Hand in Hand
"Genius round the world stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round." Herman Melville, winter of 1914… — one of Hunter’s favorite quotes.
I can’t say that I stand hand in hand with Genius, but I am lucky enough to have access to it via my library card!…we all do.
Here is an excerpt from Ralph Steadman’s intro to the 1986 edition of Lewis Carroll’s "Alice In Wonderland"
It was all so familiar when I picked it up and read it for the first time in 1967. For the first time, as I thought, but don’t you ever get that strange sensation that what you are reading or watching is something you already know? Something that is in your mind already? Bells of recognition ring as you welcome an old friend. All good ideas are like that. You already know them. The familiarity is part of the enjoyment. The words someone has taken the trouble to write down merely reveal the contents of your own mind. The picture someone has struggled to create is something you have already seen, otherwise how would you ever recognize its content?
You have already experienced the sum of its parts. You have lived them, or maybe you have dreamed them. They are the vocabulary of a vast collective consciousness which it is your everyday choice to delve into or ignore at will. What we choose to emphasize forms the structure of our lives, and what an artist chooses to depict forms the basis of his work — but of course not the sum total, for in an artist’s world two and two make five. And what an artist says three times is true! Familiarity breeds acceptance. The greater the artist, the greater number of reference points are offered for the rest of us to recognize. The more we recognize, the better we feel. We experience a greater satisfaction because we have contributed to the whole.— Ralph Steadman — intro to "Alice In Wonderland"
