{"id":783,"date":"2011-02-13T23:21:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T04:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/?p=783"},"modified":"2011-02-14T09:48:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T14:48:53","slug":"six-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/six-lines","title":{"rendered":"Six lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was younger, I would occasionally sit down to my computer thinking I was about to compose a masterpiece, something that would all but earn my place in the canon. I would have a peculiar feeling brewing, that I was on the cusp of a radical insight, that I was about to see the soul of man. It was an epiphanic mood: everything I was seeing, I was seeing as crucial and human and connected to some secret the substance of which sat wonderfully unarticulated in the canny shadows of my mind. I had but to write it down and claim my prize.<\/p>\n\n

I wouldn't need much. Ezra Pound said<\/a>, \"If a man writes six good lines he is immortal.\" A single stanza would do. Maybe a sonnet.<\/p>\n\n

The mistake I was making was simple: looking at a blank page, thinking of myself as an above-average writer, a sensitive thinker, I felt like nothing material stood in the way of me and my six lines. It wasn't like I was trying to run a four-minute mile or prove the Collatz conjecture, where it would take years just to get the tools, the mechanics, the muscles, to level with the problem. All I had to do was type the right words.<\/p>\n\n

But the page isn't<\/em> blank, and my brain isn't the Library of Babel. There are only so many things I can think.<\/p>\n\n

Insights---the kind that Shakespeare had; the kind that Joyce had---aren't just \"in the air.\" They're the fruit of a lifelong process: seeds looked for and lucked upon, grown with steady care, seized when they ripen. I may never have one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was younger, I would occasionally sit down to my computer thinking I was about to compose a masterpiece, something that would all but earn my place in the canon. I would have a peculiar feeling brewing, that I was on the cusp of a radical insight, that I was about to see the […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsomers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}