There’s a bird outside my window thinks he’s Elvis. He’s not. But what the heck? He’s happy. He’s been singing away there for hours, wittering, trilling to his heart’s content.
Why do I think he’s a he? Because only a male would persist in such vanity for so long without a hint of insight or reflection. He is probably consumed with desire and calling for a mate. Or warning off rivals from his patch. Something as “romantic” as either.
Whatever, he is totally consumed by the moment. His entire being given over to the now. A very big NOW.
At the height of his powers Elvis probably felt that way too, as he took to the stage and enchanted the masses with such full-throated ease, happy in his happiness. Pouring forth his soul in such ecstasy. Like Keats’s nightingale.
It was Yeats however who said that art was about living life more intensely, which is what the bird outside my window is doing just now. He has fully occupied the moment, leaving no space for past or future.
Great art is as wholly absorbing as are great artists in the throes of expression. Maybe the bird outside my window is a great artist, though I am not qualified to say, being unfamiliar with his medium.
Some might say that has rarely inhibited a critic. Indeed, there are those who have suggested that ignorance is a necessary quality in a critic. It has not been meant kindly.
Brendan Behan, for instance, said critics were "like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves". An unwieldy phrase, lacking pith, but the sense compensates.
As the great Pope (No, not Francis or my esteemed colleague Conor but the 18th century English poet, Alexander) said: “True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d/What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.”
He said much more. Included is the line “Words are like leaves and where they most abound,/Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found”. That ought to be chastening for many of us in this business.
However, we tend to carry on regardless of what the world thinks. Not unlike the bird outside my window who thinks he’s Elvis.
Bird, thought to have originated with Old English bridd, meaning nestling.
