Waukesha High School - Megaphone Yearbook (Waukesha, WI)

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the bed of ivory and ebony of indescribable design had its covering of leopard skins, Icould not help musing on . mf' -1, fi - ,I 8 ' 1 K 5 V what subtle differences ' -sri, yi iff: f in one's spiritual and ' g -5 g A intellectual character if 9 . fig I . . Q A H-V! 54 va-1 3' , 'Q would come from living . f' ' .. wg NJ-If il ' , ' 1 .A ' 4. . :Nc ones life amid sucn I . I gl , I furnishings. as con- . if v - Q - A trasted. we will say. X 1 li N ' ' . Ji with bedrooms of com- 21, Y - A . g v plete and perfect Queen . -, - ' Anne or Louis Qua- torze. ln the room l mention. the atmosphere, due to the furnishings, was an almost maleficent blend- ing of the perfection of twentieth century civilization with the savagery of the jungle. As one stood there, in a room designed as the last word in French art and craftsmanship for a millionaire of 1929, one was aware in part of one's soul of the faint booming of tom-toms and of the odor of black and sweaty jungle Hesh. A man could not live in that room without strange things happening in the depths of his being. GIRLS' FIELD HOCKEY This. perhaps, may be said to be an extreme example, as was Hergesheimer's, but is it? Do not all our surroundings and things affect us? The social effects of such things as automobiles, radios, and so on have now become commonplaces, but what of the effects on the individual? In many ways a man or woman with a motor car is a diH'erent creature from one without one. Think how many lives have been altered by the reading of a single book. The laboring man who lives in a Sixth Avenue room in New York facing on the elevated railroad is a different man from one who lives in a cottage and garden in Devon or amid quiet and roses in the Vaucluse. All this would seem to be so self-evident as to call for no elaboration, and yet do we pay any attention to it? XVhen we try to live as everyone else does, when we buy something because Ueverybody has one, are we not using our tools with an utter lack of discrimina- tion? There is a similar decadence in some directions in the arts other than that of life, a tendency to put any old thing on canvas, to clutter up a novel with irrelevant details on the plea of realism. We might as well try to eat everything as have everything, regardless of our own taste or the idiosyncrasies of our own digestions. A painter does not use his scarlet or blue or orange brushes regard- less of the effect, merely because they are there He selects his colors as he does his objects, for their final inffuence on his work, or he merely produces a daub. Page One Hundred Twenty-two

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G. A. A. BOARD Third Row, left to right-Drake, Miss Dodge. Fisher. Second Row -Christison, XVakeman, lvens, Miss Vklorthington. Sherman, Fryar. First Row-Vetto, Burtch. Rutte, Roberts. should have become the general one in America is merely an interesting example of the difliculty amongst us of disentangling one's individual self from the glutinous mass of all one's compatriots. X To practise an art of living, it is essential to arrive at some standard of values for ourselves, If we may judge from this contest, and from other evidences, the standard of value arrived at by the American people in the broad sphere of ethics or morality is merely the standard of what the overwhelming mass of Ameri- cans of all sorts consider applicable to themselves. There can be no individuality in conforming to such a standard so arrived at. Moreover, such a standard is bound to be beastly low. The mass of men has never risen without individuals to make it rise any more than a mass of dough will rise without the tiny bit of yeast in it. Uur concern here, however. is with the individual who would manage his life with art. not with the mass, and for him no art of life is possible if he is merely going to make his life conform to the opinions of the majority. It is as absurd as it would be to think of Keats, preparing to write an Ode to a Nightingale, taking a vote of all his fellow apothecary apprentices as to what they thought he ought to say about a nightingale. But we have also got to consider carefully what tools to use in our art. Limiting ourselves for the moment to what are usually called things, it is obvious, though generally overlooked, that the effect upon ourselves of things is both varied and profound. This is a theme which is rarely treated, but the reader will recall the effect upon Lee Randon of the French doll on his mantel- piece in I-Iergesheimer's HCytherea. It is, perhaps, the best illustration I can offer of the idea worked out to its conclusion in all completeness. The other day I happened to be visiting the exhibition of the Arts Decoratifs at the Grand Palais in Paris. The new art in France, and elsewhere over here in Europe, is producing a wholly new form of interior decoration and furnishing, sometimes of great beauty and nearly always of much interest. As I stood in one bedroom in which Page One Hundred Twenty-one

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JUNIOR HIGH FOOTBALL Top Row, left to right-Mr. Corrigan, Hockett, Miller, Helker, Enders, Boccaccio. Bottom Row--Moen, Edwards, Reid, Mittlesteadt, Russell, Maragos, Engstrom. If we are to have an art of life, must we HOF exercise equal care in trying to dis- criminate between the influences and values of all the tools that we use in making the infinitely more complex work, an individual human life of significance and happiness and worth? We have got to think what all these tools-things, situa- tions, surroundings, relationships-may mean for our own individual selves, for our own private lives, regardless of the standards of the majority, before we can begin to live as human beings and develop an art of life. Otherwise we are mere telephone switchboards, like animals, receiving stimuli and sending our reactions. Until we have given thought to this, we can use all our tools and material only at random and with no idea of the result we are producing. If we can decide what we want to make of ourselves and what tools will best assist the result, then we can vastly simplify our lives by a wholesale rejection of all those things which may be well enough for our neighbors but do not conduce to the one desired end for ourselves. We would then no longer wear ourselves out in the mere living of standardized lives and keeping up with the Joneses. We would not only simplify our lives, but we would introduce Variety into the deadly monotony of the national life. No two artists would have exactly the same con- ception of a subject or treat it in exactly the same way. If it is true that our lives are increasingly frustrate and commonplace and standardized because we do not take time and trouble to think out what is the worthwhile life and achieve a scale of values, is it not because we lack the courage to be different from the Joneses and to give to our lives that precise quality of uniqueness which is characteristic of the products of art? The three qualities, therefore, which would seem to be essential to any artistic ordering of our lives are courage, thought, and will. We have got to acquire that rarest form of courage in America, the courage to be considered different from our neighbors and the rest of our set. Page One Hundred Twenty-three