The Crouching Snail. The Towering Atlas.

On the rare ocassion that I feel significant enough to grace sheets with the tired disconcertment of everyday banality, the resultant piece is quite interesting. Its a question I've often asked myself. Would a writer enjoy reading his own story? Living vicariously out of someone else's imagination is what constitutes the delight of fiction. So when an artist assesses the product, the construction of his OWN psyche, the piece must seem exceedingly trite, hackneyed and platitudinous. Its comparable I suppose to how one never re-reads his own journal or feels invariably small and deranged when one does. Following that stream of logic, the unease and solicitude that grips me everytime the mouse pointer hovers over the Publish button is plausible. To tag a creation you consider commonplace, with your own name, to impart to it your identity, requires astronomical courage, I suppose. But does it?

Egomania. In place of the aforementioned unease, an artist could also feel an empowering sense of megalomania. Ah, to be able to create, to sculpt into language, abstract ideas and notions. He could revel and bask in his own glowing aura of talent and dexterity. Astronomical courage is then redundant. All he would need to possess is a quiet belief that the piece is sublime, transcendent. However, we've already established that its near impossible for an artist to sustain such a belief. So what gives the egocentric creator the intrepidity to build and showcase? Within the confines of reason, it could only be a severe lack of reason and rationality.

The assessment leaves me perplexed and twistedly amused. I don't want to believe that Ayn Rand was an irrational megalomaniac. Just as I don't want to believe that she didn't quite enjoy Night of January 16. Because you see, I quite enoyed it. Which makes me an egomaniac. Ah well, revolving doors, vicious circles. Much love.