The Swan

From a friend : “The Japanese have a concept of wu which they took over from the Chinese. Wu is generally inadequately translated as ‘the soul of the artist as revealed in his work’ or even ‘the luck of the artist’. If you speak Japanese even badly, it soon becomes clear on questioning that wu is very much akin to the Calvinist concept of predestination. A Calvinist is a swan: what the uninitiated consider luck visible above water is the result of ten times more effort invisible below the surface; every Calvinist I know earns his luck the hard way. An artist is a craftsman who has mastered technique to the point where it becomes an irrelevant fraction of the aesthetic value of his work; when that happens his imagination has taken control and he produces art rather than just a quality piece of craftsmanship.”

How fitting. I never knew why he chose the swan- I thought it was as simple as grace and beauty. Its much deeper than that. Just as Shindo is much deeper than just making “amplifiers.”