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| Hi, Laura | ||||||
| Well, I can see that we could have quite a debate here because since when was the world supposed to conform to how we think it should be? The world hasn't been how I think it should be since i was a little kid and it still isn't today but I still think its beautiful and mysterious and wonderful and wants to whisper its secrets to us if we want to listen, but to do such takes courage, and faith and pride and the human form and in time itself. A cave guy or gal had to worry about being eaten to death every minute of every day, and yet they took the time to form of building blocks of our culture today. The world must essentially work because its the only world there is. And I find that when people try to meet the world in any other way but its own essential poetic terms they end up contributing to the virtual geography of violent discourse - violent because it separates the process of self from the process of world. In other words, yours are valid complaints of course but I know a young single mother for instance who is raising two beautiful children without a father and doing just fine. I myself never had any parents to speak of and I'm not complaing, quite the opposite rather. There is something positive in everything, Laura. Yes, there is much politics and gender dogma to contend with, but there's also tremendous power for those that want it if they have the courage to utilize their right to form their own perception of reality - be an artist - and embrace with loving arms the essential anarchy and chaos of the world - because there is light and order there too. Yes, there is a lot to do, still. There always will be, thank god. And we are already doing it. Primal virtue would say that we can do nothing but evolve our worlds. It is only nihilism to say that we must take steps to avoid failing at doing so or even destroying it, that without us, or me or you, everything would fall apart. Nonsense. The universe functions along lines of beauty and respect, morality and poetry and even if we don't always know it, we are always acting it out. Am I being metaphysical or trite? I don't think so. I think I am drawing upon several thousand years of cultural history. | ||||||
| You bring up some great points. I'm sure I've not responded head on but I thought I'd give it a shot. I believe in fate, in desinty and dream. I always will. I think we do most of our work while we're sleeping, like nature, "Death's counterfeit". Yes, the world has its masks and often those masks are ugly and brute but what lies beneath those masks? isn't that a great question. It must be a question that people have bee asking for thousands of years. I love that question. To answer it one must worship humanity and culture as though one's very life depends upon it, because it does. We are artifacts of the source of that beauty, songs trying to remember who we are singing to and why, We are Liturgical by nature, such, to me, is the essence of Ritual, of uniting the imagination with the mundane, but we have to listen very carefully to the world and that is, at times, a very difficult thing to do because we must fight the nagging shame of who we are. Do you know the band U2. They produced a Cd dedicated to the Kosovo tragedy and one song in particular was about a beauty pangeant being held in the very midst of the crisis and featured Luciano Pavarotti. It was wonderful - to find beauty in the face of the most extreme opposition to self-love, this is why I love who we are, warts and all. This "I" "me" doesn't always. Hell, I feel like you do just as much probably, I'm not trying to be pretentious or self-rhighteous, but I honestly believe that the totality of who I am or we are loves this life, every bit of it. I think this Is what I find so easy and difficult at the same time about art, the irony that the audience in a "despiritualized" world will often accuse you of being a idealist or irrelevent when it is quite the opposite, that art is made by relevence and reality , it is a living breathing totem of it, an artifact of the body. In essence, there is only one creator and it is us. How else might one approach human responsiblity "the obligatoin to produce" as you put it? | ||||||
| Well, I hope you find that as enjoyable to read as it was to write. | ||||||
| Best of luck with all your work, let me know if you have any more articles posted. | ||||||
| And thanks for some extremely stimulating comments. I know I don't need to say any of all that I have said to you, which is why I think I've enjoyed it all the more. | ||||||
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