aligning the disparate
If you've been here before and don't have MEMENTO Disease, you've most likely noticed a few small changes. This is because I've decided to make this site a bit less eclectic -- to focus more on what matters most to me right now: movie-writing and art-making.
As fun as it is to whine about stupidheads co-opting the Christian church and making mince-meat of 'Merica, it's starting to feel more and more like I'm just forcing it. I know I've said this before, but this time I really, really mean it.
So, I figured I'd shift some things around and exchange the old elephant/egg header for a more apropos drawing, to see if that might inspire me to write more about what matters most to me: telling visual stories that build something.
It's easy to tear something apart - especially when it's already pretty rotten.
I want more of a challenge.
As fun as it is to whine about stupidheads co-opting the Christian church and making mince-meat of 'Merica, it's starting to feel more and more like I'm just forcing it. I know I've said this before, but this time I really, really mean it.
So, I figured I'd shift some things around and exchange the old elephant/egg header for a more apropos drawing, to see if that might inspire me to write more about what matters most to me: telling visual stories that build something.
It's easy to tear something apart - especially when it's already pretty rotten.
I want more of a challenge.
Haha! Oops. I just came back to check and see if my comment elicited a reply from you and realized I put my comment on the wrong post! And that it probably made you wonder if I was crazy. Well I am. Crazy. But I meant to post here that I am looking forward to hearing more about what you are passionate about at the moment. I like you and I like your stories. And please inspire me this time. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd tell me what you think about creating as an artist who feels tortured vs. creating as an artist that dies for love... on a daily basis? What is it about love that makes it so scary?!
ReplyDeleteHa!
ReplyDeleteI did think you were nuts. Then I thought that I was nuts. Then that the Universe was nuts and I was sane. Then that the squirrels were out to get the nuts, and leave us with shells. And then, perhaps, that you were blind and only ever listened to movies.
But being a lover/hater of mystery, I clicked on your name and looked at your Flickr page and determined that a blind woman wouldn't do the things you do, and also that, yes, I am crazy, because I started to write stories in my head about your husband/partner/whatever as a lovely graffiti artist and both of you raising beautiful bohemian children who will grow up to be artists and lovers of the highest order, walking lightly over the earth and endlessly making light with their lives.
There is a very fine line between "endlessly curious artist" and "weirdo creep," and I have no idea where that line is. But congrats on not being blind, because that would suck. Used to be one of my most ardent fears, that.
Anyways, glad you like my stories, and glad to be part of the Communal Endeavor of Inspiration.
As to your questions... are you sure you don't want to back up and just ask a Yes/No? Because those are easier and my brain hurts right now and I'm rushing to finish this comment before the INSANE storm brewing outside electrifies my computer. No? Graljfadkfja.
Fine. I'll try. Uhhhhh... As assured as I sometimes try to sound in my opinions, I'm a little shaky on this one. Creation is, for me, an ongoing mystery and an endless dance of polarities. "The Agony and the Ecstasy," if you will. Or a punch in the face, followed by a gentle hug.
I think, though, that maybe you CAN'T be a truly GREAT artist without being a bit tortured AND dying for love on a daily basis. This is because love is a great, empathic power, and to empathize with this world is to feel its pain - to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn. And there is ALWAYS somebody out there weeping or mourning. To fully engage the world is to "wail, for the world's wrong."
But there is the flip side, too - that life is rich as well with exquisite pleasures, joys, and moments of exuberance... moments contextualized by the pain, suffering, and evil.
The best tool I ever found for accepting this was, of course, a work of art: THE GIVER, by Lois Lowry. It made me feel that although this empathetic knowledge was painful, it was vastly superior to the alternative. Because it was LIFE.
So... why is love so scary?
I don't know. I think maybe its because love at its utmost asks of me the utmost - that I be willing to sacrifice my very life on the altar of love. That I die to self in the hope that creation is worth it... that love is worth it. Love brings us ever into awareness of our own finiteness, our own death, and our own vast unknowing. Love invites us to stand at the brink of the abyss and scream, "YES!"
I think this bears out.
I think that love is slow, and builds in us in rolling waves that leave us with the fullness that comes from accepting what is most real and most worthwhile about our lives.
It's ludicrous.
I. am. ludicrous.
I start writing about this stuff, and I begin to feel like I did when I used to try to go inverted on a trampoline, diving board, or snowboard: lost, confused, bereft of equilibrium.
(insert joke to relieve inner tension)
Perhaps that's why I love stories. While they carry with them strands of the ineffable, they themselves are concrete. They require detailed care - and although that detailed care is always, ever an attempt to coax that ineffable into being - it is the details that matter, moment by moment.
I think fear and finiteness present us with an unending choice to create, or destroy. The opportunities of creation are infinite, but the opportunities of destruction are finite (being dependent upon creation) and less satisfying.
And also, blah blah blah.
Kids say the darndest things.
Ah! Thanks for this! I just woke up and in this reality am expected to go make some breakfast for my hungry, naked, child that has been foraging in the pantry for the last hour as I tried to finish up a dream. I look forward to coming back to this and reading it again and seeing if I can muster a response back. I crave a heated and long conversation with you! You know this?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, as an in-the-flesh human being (when I can't edit, or consult google), I'm far less interesting or intelligent. Mostly I sit and observe, with my beady little eyes, the interactions of others.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, I am a decent maker-of-pizzas, and in further creepering have discovered that we have a certain mutual, insane friend-or-two... so, who knows? Perhaps some day such a conversation might happen. Over pizza. With other crazy people.
Okay, yes, I have been creeping much longer than you and have already realized this mutual friend. But this fire I speak of will be on a mountain and not among any conventions that we know of. I no longer participate in those gatherings. At least for now. As I marinate in a dreamy world with Neptune, I only seek those that I can see through this fog. On second thought I would take a meeting with you under conventional circumstances. It would give me the opportunity to be brave enough to explore what I need to explore with in the context of the world the majority of people are living in and just say fuck it all. In the name of expansion and growth and an opportunity for ecstatic idea exchanges, I am ready to offend and appear absolutely out of my mind. Because that is where I want to go. And I think you would like to go there too.
ReplyDeleteCheck this guy out:
http://youtu.be/1jCXR8KEMGc
his excitement is quite enjoyable. I don't quite understand or agree with all of his perspectives but none the less, he talks about ideas having sex with eachother...
Amanda
Nah, Amanda. I never censor anything on here. I think if you throw a link into a comment, Google automatically throws it in my junk bin. I saw it in my email, though. Dang! That guy talks fast. I haven't seen talking that fast since the Gilmore Girls :)
ReplyDeleteAnd, no. I don't watch Gilmore Girls. My ex did, and it's impossible to miss the frantic, metronomical cadences. As someone accustomed by long exposure to the long silences of mountains, my brain goes into overload and shuts down whenever somebody talks that fast at me :) But perhaps I can give it a try again, later.
As to trying to be perverted or offensive... uhhh--pretty much impossible to offend me, so no worries.
It isn't that he didn't inspire me... it's that his enthusiasm, vigor and acceleration left me vertiginous to the point of loo-loo (have you ever noticed how I like to make up words?). I did catch a few good things in there, but mostly I just felt dizzy. I need time and silence to think and process... like this: http://jesserosten.com/2010/growing-is-forever
ReplyDeleteYou're right, though. A sweet tune. Anyone who uses a bicycle to make music is already a hero.
That was an interesting article. I wonder if eastern mysticism is inherently Platonic (or vice-versa), or if the author of said article was merely mish-mashing. Either way, interesting. Plants are certainly inhabited with mystery, eh?
post script: Kudos for raising foraging nudists. And zounds on the sun for hiding its warmth most of the years, so we can't all do it :)
Sorry. The word "Platonic" has two meanings. The one I was referring to was "in the vein of Plato," who argued that we live in a world that's a shadow of another, more real world. Not knowing that doesn't make you uncool, it makes you normal.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a crash-course in Western philosophy, I highly recommend checking out the novel Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaardner. It's long but it's fiction, so it's a highly palatable way to get an overview. Plus, it's a really interesting (if weird) story about a little girl and her dad.
Whoah. I just realized that one of my short stories was directly inspired/ripped off from that novel... which is understandable, I guess, since I read it twice. Ah, the joys of creative plagiarism.
That WAS a lovely video, wasn't it? It was made by an acquaintance/friend from college. He's a rather gifted chap.
I just read your first reply to my questions for the fourth time and only now has it sunk in the depth of your response to me. I want to just keep reading it. And watching the tree video. That is my medicine for today. So I am going to go back and destroy all the horrible comments I have made here on top of that lovely peice at 5:13 am! And please excuse my over excitement to want to connect with your special sparkly mind.
ReplyDeleteNo excuses necessary. He said. Sparkling.
ReplyDelete