Redtree Times

Archaeology: Deja Vu– At West End Gallery

Genius is the gold in the mine. Talent is the miner who works and brings it out.

–Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849)

I came across the quote above from the Irish Countess Marguerite Blessington, who was a writer and hostess of a famed literary salon in London who is best known for her published conversations with Lord Byron. Hers was yet another name with which I was not acquainted.

But her words made me both think and chuckle a bit. Made me think of some of the lyrics from the old Lee Dorsey song, Working in the Coal Mine:

Five o’clock in the mornin’
I’m already up and gone
Lord, I’m so tired
How long can this go on?

So, here I am at a little after 5 in the morning, getting ready to head down in my own version of a coal mine. Not quite the same, of course. Not as dark and dirty though if you saw the clothes I work in you might not think there was much of a difference.

I am ready to head down in the mine looking for my own version of the gold, the genius contained within according to the good Countess. Now, I would hesitate to call it genius but whatever is contained in that mine it has value to me.

Maybe we all have genius of some sort in our mines in which we toil. Maybe we don’t recognize it as such and don’t value it as highly as we should.

But if it is genius, mine is a very thin and spotty vein. Takes every bit of effort I can muster and all the limited talent I possess to extract the tiniest of nuggets.

To quote another song: It don’t come easy.

But it is the mine I in which I chose to toil. That’s probably another difference between real coalminers and me though we both might feel equally at home in our respective mines. I like my mine even on those many days when there is no gold, coal, or even lead ore to be found. Just being in the dark stillness away from the outer world is a form of gold in itself.

But there are days when the lines from the song above ring true. Oh, lord, how long can this go on? Except for those times when I am going through creative blocks, which I guess that would be the equivalent of running into a vein of granite(?), that feeling doesn’t last long. Once I start digging, that fatigue pretty much goes away.

Okay, enough of this. I got to get back to swinging my pick. There’s something good– gold, coal or whatever– down there I can pull out today, I just know it.

Here’s Lee Dorsey and his Working in a Coal Mine, written by the great Allen Toussaint.