To Understand the Crowd One Must Become an Individual

            On Tuesday morning I finished working out the chords to “Exercise en forme de Z” by Serge Gainsbourg but I still have to run through it to make sure. I also have to re-work some of my translation. 

            In the late morning I cleaned the bathroom sink. 

            I read the first eleven pages of Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic As Artist” which is in the form of a dialogue expresses similar ideas to other of his writings. I did the same in my essay “Artists Must Be Outlaws” last year and used his Portrait of Dorian Gray as reference. 

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Queen’s Park, south to Queen and then home. It was colder than I’d expected but not extremely uncomfortable. 

            I read most of “The Critic As Artist” before dinner. 

            I roasted eight chicken drumsticks that I’d rubbed in curry powder. I had two with a potato and gravy for dinner while watching Andy Griffith. 

            The story begins with Aunt Bee asking Andy if he’s asked Ellie to the upcoming social. He says he doesn’t have to ask her since they have an understanding. Bee tells him that a woman likes to be asked so as to not feel that she is being taken for granted. Meanwhile Barney notices that there is a new doctor in town who is young, handsome and single and that he is spending a lot of time at Ellie’s drug store. He’s spending a lot of time there because he doesn’t have a phone yet with which to make his orders but Barney thinks he is moving in on Andy’s girlfriend. Bee begins to also think that it’s a possibility and so Andy starts to get jealous. When Barney eavesdrops at the pharmacy and hears Ellie and the doctor in the back talking about marriage and of having Andy as justice of the peace perform the ceremony, he goes running in a panic back to Andy. Andy storms into the drug store and proposes to Ellie. The doctor is thrilled and says they could make it a double wedding. Andy then learns that the doctor’s fiancé will be moving to Mayberry after they get married. Andy realizes that he has put his foot in his mouth but he tells Ellie she can name the date. She reminds him that she has yet to answer his proposal but the answer is no because she is not ready for an engagement. Andy is relieved. Later when Andy walks into the drug store he hears Ellie behind a curtain say, “I love you and everything’s going to be all right.” The doctor says, “It sure is.” Ellie says, “Now do I get a great big kiss?” Andy pulls back the curtain and Ellie and the doctor are putting a bandage on Opie because he skinned his elbow. 

            I finished reading “The Critic As Artist.” To summarize, it is more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it, and that to do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world; Art is immoral, and all thought dangerous; criticism is more creative than creation, and that the highest criticism is that which reveals in the work of Art what the artist had not put there; that it is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it; and that the true critic is unfair, insincere, and not rational. If we stop trying to be good or right and just pursue beauty there would be no war. To understand others one must become an individual.