Blog-friend Melissa Mental Multivitamin asks some question today in this chapbook entry that I can’t answer in her comments because she doesn’t have them. So I’ll answer here:

1.

Many people have had this experience, I think, especially where music is concerned. We become steeped in the notion that if we can’t excel, there’s little point in pursuit.

Quoting from Bachelors Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast by Bill Richardson, MM-V asks “What do you think? Is there little point in pursuing an interest if there’s no chance you will excel?”

I answer with these words from Edith Schaeffer’s wonderful book, The Hidden Art of Homemaking:

Man, because he is limited, has a very limited choice. He is limited by time, as well as talent. He is limited by the resources at his disposal as well as in the skill to use what he has. We do not all have the talent to produce all the ideas that come into our minds. . . A man might think of some great painting in his mind, but not be able to execute it on canvas at all, because he does not have the talent to paint.

We are limited by time and by areas of talent and ability. So our creativity is not on God’s level at all. His creativity is unlimited and infinite. Nevertheless, we have been created in His image, so we can be, and are made to be, creative.

One more:

You are not a great musician, but you do play an instrument –or you did. . . All the music you make is in your daydreams of some remote future success, when you burst upon audiences as an established talent, or surprise your friends by letting them know you have been “discovered.” Your musical talent and your creative possibilities are in a cast, and the rest of your body and personality are suffering from the lack of freedom. . . Even if musical talent is “just” used within a family, someone is appreciating what is being produced, or is sharing in the enjoyment of producing something together.

Read the book if you’re still of the opinion that art is only for the notably gifted and the highly talented. Read the book anyway to be inspired to pursue your own art.

2. MM-V: “What poems have you ‘learned by heart’?”

I’m nobody. Who are you? by Emily Dickinson
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
The Raggedy man by James Whitcomb Riley
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow from Macbeth by Shakespeare
600 lines from Shakespeare, some of which I still remember.
Always Sprinkle Pepper in Your Hair by Shel Silverstein

A rather eclectic collection, don’t you think?

3. MM-V again: “What Thurber have you read? And which books bridged your childhood and adulthood reading?”
In answer to the first question,Many Moons, the story of a princess who wants the moon and a few cartoons. I think I read Walter Mitty a long time ago, but I may have only seen Danny Kaye enacting it. In answer to the second question, I have no gap between my childhood and adult reading. As a child, my parents allowed me to read anything I wanted to read, and now I do the same. I float between picture books and young adult fiction and so-called adult books, and I sometimes find more maturity and depth in the children’s books than in the books written ostensibly for adults. I suppose I do remember the first book I read in which two of the characters engaged in premarital sex. It was Exodus by Leon Uris, and I was shocked. I still disapprove and think those particular characters made a poor decision, although I like the book very much. Call me a prude.

4. Final question: “Do you subscribe to Reader’s Digest?”

From the quotation above the question, I gather that it’s unfashionable and unsophisticaated to read Reader’s Digest. If so, I plead guilty although we no longer subscribe. I ran out of money about three or four years for magazine subscriptions, and I haven’t found any extra lying around. I do have an entire long shelf of old Reader’s Digests that I have considered mining for blog posts because I think the magazine could be a blog nowadays. If I start posting entries with titles such as “I am Joe’s Colon” and “Ten Things I Learned While Delivering Pizzas”, you’ll know what I’ve been plagiarizing. No, on second, thought, I’d give credit where credit was due. I’m not ashamed of my shelf of digests.