When my good friend David Schoffman started wearing Guayabera shirts and appointing his studio studio with fresh cut peonies I knew he was losing his edge. Middle age has taken its toll on this former pugilist of paint. Known never to shy away from a fight, David has abandoned his quarrelsome ways and now contents himself in a catholic tolerance for what he calls 'diversity.'
In French the word diversité means something entirely different. It is void of any social and political connotations. It simply suggests the idea of variety and one can easily maintain the ability to be violently opposed to whatever form that variety may take. It is about choice rather than about coercive kindness, a uniquely American social fiction that seems rather impossible to enforce.
This is especially true in the artistic and intellectual worlds. I have no problem confessing to the fact that I cannot abide the revisionist realism school of painting that has acquired great currency of late. I find politically tendentious video and installation art both childish and boring. Gender issues are only slightly more interesting than transgender issues and third generation minimalism is as inviting as gum disease.
The way of the Buddha doesn't come naturally to my contentious friend. It must take an unbendable will to hold one's tongue while the heathens and barbarians inundate our cultural institutions with the silty refuse of third-rate ideas. While here in Paris the intellectual gauntlet is thrown at the least provocation, in California where anything goes, convictions are as durable and as defensible as a Malibu mudslide.
And so my good friend sits, bathed beneath the Five Pure Lights with his Lung ta Wind Horse flags decorating his studio as if for a child's birthday party. He has willingly exchanged the cerebral for Sādhanā, bellicosity for an ego-defeating bliss and anxiety for the wretched stillness of Abhyasa.
To tell you the truth, I'm rather relieved by this recent turn of events.
Now I can check one more competitor off my list of rival geniuses!
In French the word diversité means something entirely different. It is void of any social and political connotations. It simply suggests the idea of variety and one can easily maintain the ability to be violently opposed to whatever form that variety may take. It is about choice rather than about coercive kindness, a uniquely American social fiction that seems rather impossible to enforce.
The way of the Buddha doesn't come naturally to my contentious friend. It must take an unbendable will to hold one's tongue while the heathens and barbarians inundate our cultural institutions with the silty refuse of third-rate ideas. While here in Paris the intellectual gauntlet is thrown at the least provocation, in California where anything goes, convictions are as durable and as defensible as a Malibu mudslide.
To tell you the truth, I'm rather relieved by this recent turn of events.
Now I can check one more competitor off my list of rival geniuses!
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