Christopher Koch

This painting is a masterpiece

On the nature and purpose of sadness Amongst meines zettel auf gedanken Scattered across my life of mind are Titles of attempts never attempted (à la Montaigne: essay jamais essayé) Sur le Tristesse. Der klinik ist Kranken. To know the truest truths you'll find are The ones you hear most oft contempted And none of your words can ever convey, Leastwise to the person you need most To understand; but this is maybe Jung's Lonliness: not the absence of others but The presence of those you cannot talk to. Checkov: Anyone can handle a crisis. The lesson: find the right crisis and Make it constant. How to endure The daily heartbreaks of petty Misunderstanding; responses launched Before the end of a sentence or even a Fraction of the thought you had hoped, To express. Vanity of vanities, all is Always already et cetera and the sun Also goes down. All too Humean: we Cannot be certain on the basis of Contant conjunction. To have yesterday Arisen is no garuntee of today's arising. Jung again: we cannot live our life well In overly conscious anticipation of death. Kant: we can only act under the guise of Freedom. Who's hunger was ever Nonplussed by the philosophical Rejection of our notion of free will? (à la Camus: who ever died for the Ontological argument?) Montaigne Has no time for such ugly ornaments. But of course he was always already Flirting, which requires an essentially Playful relationship to the truth - Never quite lying, never quite perfectly Earnest. (Qu'évident, non?) To what extent Is sadness a decision? What purpose does It serve? How is it that sad songs are So beautiful? Sad eyes so becoming? It is also possible to convert sadness Into anger. But then what is the nature and Purpose of anger? One discovers Confirmation for all of one's worst Thoughts and It's hard to think life Still worth living; one see's a child Smiling and comdemns the sin of Despair. What then is the nature and Purpose of Despair? Chopin did not Choose to name his E Major etude, But publishers can be officious. The sad soul craves commiseration (à son ami Franz Liszt), not to be flattened By vulgar and bottom-lining eyes. And so we have Adorno looking sad At the beach. The mermaids sang Each to each and not to him. C'est la Sublimated rage. Like him I have no Hobbies.

it has been disproven! no credible psychologist believes it’s real!!!

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It’s weird how historicized, canonical figures in the arts are all flattened in the popular imagination as having lived in some strange, undifferentiated 19th century. Even the great modernists, who definitionally dwelled within a thoroughly industrialized technological paradigm, are all conceived of as some vague Victorian types who wrote by candlelight.