Crasses et Voluptés

 Chapitre 7 - Emmett: a life played for keeps

From our point of view, freedom involved first liberating the imagination from economic assumptions of profit and private property that demanded existence at the expense of personal truthfulness and honor, then living according to personal authenticity and fidelity to inner directives and impulses. If enough people began to behave in this way, we believed, the culture would invariably change to accommodate them and become more compassionate and more human in the process.

All artists desire an audience, and while we might criticize our culture, some part of us wants at the same time to be acknowledged by it. For Emmett, this contradiction—this simultaneous spurning and yearning—became the crucifix on which he impaled himself.