
E.E. Cummings on Art, Life, and Being Unafraid to Feel - dsr12
https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/09/25/e-e-cummings-advice/
======
badrabbit
Probably an unpopular perspective here,but, I look at feelings as something
that must be understood with applied wisdom.

Feelings can be extremely deceptive,and self-deception is the worst kind. One
should completely distrust and be hostile towars a "feeling" until one is
confident he/she understands _why_ the feeling exists and is the way it is.

To add on that,we should strive to make conscious and intentional decisions,
making sure we understand our own intent.

I am not saying emotions are bad or it's bad to say "I feel ..." But rather to
know why you feel that way and _if_ you make a decision based on that
feeling,make sure to be conscious of that _why_ behind the feeling.

~~~
bengotow
> One should completely distrust and be hostile towards a "feeling" until one
> is confident he/she understands why the feeling exists and is the way it is.

I get the impression this is a very common sentiment in the engineering
community, actually - I was raised this way. In my family, step one of
"digesting" a feeling was always understanding why you felt it. Someone told
me recently that "your feelings do not have to make sense to be valid and
action-worthy", and I was stunned — all these years no-one had told me. It is
immensely true.

If you insist on understanding your feelings before taking them into account,
I think it's easy to fall into the trap of disregarding ones you think you
shouldn't have, or choosing not to act because rational beings rise above
their feelings. There are also some feelings you may never understand, and you
could spend years sitting around trying to grok them.

It is perfectly valid (at least to me) to say "I made this decision because I
felt this way at this time." No further explanation required.

~~~
marmaduke
To continue that thought, intuition enters in engineering after several years:
you see the work of someone else and think, “yuck.” Often, I then search for a
reason and voice that instead of “yuck,” but it still starts with a feeling.

This is relevant because when you’re hacking away, you can “feel” out the
solution of a problem, instead of approaching it axiomatically (even if the
latter is often useful)

------
eruci
Anyone lived in a pretty how town //

with up so many antennas down //

bit by bit and byte by byte //

they laughed their is //

and cried their was //

smirked their are //

sneered the been //

//

//

then one day everyone died I guess //

and no-one stopped to book their face //

busy people buried them side by side //

all by all and deep by deep //

and dream by dream and sleep by sleep.

~~~
owenversteeg
I like it! The original is a terrific poem and personally makes me feel some
strong emotions not many poems do. I'll put it below:

anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

spring summer autumn winter

he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)

cared for anyone not at all

they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same

sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few

and down they forgot as up they grew

autumn winter spring summer)

that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf

she laughed his joy she cried his grief

bird by snow and stir by still

anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones

laughed their cryings and did their dance

(sleep wake hope and then)they

said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon

(and only the snow can begin to explain

how children are apt to forget to remember

with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess

(and noone stooped to kiss his face)

busy folk buried them side by side

little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep

and more by more they dream their sleep

noone and anyone earth by april

wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)

summer autumn winter spring

reaped their sowing and went their came

sun moon stars rain

------
yawaramin
Is it just me, or is everyone starting to capital-case cummings' name again?
Anyway, this reminds me of his poem, which is especially apt as someone who
has to pay attention to syntax as part of my job:

    
    
        since feeling is first
        who pays any attention
        to the syntax of things
        will never wholly kiss you;
        wholly to be a fool
        while Spring is in the world
    
        my blood approves
        and kisses are a better fate
        than wisdom
        lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
        —the best gesture of my brain is less than
        your eyelids' flutter which says
    
        we are for each other: then
        laugh, leaning back in my arms
        for life's not a paragraph
    
        and death i think is no parenthesis

~~~
themarkn
I like the poem. I also like this take on what we should do about capitalizing
his name, it feels like it's as close as we can get to a rule:
[http://eecpoem.pbworks.com/w/page/9068325/Decapitalization](http://eecpoem.pbworks.com/w/page/9068325/Decapitalization)
... Where he changed it, keep it changed, everywhere else, use standard
capitalization.

~~~
teddyh
I don’t know about that. Should we also do such things w.r.t. gender pronouns?
Current etiquette suggest that no, we should follow the preferences of the
person on this. Why not then do the same about the _spelling of their name_?

~~~
themarkn
I agree we should follow the preference. That's what I'm saying to do. My
understanding from the link I posted is that EE Cummings did not want to
always have his name lowercased: he chose to do it in certain contexts for
specific artistic reasons. When we lowercase the name as though he intended to
communicate something by having his name always be lowercase, we're creating
an artistic statement for him that he never intended to make in the first
place.

~~~
teddyh
> _EE Cummings did not want to always have his name lowercased: he chose to do
> it in certain contexts for specific artistic reasons_

On careful reading of the link, I can not find any support for the claim that
he sometimes used a capitalized version of his name. If he did normally
capitalize, and only used the lowercased version in artistic contexts, that
would certainly give credence to your idea. But the link does not give any
support for this.

~~~
cokernel
Here is some support for the claim that he sometimes used a capitalized
version of his name.

Quoting from
[http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps2.html](http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/cummings/caps2.html)
:

> As we may have mentioned, due to the kindness of D. Jon Grossman's son,
> Jerome, we have the complete file of Jon's correspondence with Cummings. On
> making a preliminary tour through these letters, we found Jon preparing a
> French edition of his translations of Cummings' poetry, and on 27 February
> 1951 he wrote to the poet: "are you E.E.Cummings, ee cummings, or what?(so
> far as the title page is concerned)wd u like title page all in lowercase?"

> The poet replied on 1 March 1951: "E.E.Cummings, unless your printer prefers
> E. E. Cummings/ titlepage up to you;but may it not be tricksy svp[.]"

> That seems definitive to us: _may it not be tricksy!_

------
andrewstuart
It's really hard to truly be yourself. Comparison is the root of many
problems.

------
geggam
Emotions and feelings being a chemical imbalance of the brain causing
irrational thought or actions. Yet this irrational thought is expressed,
protected, and considered valid reason to justify actions in society.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if people acknowledged feelings yet did the rational
thing ?

~~~
Cthulhu_
The problem is that emotions affect rationality - what is rationality even?
You feel confident that your thoughts or actions are rational, but that too is
an emotion.

To invoke Godwin's Law, the nazis were rational in their policy of
exterminating certain people, they listed the traits and stereotypes and
decided that the best course of action was to isolate and exterminate them.
The US is rational in their policy to label terrorists as 'enemy combatants'
and not respect the Geneva conventions when it comes to those.

Yes, underneath those is a certain type of hatred, the emotion, but for all I
know that emotion is applied or assumed after the fact - that is, "surely they
have to really hate someone do to that", instead of having to admit that it
was a rational decision. I don't know which is worse, treating someone badly
out of emotion or out of rationality.

------
techbio
Real TLDR:

""" As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a
little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because
nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do
exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and
feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky
indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something
easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing,
but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does that sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel. """ -ee cummings

------
robotkdick
The article is striking in how similar his description on "becoming a poet" is
to some insightful advice from Paul Graham and others I've read about "moral
weight" and becoming an entrepreneur.

Both paths also promise a more enriching life.

~~~
8077628
I think you're confused. When poets talk about "enrichment" they mean
spiritual enrichment.

~~~
techbio
I'm not so sure "confused" is exactly the term. "Hackers and Painters" was
largely about mastery, less about wealth, and in many traditions, mastery of
craft _is_ spiritual enrichment.

------
throwaway77384
Feelings are such a tricky thing.

I was raised to suppress them. Or, well, not even that. Feelings were so
thoroughly suppressed in my family, that they never even featured. I must have
learned that any expression of emotion gets me nowhere by the age of 0.5

In my 20s, throughout various failed relationships I began to re-examine what
feelings are. Why did people (and, anecdotally, women) have so many feelings,
of such strength and seemingly of such unpredictability?

It wasn't long until I decided to get therapy. To see what's lurking beneath.

Lo and behold, there were some feelings there. Lots of them surprisingly
strong, yet hesitant to surface. It was a bizarre dichotomy to have to deal
with. One that affects me to this day. It's like the stronger a feeling within
me, the further it is hidden away, leading to this cat and mouse game of 'who
am I?'.

Feelings offer a surprisingly absolute way to perceive the world. They are
always there and they are always exactly what they are. So long as you allow
yourself to feel them.

For the last decade I have been doing nothing but trying to feel more and
more. This is still a lot less than most people. At the same time it makes me
feel much more 'at home' in the world, it has made me able to connect with
people better, it has reduced my stress and anxiety.

It has also lead to some other curious changes within me. I am feeling myself
become more and more incompatible with the 'business world'. I know that's a
very vague term, but I have found corporate culture and the striving for
endless profits, no matter what the human cost, to be incredibly despiccable.
Nauseating, icky. Misguided.

I wonder whether feelings and emotions provide a certain common ground for
what a human being 'should be' or 'wants to be', which runs counter to
capitalist incentive. After all, you want a herd of obedient workers, not
uppity individuals causing trouble with their free spirited antics.

I should add that I am of German heritage and I feel there is an entire
generation of people who have lived through historical events enabled almost
entirely by the suppression and eradication of all feelings (apart from,
ironically, hate and fear).

------
some_account
Tldr, I was busy on Facebook.

~~~
extralego
TLDR, “Kids these days have no idea”

