This: I feel only one thing, I have only one conviction; it sits on three chairs in Heaven. Sometimes I look at it, with terror: it is such a perfect acrobat! The three chairs are three facts—it will quickly kick them out from under itself and stand on air; and in that moment (because everyone will be disappointed) everyone will applaud. Meanwhile, some thousands of miles over everyone’s head, over a billion empty faces, it rocks carefully and smilingly on three things, on three facts, on: I am an Artist, I am a Man, I am a Failure—it rocks and it swings and it smiles and it smiles and it does not collapse tumble or die because it pays no attention to anything except itself. I feel, I am aware—every minute, every instant, I watch this trick, I am this trick, and I sway—selfish and smiling and careful—above all the people. And always I am repeating a simple and dark and little formula...always myself mutters and remutters a trivial colourless microscopic idiom—I breathe, and I swing; and I whisper: “An artist, a man, a failure, MUST PROCEED.”

-e e cummings, "Him" Three Plays and a Ballet-




the master...need i say more?