We are a market of the devoted. Our faith is absolute. Stars cannot hide behind the day. We remember where they are. With a smile that pretends to forget, we prance in the daylight to remind them of the moon.
Or some shit like that. The turn is what's important. To deflect, subvert intentions. Appearance is key. It's "The Prestige" idea. Play the part, all the time. It used to be referenced as "Be The Art." Don't just want to do it. The cliche is, Live it, Breathe it. For those so inclined, the question becomes, would you die for your art? This, I think, presses too close toward zealotry. The fool denies zealots, he confounds them with his seemingly superfluous view of the world. The zealot cannot understand the fool, fundamentally, because the ideas they give absolute, dogmatic certainty, the fool gives almost no importance at all.
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,And follows but for form,Will pack when it begins to rain,And leave thee in a storm.But I will tarry; the fool will stay,And let the wise man fly,The knave turns fool that runs away,The fool no knave, perdy.Kent. Where learn’d you this, fool?
Fool. Not I’ th’ stocks, fool.
From A.2 Sc.4 of King Lear by William Shakespeare
And it's past integration. Integration implies separation. One must accept their film of uncertainty. Like the thick line of grease that accrues after a lack of bathing, or the tar that fills your lungs; the scar tissue over one's liver. It's not enough to simply integrate those characteristics necessary for writing. You have to be the art. Especially in our current time, when the average person has become so jaded, people believe less and less except for those who confront them screaming with a smile.
What's the cost? Derision, rejection, the dehumanizing stare of indifference. Eleven years of no publisher for a book that will later be treated with the classics. Waiting until you're fifty to get any response better than a rejection letter. The history is there. So much so that the artist not recognized in their time has itself become somewhat of a cliche. And then there are those never found, bodies beyond the yard.
“I’m well, I am completely, absolutely well. I’m smiling—I can’t help smiling: They extracted a kind of splinter from my head, and now my head is easy and empty. Or should I say, not empty, but there’s nothing strange there that keeps me from smiling (a smile is the normal state of a normal person).”
From “We” by Yevgeny Zemyatin
The fool does not care. They cannot. To accept that would be to cure themselves of what makes them a fool, what disallows them from participating in the masses. The risk is that they disassociate completely and their insanity becomes absolute. If there is a risk there, then perhaps there is also a truth. To write well, to engage in the type of writing which can be recognized as, truly unique, truly exceptional, touching at the bottom of the well of art, you must become accustomed to risking the edge. Which makes sense. The majority of individuals will not risk a precipice. When you decide to do the opposite and get a view of what's over that edge, you are viewing something rare. It is the purview of the writer to document that rarity, to give witness of what they saw.
“—though for me his craziness had too much sense in it.”
From “The Wine of Astonishment” by Earl Lovelace.
For that purpose, it may be helpful for the fool to incorporate something of the zealot. This does require separation. Not zealotry, which would result in such a narrowed view that while searching the edge the fool would almost certainly misstep and fall, but to be zealous, which is to be incorruptible in their pursuit of the cliff.
As a note, there may be the assumption that every metaphorical edge inevitably leads to an abyss. That is fear. A trip that every poet and writer should consider: excursion or pilgrimage to the coast of Normandy in France. Visit Étretat and the Falaise d'Aval. Some of the map has already been filled out. Visit those places inspiring enough for paint. Some cliffs are merely the old homes of an ocean.