I am fascinated by the idea that someone’s entire life exists solely to create something sublime. Some one sublime thing. Maybe a series of them, if they are very lucky. But that, behind every masterpiece like Bridge Over Troubled Water, or the Mona Lisa, there lies a multitude of days spent in reckless wandering, or economic straits dire and devastating, meaningless hours spent in rooms as dull and defeated as the days that demons fought the angels of creation to a draw. For all the times we all listen to and take shelter in the wonder of another human voice that speaks Holy Truth to us, there was a life behind it, full of all the same food and pain and suffering and farts as we all have. The places where the daily experience of the struggle of life meets with the eternal products of creation is endlessly fascinating to me. Walt Disney and Michealangelo had insomnia, and allergies in the spring, and too much to drink some nights. Benny Goodman and Mozart had laundry to wash and bills to pay. What masterpieces went down the drain with their dirty water? What was created while they washed, and never would have been if they hadn’t had the work to do?
The conjunction of the ordinary with the extraordinary feat of such creations always brings me to my knees.
-Tony Stark,
Publisher and CEO,
StarkLight Press.
