened a documentary called Secrets of the Beatles, but it was just a guided tour of the usual landmarks and I switched off after an hour. Yeah, they did drugs, they went with girls. Tell me something I don't already know.

One pleasing trifle: there are women in Liverpool who had children by one or other of the Beatles but have never profited from it or dished the dirt. Damn good show. Human dignity rules, OK!

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I always wonder...is it talent (Dhani Harrison comes to mind...) or is it just being familiar with what your parent did? Not that the Arnolds and Huxleys weren't talented, of course.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Technical achievement can be passed on, but exceptional talent is something else. A lot of Bachs persevered in the family business of composing, but there was only ever one Johann Sebastian. Similarly, there were lots of Breughels who painted but only one of them was a genius.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Hm yes. Excellent point. How many times have we heard "he looks (sounds, plays) just like his father ?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

How galling to hear that.

It must be very hard to be the talented- but never sufficiently talented- child of a genius.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

What is a genius, I wonder?

It's like a door was left open.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's something daemonic about genius- something not altogether human. The unstoppable creativity of a Picasso or a Mozart. How can one person do so much and do it so transcendentally well?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I read the biography about Jacqueline DuPre, the cellist, who died at 40-something of MS.

From a talented and musical family, she demanded and received a cello at five. She learned quickly and cried when she couldn't be with her cello.

At seven or so, she suddenly turned to her sister while playing in the garden and said "I will someday be unable to move. But it's all right."

It's like the ability is flowing out of some accessible source and seems almost like being psychic, whatever that is.

And it does seem to have a daemonic component--or at least something odd seems at play: Beethoven goes deaf; DuPre can't hold her bow--and so many young gods (Elvis, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Kennedy) seem devoured by their worshipers. So many die young or go (Michael Jackson) mad.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Geniuses are often unbalanced. All the energy goes into the one activity, leaving the person incapable of sustaining ordinary relationships etc.

It's a Faustian pact. You have to pay heavily for the Gift.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And I must add that Jesus fit all the criteria. He was doomed from the beginning to die young.

Perhaps there is an archetype for genius. Jung once said that some people are possessed by the archetype (the daemonic) for their entire lifetimes--as was Jesus, he added.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A single archetype? I'd say several. There are the gods who die young, but there are also those who live to enjoy a titanic old age- like Brahms or Picasso or Einstein.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

It's like a door was left open.

well said! Very thought provoking.