Amber Benson

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man

Netflix recommended this documentary to me. The algorithms tonight couldn’t have been more prescient.

The idea that art is art, outside of self and taste and worth. That is the question I am grappling with tonight. Intellectually, I believe that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of something I’ve created. In practice, of course, that’s not a truth. I am just as human as anyone else, stymied by negativity.

Then I watch this goddamned documentary ’Scott Walker: 30 Century Man’ and am confronted with a man who seems to walk the walk and not just talk the talk (like me). To just create, to just wholly and utterly give birth to what is inside of you, and not disown it or vilify it or praise it, but let it go, unjudged. To be pleased with the process, alone, and unfettered by what anyone thinks...this is the ultimate goal.

Like in Buddhism there is the notion of transcending self.

In art it is the notion of transcending judgement...your own or anyone else’s.

Now go create and damn the consequences!