Just what we need, another conspiracy theory

I have a conspiracy theory. The Romantic Myth of poets and artists as tortured souls who have to drown their misunderstood selves in booze and other drugs is perpetuated by the powers that be in their own self-interests.

Plato well knew how dangerous poets were. Not in my Republic, thank you very much. Poets are revolutionaries against the very foundations of political power. Don't listen to him, listen to your own heart. Somewhere along the way, a politician learned you could castrate the political threat of poets without having to ban them -- you could just keep them drunk and wedded to notions of being victims of a society that doesn't understand them. They'd go off and do their masturbatory dances of self-indulgence in arenas where nothing substantial could threaten the power structure.

And many poets and artists, maybe most, have bought into this myth ever since, especially the non-mainstream ones who, in fact, pose the greatest threat of all to (unlearned) culture. In fact, the powers are so ingenious they learned how to MAKE MONEY on the very products of their threat!

"the Fiery Chariot of His Contemplative Thought"
(Blake)

Leave it to Norman Brown in Love's Body to show the real threat of the poet to political culture -- the Fiery Chariot of His Contemplative Thought, to use (as he does) Blake's term. Leave it to Brown to separate the mythological war that changes nothing from the war that can be won, the war of the individual to move toward personal transformation, which changes everything.

I didn't realize until my brooding about Marty's death how convenient and even necessary the Romantic Myth of the Artist is to keeping the status quo of the culture in place.