Humans are complex.
Our family recently watched Amadeus – it’s a beautiful, funny, and powerful film telling a fictionalized story of Mozart’s life.
In the end, my eighth grade son enjoyed the film but didn’t love it. When I asked why, he said it was because of Mozart. To paraphrase, he felt that Mozart’s character – silly, crude, sloppy, uncaring – didn’t stand up to the heavenly music he composed. (My son is currently obsessed with the Mozart Clarinet Concerto.)
I had to break it to him that Mozart really was like this, by all accounts. He signed his letters with scatological jokes, was terrible with money, and by all accounts was not the best husband or father. Even as he wrote his transcendent operas, symphonies, and concertos.
We have to come to terms with this over and over with the humans we meet. Especially with the geniuses who can transcend their baser impulses in their art – thereby creating an ever larger differential between the two.
I have met people whose humanity lived up to their art – Alice Parker comes to mind, but many others. And I’ve met or learned of many whose humanity fell short. The greater the art, the harder it is to accept the flaws in the human. But if we want to enjoy the art, we must learn to accept the humanity.