The Accidental Masterpiece: Maximizing Your Time

I'm beginning to lose track of which chapter I'm on in the book...five? Six? I take that as a good thing, of course. If your primary concern while reading a book is what chapter you're on, there's a problem you need to fix. At any rate, this chapter of Kimmelman's The Accidental Masterpiece dealt with the ways artists try to "Maximize Their Time." Kimmelman took a more literal view of this idea, discussing artists like Jay DeFeo and Eva Hesse, who were both terminally ill and died before their times, and Charlotte Salomon, a Jewish artist who died in Auschwitz after years of hiding (albeit in plain sight) in the French Riviera. That aside, Kimmelman spent a noteworthy amount of time on the more metaphorical meaning of the statement. I took this figurative view - to me, "maximizing your time" when it comes to art means making sure your art will be there for posterity in the eons after you've gone. One point Kimmelman makes early on, about the "eternal attraction" of art, made me think of my old pal Tolkien. I've learned from documentaries I've seen on Tolkien's writing (yes, there are documentaries on Tolkien, and I have watched them), which included interviews with his children, that he didn't have any set influence for many of the elements in his book. The descriptions were inspired by his own experiences, of course, but there was nothing he had in mind for the themes. For instance, the Black Land of Mordor isn't based on the possibility of nuclear war, or Nazi atrocities, or the Soviet regime, or anything of that sort. Mordor is based on whatever the reader thinks it's based upon. There is no wrong view, because Tolkien didn't have a view (which would therefore be considered the "right" view). Anybody - literally, anybody - can assign their own meaning to what Mordor, or the Elves, or the Men, or any of the other elements in Tolkien's works is representative of. And they'll be right every time. That's a big chunk of what makes Tolkien's work so endearingly popular - anybody, in any time period, can find meaning in his work. And as such, Tolkien's works will live on until the end of civilization. Or until people stop reading books...which is the same thing as a societal collapse, if you ask me.