Novel Sacred Unique

Do you ever get stuck in a loop? A searching loop.  One of the ones where you seem to keep searching forever.  More importantly, where you COULD keep searching forever.  There are some subjects of such depth that you just want to keep looking until you find the bottom.

You know the questions that prompt these.  "Who was the best..."  or "Who made the perfect..."  The answer is not roundly shaped or functionally adept.  More importantly, it is not there.

Why do we want the perfect answer?  Why do we even try?  Because of our desire to defend.  We defend space and we defend ideas.  We want to defend a turf of ideology.  We want to plant our flag.  And we want to defend the ideal that we have found the insight - not just the example - that is the key to something more.  This falls into both.

But every once in a while, we do better.  And that is not just staking out our own ideals.  Sometimes, more importantly, we defend the novel.  We defend the new.  As Anton Ego said in the fabulous film Ratatouille, "There are times when the critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new."

God help us when we find such things.  Not that we are protected, but that we protect the sacred, the novel, and the unique.