1. I am still busy flying the Barack Obama flag. Obama lost in Louisiana almost 2-1, but that does mean more than one in three people are Obama voters, many of them young. They say things like:
I was born in 1988. When I heard Obama had won the election, I felt that a great weight had been lifted from my life. I am not so embarrassed to be an American any more. Is this what hope feels like?
2. Meanwhile I am taking notes toward a post on integrity and autonomy which I do not have time to write now. Items:
+ the idea that to have a PhD you should have some intellectual autonomy;
+ the fact that professionalization requires the opposite;
+ the fact that the mentoring system fosters enmeshment, which is not autonomy;
+ the fact that an artist who does not develop a personal vision remains a copyist.
All of these things would fit together in an interesting essay.
3. Now I will go to sleep. I have realized why I do not sleep, impractical though this is: I want to be awake. I have always been told I think too much about things, but truly I find that one should do that, because if not then one only absorbs standard interpretations.
The standard interpretation in this age is that one should speculate about negative reasons one does or does not do things. What do you fear? What are you trying to destroy? ask the multitudes.
But as I have said before, I find that to understand one’s impractical behaviors one must discover what positive goal one is expressing through them, however weakly. Then, I notice, it is easier to see more practical ways to attain that. I want to be very much awake, so to that end I am going to sleep now. I have even asked FIVE other people about this. They say they have the same problem but just force themselves not to stay up. I get it now.
4. Tuesday Barack Obama won, and today someone in my very college won a national prize! A big national prize! We are looking good! Everyone is looking good!
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Great points; but does a personal vision have to equal a personal “style”? That’s the usual equation, though some writers with distinctive visions (Hughes, Rich, Rukeyser, Ashbery, Jay Wright, etc.) have had multiple styles. Sarah Schulman once stressed that the style much match the work, and it’s the aim that’s most important. What do you think?
Our romantic picture is of the lone creator, but most famous artists have had a support system and maybe even an entourage.
Or am I missing the point, as I so often do?
JStheater – nice to see you here! No, personal vision is NOT just a style. That I think is a problem … have you read John Berger about Picasso just reproducing himself, reproducing Picassos? It makes that point pretty well.
Hattie – no, you’re adding a key point. One needs a support system, a context, and an entourage, but NOT one that drags one down. You are quite right about the lone creator myth. It is really destructive.