“Y repetía el poeta: ‘Creo que siempre es preferible la neurosis a la imbecilidad.’”
This line comes from the short story El pájaro azul, the Blue Bird, first published in Rubén Darío’s book Azul in 1888. Darío was a Nicaraguan poet and the founder of a literary movement that I don’t quite remember the significance of. However, I do remember this story, which I came across while hunting around for a topic for my final paper. Here’s the full text if you know Spanish and want to soak it in, otherwise tl;dr —
Setting: cross between the cast of Rent and the students from Les Mis.
One of the bohemians writes poetry and drinks a lot of absinthe. He keeps going on about how his brain is the cage of a blue bird that wants to fly into the blue sky. He would always repeat,
“I believe that neurosis is always preferable to stupidity/idiocy.”
There’s a bit of character development: paternal disappointment, 20-something angst, and so on. At the end of the story, they find him sprawled across his bed with his brains blown out onto the pillow. The blue bird has been freed!
I’ll always remember the initial shock from the ending, but that wasn’t the main part I took away from this work.
When I was in college (just a few short months ago at the time of writing), at times I had a feeling that I’d developed some slight neuroses. I had gotten myself into some intensive classes and lots of side work, but I always thought that was better than the alternative. If I resigned myself to not taking part in the world and bingeing on Netflix, I realized that I would never feel my most fulfilled as a person.
It occurred to me that I need my neurosis to keep my stupidity at bay.
So I’ve taken up the poet’s neurosis as my rallying cry and the uncaged blue bird as my emblem. Therein lies the meaning behind the blue bird bursting out the back of a head you see at the top of the page, in case you were curious. That’s one more example: I never knew much about vector art until I started fiddling with my logo for the site. To say I’m an expert on the topic now would be a lie, but it was fun to figure it out and I feel accomplished having created something. In that same spirit, I’m always going to stay off the paths leading to flatness and tedium. You’re welcome to join me where the field of what’s known drops away, and keep paddling onward.