Endless fame
The combover of Donald Trump stares out from the internet news homepage, how much spray does he apply each morning to get it to stay in place? There is a reassurance in the fact that politicians are barely remembered beyond their own lifetimes, that those whose trade is the exaltation of themselves are quickly forgotten. How many people could name American presidents of the 1950s, how many people could name British prime ministers of the 1960s? How many people could name the current premiers of most European countries? Or have any idea of the names of the leaders of India or China? Politics is an ultimately self-effacing activity, it was the right-wing British politician Enoch Powell who once commented, “all political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics.”
What abides in human minds is that which enhances human life, that which speaks to sometimes deeper than political inclinations, that which continues through generations.
Until this morning, I had never heard of the band A House. A search of the web told me that they were an Irish indie rock band, a band who in 1991 released a track called “Endless Art”. It catalogues an eclectic collection of artists. It includes painters, writers, musicians; it makes unlikely juxtapositions. It is a track to which I think I shall listen again when tired of news of the combover and Brexit and all the other divisive stories that fill the news.
All art is quite useless according to Oscar Wilde
Turner 1775 to 1851
Toulouse-Lautrec 1864 to 1901
Andy Warhol 1928 to 1987 RIP
Ernest Hemingway 1899 to 1961
George Orwell, Jimi Hendrix, William Butler Yeats, Jack B. Yeats
Richard Redgrave 1804 to 1888
Henry Moore 1896 to 1986
Henry Miller, Sid Vicious only 21
Brian Jones
Otis Redding 1941 to 1967 RIPAll dead, yet still alive
In endless time, endless artMasters of their arts
Claude Monet 1840 to 1926
Beethoven, Bach, Brahms
Elvis Presley 1935 to ’77
Man Ray, Johnny Ray
John Donne 1573 to 1631
Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809 to ’92
Degeneration art, Joan Miro, RIPJackson Pollock 1912 to 1956
John Lennon ’40 to ’80
Henry Lamb, Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, William Shakespeare
Brendan Behan 1923 to 1964
Tennessee Williams 1912 to 1983
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 to 1889
Pissaro, Picasso, Degas RIPJoseph Conrad 1857 to 1924
Jack Kerouac 1922 to 1969
Keith Moon 1946 to 1978
D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Mozart
Van Gogh 1853 to 1890
Ian Curtis, Salvador Dali, Johann Strauss, Richard Strauss, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse RIPAll dead, yet still alive
In endless time, endless art
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