poliphilo

There was a stage of his career when John Lennon was talking- quite seriously I believe- of redoing all the Beatles material and this time getting it right- which is sort-of amusing if you believe as most people do that the Beatles got it right first time round....

But Lennon was a perfectionist- and perfectionists are aware of all the tiny flaws in their work and get so they can't see the triumph for the trivia. I know how this feels.

The greatest artists are those who don't care- and the reason they don't care is because they're so busy making new things they forget about the old. Shakespeare comes into this category and Mozart and Raphael and Picasso and all those other gurgling downspouts of beauty and wisdom.

Thomas Hardy maintained that the awkwardness of his verse was essential to the poetry- and Leonard Cohen said there was a crack in everything and that's how the light gets in....