My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

48 W HAT'S ART GOT T 0 DOW I T HIT?
pan out." (As if writing were prospecting for the pleated gold at the end
of the theory rainbow.)
I suppose the only thing I count as an absolute moral virtue is learning difficulties,
disorientation, and lexical hindrances. When I hear people talking
about scanning lines I assume they're referring to the security guards
at grocery checkouts. Not that I don't admire scrupulous accuracy and
competence, I just happen to prefer the company of small businesspersons.
But seriously, you can't go wrong if your attitude is bad from the start.
You've got nowhere to go but up. Virtue is easier to strive for than to hold
onto.
A friend of my daughter just got into the school for the gifted and talented,
but she was confused and wanted me to tell her if she was gifted or talented.
I always wanted to be gifted but eVidently didn't have the talent for
it. Anyway, my philosophy of education is-don't take gifts, but don't pay
retail either.
Yet many of my friends in the university are conflicted-are they artists
or scholars, teachers or writers, as if you aren't one by virtue of the other.
That's what virtue is all about.
Or consider the professor who was always distracted at his seminars
because, he said, they were taking him from his work. My teaching also
keeps me from my work, which is teaching.
But while I love Art, I wouldn't want to marry her.
Or have you heard the one about the person who was half critic and
half artist. What she can't objectify, she appropriates.
Behind every successful artist is a new historian who says it's all just a
symptom. Behind every successful new historian is an artist who says you
forgot to mention my work-and, boy, is it symptomatic!
I've never met an artist who felt she or he was getting enough attention.
Prizes, books on the work, multiyear grants. "But still, did you see the fifth
sentence of that review where it says 'possibly the greatest ... '1" Or: "Did
you see the index to that book on the 20th century?-no mention of my
name." Scholars, in contrast, seem surprised if you've ever read a paragraph
of theirs. "What? You saw that article? I didn't realize anybody read that
journal." "What? You read my book? But it was just published eight years
ago and I didn't realize your research took you so far afield to read about
the decline of modern civilization."
One can learn as much about a profession by dwelling on what it frowns
upon as on what it prizes. Our professionalism encourages us to act as
administrators of culture rather than participants, collaborators, or parti-