One aspect of a genius’s awareness is an ever flowing onslaught of brilliant ideas through which the genius must constantly sift for the keepers. There are essentially three books one needs in order to understand reality: Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man, Sylvanio Arietti’s The Origin and Natural History of Creativity, and Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, and Heaven and Hell, this last book examining the relationship between genius and insanity. If you want to, go for Jung, as well, he’ll get you on the right track.

Consider, please, our species, as a whole. Neanderthals, while our own species, are gone; and don’t do art. Only we: Homo Sapiens Sapiens, make art; and the Willendorf Venus provides some of the earliest evidence of this activity. So the first sculpture attributable to our species is a celebration of lust. I will soon describe why this is true.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens, by definition, is a sub-species about a thousand generations into its existence, that is to say about twenty five to thirty five thousand years old, existing upon a planet about fifty thousand light years from its galaxy’s core. Homo Sapiens Sapiens, is you.

Where do we come from? (Well, I think we all know that by now. Storks! Right?) We evolved on a planet where sexual reproduction arose around three and a half billion years ago, a wee bit before our species came about. Our species has been procreating, therefore, for about one millionth of the hours during which procreation has taken place on this planet, and light we see from the Milky Way originated while Neanderthals were still busy traipsing about.

Wow.

Now, it’s really only in the last century that medicine has significantly reduced the very real risk of dying during childbirth and infancy, and during Roman times, if one survived infancy one stood a reasonable chance of attaining a lifespan similar to ours of today, because the ancient Romans had excellent hygene.

During most of our natural history, however, in addition to rampant infant mortality, diseases arising from inadequate hygene, and tooth decay arising from a complete lack of dental care, created living conditions during which few could expect to see forty. We were busy foraging, hunting Mastadons, and fighting for our survival during an ice age. (We must be pretty tough!) And we needed to have a LOT of children, all the time. Procreation as soon, and as often as possible, was the continued order of the day.

So in other words, our species owes its existence to a lot of wild and savage teenagers indulging their unbridled lust and urgent sexual needs, unprotected, in the woods, in the grass, on seal pelts in ice caves, on the ground, anywhere and everywhere as often as they could. Kind of wild, isn’t it? Predators were everywhere. One of these teenagers could have saved your great (power of 10 to the 3) grandmother from a sabertooth tiger, because that’s what we were busy doing! Gives one great reverence for the power of nature, for the power of sex as it surges through and animates the living world. And think of how many kids were around, all the time, everywhere!

And remember, this is also the first time in the natural history of our planet that an animal DECIDES, through her cerebral cortex, when and with whom to mate. So these kids are not just busy having sex, they’re busy THINKING about it, all the time! So it’s only natural that the first sculpture someone decides to make is a celebration of sex, of lust, of procreation!

People are strange! And getting stranger all the time…..

Is there a rock and roll lyric in here somewhere? Absolutely! There’s gotta’ be…..