What Do We Amount To? Ask Goethe.

"How can you come to know yourself? Never by thinking; always by doing. Try to do your duty, and you'll know right away what you amount to."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Here at This Side of Paradise, we term ourselves a "Thog," or, a "blog for thinkers." So, it might seem strange to put up the above quote on this page. Goethe has countless inspirational words for artists and human beings in general, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. But I would add that for artists -- if we dare to call ourselves "artists," the act of "thinking" is just as important and essential as the doing. It must be done in combination, however -- one cannot exist without the other. "We think, therefore we do" (pun intended). We think, so that we might build something that is greater than what we would have otherwise expected from ourselves. We think, and we do, because we need to create -- and by creating, we might still never know the "self," really, but we will truly and indeed make something that amounts to "better than good." Leave "brilliance" to the critics to pronounce (or not), but if we create a work that is "better than good," we have completed our task, demonstrated what we are made of -- "done our duty" -- to self, yes -- and for others.

Isn't this art, after all? Not commerce, but art?