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Old 2007.08.23, 11:53 AM   #10
Nimh
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Join Date: Feb 2006
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Nimh deserves a fucking medal
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I would be so far from irate, Jihad, you have no idea. In fact, I'd be MORE impressed if I found out, say, that a white woman wrote 50 Cents' P.I.M.P., and not Fitty His-self.

Not to get all lit-crit, but John Keats' theory of "negative capability" has a lot of value. He judged a work of art not by how close it was to the artist's experience but by how *far away* it was. In his eyes, Shakespeare was the greatest author of all time because Shakespeare, even though he never spent one minute in the shoes of most of his characters, nevertheless wrote them, and did a damn fine job doing it. That, to Keats, is what the imagination is all about, and "imagination" should be valued over simple self-expression.

I think there's a lot to that. At the same time, there's genius. The same Mozart that wrote the mazurkas wrote the requiem. You can't study that, or learn it. That's simply God's gift. (I'm an atheist, but bear with me.)

I'm not saying Shiina is a genius on that level. But I do think she's proven to be a good chameleon, channelling personas that may not be remotely close to her own.

Which one is the "authentic" one? That's an impossible question. Her Honnou persona could very well be the authentic one, *at the time she wrote it*. Just like her crowd-pleasing TJ persona could be authentic *for the time being*. I don't think a person should be expected to declare one particular "authentic" persona early in their career and never move away from it. That's pretty restrictive, and unrealistic.
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