Do What You Love

You do something because you love it, and you do it with everything you’ve got. And then you die. What you leave behind doesn’t matter. How much money you make doesn’t matter. What people think of you doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is how you spend every fucking day of your life, how you feel about yourself – and not in the narcissistic, egotistical way. It doesn’t matter how I’m remembered, because I’ll remember everything myself.

- Ralph Bakshi

I could not agree with this quote more – I’m almost temped to delete the post that lies underneath. But I ain’t gonna. For reasons which may become clear…

It has been an interesting few weeks, hence the tumbleweed blowing across this blog.  I’ve been lucky enough to be taken under the wing (for now, at least) of a large regional theatre, who’re encouraging my writing, and that means you give it your absolute all!

Now – this is the thing. How committed are you to achieving what (you say) you want in your life?  Yes, note the cynically inserted brackets. Quite right. What cheek I have to put those there.

Allora – you want to be rich / celebrated for being a great sculptor / a brilliant friend. So what are you doing about it? Sorry? Too many other things getting in the way? Join the club – I’m totally with you on that one. There is never enough time.

BUT

if you don’t commit to your ideal, your passion – how’s it gonna happen?

If you’re too busy doing everything you promised other people (the tax man, the cleaner, the headmistress, the in-laws), when are you EVER going to have any time to keep the promises you’ve made to yourself?

And who’s most important here? (The exception, natch, being promises to your children / family / partner – as long as they’re reasonable and you’re not a self-hating, self-sabotaging doormat!)

So – what’s the promise you made to yourself? Say it out loud. Oh, go on. Eh? …thank you. (I trust you…)

Now, this is not an exercise in self-flagellation. But just ask yourself what you did to make that promise come true recently.

OK. Now think. If that was a promise to anyone else, would your committment to it be ample? Fair?

If the answer’s no, then find the time this weekend to do something- anything – to get that promise back on track. And another thing the following weekend. Or bin it. Altogether.

…whatcha fink?

 

We have snee, we have thaw

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer”

- Thoreau

…By which snee in the title, I mean ’snow’, but I prefer the sound of  ’snee’ (the word for ’snow’  in Middle Dutch, so it seems.)

The part of England I’m living in just now is not used to such whiting and ice. But it brings lovely things, if also sadly, some tragedies. The hills are resonating with screams, yelps and laughter as snowball fights and snowmen-manufacture are interrupted by make-do sledging; the laughing bouncing off the walls of the houses below.

The melt began early, after several inches of snowfall overnight. As I explored this morning, I could hear the slow, inevitable drip, drip, of melting snow, and the beguiling bubbling of newly-formed brooks; surprising rustles as the little snow piles let go and branches rediscover their bounce.

The sound of the thaw is unique.  I know several of you reading have had Proper Snowfall in your parts of the world and are more used to it than we are here, but I hope you still notice that special sound of nature doing its thang.

It is a fine word, tho’, thaw, so indulge me a moment’s exploration. It’s an Old English verb, not surprisingly (þaw,  where the ‘þ’ is one of two signs for ‘th’) and it became an English noun in the early C15th.  Now, there’s an interesting (for me, at least) thing to spot here. English didn’t seem to need a word for “the thaw” until c1400. Why not?

Apparently, the south and central parts of England had a very favourable climate between the late C12th and late C13th. There was then a cooler period , until the late C15th, and during the early days of this time, ”thaw’ becomes a noun. This suggests to me (just a theory!) that  the thaw was itself a newly observable phenomenon – presumably quite a lengthy one, after a long, snowy winter – and this weather ‘event’ needed naming. In time, the thaw would have become one of spring’s first heralds, most likely, and in Chaucer’s age, would tell you to ready yourself for spring pilgrimage: (translated below, but look at this lovely Middle English, from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales)

WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth	5
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,	10
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes

When that April with his showers fragrant
The dryness of March has pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such liquid
By which power engendered is the flower,
When Zephyrus also with his sweet breath
Inspired has in every woodland and heath
The tender crops, and the young sun
Hath in the Ram has his half course run
And small fowls make melody,
That sleep all the night with open eye
(So rises the nature in their hearts),
Then long [yearn] folk to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers [pilgrims who carried palm fronds] for to seek strange strands,
To far-off shrines, known in sundry lands….

 

Sick Note

Just a quickie to say the Imp’s been hit by goblin fever and will reply to comments as soon as poss!

 

PLAY UP!

LOUD MUSIC, rudely, unpolitely, SHOUTily (in this case, PJ Harvey, The Piano) exorcises a house like nothing I know.

For hours today, I was living mouse-like politely in my own hole, intensely communicating away, nibble-nibble, by email, by face, by ‘phone and by smile and then  – I stopped. But  – gah, horror – the flavour of the careful listening stayed. It sat on me, squishing me down.

I turned up the volume. Some more. More, up to ‘naughty’; more, up to ‘taking the proverbial’. And now, right now, PJ (on a repeating, monomaniacal loop, but happily between the Pixies and Placebo should I need variety) is deafening anyone within range.  I can’t quite get it loud enough, tho’.

We forget the importance of music too often, I think. In the last fifty years, we must have become more singularly-visual (since TV and latterly, computers). Music might accompany  this new visual intake, but in its own right, it must receive less attention.

But music has a power over our selves which is rivalled only by great art; and the beauty is that the tinkliest pop song can bring you to nirvana (with a capital N, if you like). A combination of notes, a sequence of chords, a variation in volume, pace, tempo and instrumentation all quicken or calm the senses, evoke moods and memories, inspire ideas – it takes us backwards, forwards, down, up and inwards.

Research shows that stroke patients recover a wider range of brain functions and are less depressed than those exposed merely to language. Einstein put his braininess down to his violin playing (he was slow at school, written off by teachers – until his mother bought him a violin). And many animal species use music in ways similar to us (humpback whales’ songs are structured much as ours, although last up to 21 hours). Seals and of course, birds, also sing – and learn songs, most importantly. For them, however, it’s always social – whereas we practice (hum, howl) alone as much as in groups.

For us, musical euphoria lives in the same part of the brain as sex and drugs, with endorphin rushes. Male birds have dopamine rushes when they sing to females (girl birds don’t sing): they enjoy it.

Get up and SING – or at least, turn up the volume (not for too long, mind you; lifelong tinnitus is too hig a price!). Beat the gloomy blues (one of the search terms that has brought people to this site in the last few weeks is ‘miserable’, sadly.) Reclaim your dopamine!

 

Seeing the curl in the fractal?

Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

- Margot Fonteyn

I hope you enjoyed that period of Imp quietude. I had nothing to say. HOWEVER… that’s all over now.  What an odd blog it would be if the point was just silence. Stephen ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy, he of “in Duran Duran before they made it” fame, once told Smash Hits that as a student he was asked to run a talk on anarchy. He agreed. Then didn’t show up. “‘Cos that’s the point of anarchy, innit?”. I thought that was really clever. When I was 12.

Now, today, I’d like to witter on about superstition, fate, coincidence, pre-determination, randomness. I am very grateful to the ever-patient ear of the imp’s lover, who smiled politely as my babbling brook of  consciousness tickled these ideas by the river this week, and who then pushed them to grow. Any blame lies  entirely with the author, however.

OK. Let’s take two extreme views:

Extreme 1) There is no higher power (god or gods)

• no afterlife
• no purpose in life except life itself (ie continuation of the organisms that make life – see past Impery on this here)
• As one of my personal heroes said (yup, it’s Mr William Hicks), it’s just a ride.

Extreme 2) Our lives are – to a lesser or greater extent – governed by a power higher than ourselves (god or gods)

• live life carefully, according to that power’s (moral) code, because (a) there is an afterlife and reward or retribution for your actions and (b) the code says you have to strive to be good to one another (viz. Bill & Ted)
• your life is (again, to lesser/greater degree) determined by that higher power’s whims/grand plan [the hamster died to teach you about hygiene; your boobs fell off because you were vain enough to like them; etc etc]

Now, I’d always thought that these two extremes were just that: at opposite ends of the spectrum; unmixable. But then I was hit by a thought, inspired by going back to the idea of us just being cell-carriers, and nothing more. And that thought was this…

Part 1: Throughout nature, everywhere we look (and the better science is at seeing, the more this seems to be the case), there are patterns. Not random weirdnesses, grand exemplars of uniqueness after uniqueness, no, but each and every individual thing is made of the same building blocks, the same patterns – fractals, basically. Yes, there’s singularity – each leaf, each snail, each fingerprint, each person, is different. But when the Darleks call us “carbon creatures”, they’ve got it right. There is newness, from development and growth (evolution), but it is based on what has gone before, inspired by surrounding conditions, and born of what potential already exists within the evolving organism.

Part 2: Now here’s the bit that surprised me. What if – and remember, ideas should always seem batty at first – what if there are patterns not only in cell growth? If you think about it, we can see patterns in geology: erosion, mountains, rock formations, glaciers, caves. And in the weather, too: cloud formations; rainbows; low and high pressure etc.  So that, to me, says that actually, there are not random happenings, but rather there are sometimes huge, sometimes tiny fractal-like patterns of “nature”, that guide these processes.

Part 3: So – what if there are patterns in the way our lives flow, just as there are in these other things? Not ‘cos of a god on high (extreme 1), but in a way that also contradicts extreme 2’s view that everything is completely random? That would bring about a link between the two ideas, wouldn’t it?

Think back to your last funny coincidence, or sense of something prophetic; the strong feeling  that you just knew something would happen. If you’re religious, you might have seen it as something from your god. If you’re not, you may have rationalised it (“my brain knows how to predict things without my consciousness being aware of it”).

What about a third view (after all, being binary is so dull)?

What about it being a case of you spotting the coming curl in the fractal? And that fractal being the flow of the life that is around you? I say “the life that is around you” rather than “your life” for a reason.  It may just be a ride, but we’re all in it together, this primordial soup. It doesn’t mean that the meaning of life is determined by any god, but it doesn’t mean it’s entirely random, either. Nor does it mean that this posting draws a final conclusion…Just enjoy the ride.

 

Intelligent Design…?

After further design meandering (although the TLI blog surgery is still open for comments), we’re back ‘home’ with Ms Muller’s Connections theme. It’s the only thing I like that has both a decent font size as well as decent space for encouraging and reading comments. No-one seems to have anything that allows comment extracts posted underneath posts. And no, I’m not going to learn CSS. The thing is, we’re not mini-books: isn’t blogging about conversation, rather than monologue?

An interesting adventure – designers, please take note! Fellow bloggers, what do you think? Pure readers, you?

 

Death by a thousand paper cuts

“What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork” - Pearl Bailey

Clarity.

1) Unmuddied water: a shimmering, moving, entrancing veil that teases with snatched moments of clear vision; that permits imagination-catching moments of unrivalled perception.

2) A searing incision, blade like, sharp, freeing. Knowing that what is revealed is true.

I don’t mean to sound gnomic, like some ambiguous Tarot reader, but I’m struggling with trying to describe the clarity I’ve accidentally created today. It’s both watery and sharp; both soothingly cleansing and triumphantly sparkly.

Yes, I think I had better explain, too. I spent the afternoon invoicing, reviewing contracts, clearing that email backlog, catching up with household admin and then shredding kilos of paper. Seven years’ worth of tenancy agreements, a bailiff’s notice (I’m tempted to frame that one), cheque books stubs naming mad souls who parachuted for charity, lawyers, dentists, the mortgage, blah. It’s like peering through a historical porthole, spying the people who take cheques rather than plastic. God: it gets worse: bank statements going back 13 years, bills for 10, store card agreements for stores that no longer exist.

So, I tipped it all out, piled, shred and filed. I feel great! Clean, clear, and guiltless.

Uhuh, guilt. But why on earth would all this rubbish make me feel ‘guilty’? Weird…I will guiltlessly watch The Simpsons and have a think before coming back to you….

Hmm: Sideshow Bob had no answers for me. However, I think it’s the sense of things not being done. The more faffery [meaningless activity & noise, even if it is just paper: it's uninvited and attention-seeking] there is, the more there is that might not be done…? And while you’re elsewhere, more comes in!

Over the last few months I’ve taken myself off a great number of email lists (news bulletins, shop offers etc) – it is pathetically liberating. Something so small but so powerful.

But this way, I know for sure when there are things that really do need doing. And the niggling sense of incompletion is gone; the understanding of my own time is genuine.

As a freelancer, being able to hold my own time in my own hands is psychologically vital. I feel like the prince in Sleeping Beauty: hacking away at a century’s worth of briars, tho’ what I’m about to snog at the end, I’m not so sure…

Have you seen Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil? Bureaucracy, paperwork, procedure, rules and petty codes mask the emptiness at the heart of the society. At the end, Robert de Niro’s saviour character suffers a fate that makes that metaphor flesh (I won’t spoil it if you’ve not seen it, but I thoroughly recommend you do).

If you have any idea of what I’m talking about (and I suspect freelancers are more prey to this than 9-5-ers), try using the shredder and the “unsubscribe” button if you don’t already. Feel free to share with us when your world comes crashing down around you (or when your balloon goes sky high and you just don’t care).

 

Speaking for whose benefit?

“I’m just a story teller. I have to . . . I have to. I’m very unhappy when I’m not writing. I need to write. I think it’s possibly some kind of psychological balancing mechanism–but that’s not only true for writers . . . anybody. I think that we’re always . . . just a step away from lunacy anyway, and we need something to keep us balanced.” – Doris Lessing, 2001

I am interested in what drives people to write, to paint, sing, express themselves, and especially, particularly for the purposes of this posting, what drives people to communicate with words. And apart from the source of the urge, once it’s rationalised, is it for the communicator, or because they feel that the listeners really might benefit?

I’m tempted to begin with the general – about humans. So let’s.

Essentially, we are all social beings: that is a key part of humankind’s nature. As a species, we can point to story-telling, fairy and folk tales, traditional songs and if you’re of a Jungian bent (and I am), to the common unconscious, evidencing similar symbols and narratives across unconnected cultures: very exciting and something for another time. Developmentally, the urge to communicate is what drives a child to learn to speak. And interestingly (although obvious when you come to think of it), if you are denied the ability to communicate, your mental health will take a fair knocking (solitary confinement is a prison punishment for ‘good’ reasons).

We also, of course have a separate urge to record (IE not necessarily the same as the need to verbalise, but instead a drive based on a desire to record for posterity, perhaps in unusual circumstances – the forward-looking historical urge, if you like.) Just think of the Mass Observation project in the UK in the ’30s-’50s, where trained volunteers kept journals of everyday life, which are now very useful historical sources.

But here, I am more interested in the poet, lyricist, author, the journal or diary-writer and anyone else with one or other form of logghorea (yes, it’s just like diarrhoea, but this is verbal incontinence, not poo).

They are either loggers and crafts-people working with thoughts, inner development and growth, as well as of the quotidien, routine.

In the case of journals, perhaps it’s partly about a fear of forgetting; of ever-living in the present and perhaps making the same mistakes over and over; a fear of not learning from one’s own history. There’s also a desire to have something akin to a photo album: “remember the day when…..?”

With art (poetry, songs, novels, plays etc: blogging is perhaps the overlap between the two), there is more of a stretching-out to others, sharing experiences, capturing their essence with the writer’s own special butterfly net of language, to secure that reaction of, “aha, yes! THAT is what I feel,” in an audience.

I don’t have answers here, only questions. The comment from Doris Lessing, the 88-year old Nobel Laureate, which I quoted above sounds just perfect to me; the idea that writing provides balance in the brain (for her; and as she hints, it’s different strokes for different folks; others use different activities to achieve the same thing).

So, answerless, I want to leave you with another Lessing quote, from an interview she gave to PBS Now in 2003. All and any comments or thoughts would be extremely welcome.

I’m compulsive. And I deeply think that it has to be something very neurotic. And I’m not joking. . . . I don’t have to do anything. Nothing. I can just sit around. But, suddenly it starts, you see. This terrible feeling that I am just wasting my life, I’m useless, I’m no good. Now, it’s a fact that if I spend a day busy as a little kitten, racing around. I do this, I do that. But I haven’t written, so it’s a wasted day, and I’m no good. How do you account for that nonsense?

 

The Glorious Twelfth

Today is the Glorious Twelfth: the opening of the grouse-shooting season. No, worry not: your tricky one is no hunter. But it’s an important date, with its own interesting moniker, “The Glorious”. Why? For me, it says so much about the British class system of days gone by – and not so long gone. Shooting for fun (not necessarily for food), house parties, the beaters, preparatory full English breakfast, stupid tweed, angular accents and class angst – and it is said the birds are not overly bright.

Anyway, t’was on my mind because it was on 12th August 1914 that Britain declared war on Austro-Hungary, bringing to ‘life’ a war which killed an entire generation of young men from all parts of society, changing Europe and Britain for ever.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated on June 28th, and Germany then supported Austro-Hungary in trying to deal with “the Serbian question” in the assassination’s aftermath. On 23rd July, they sent an ultimatum to Serbia, which was rejected and so on 28th July, Austro-Hungary declared war on Serbia. The Russians quickly mobilised, and Germany declared war on Russia and then France. By traipsing through Belgium, Germany invaded its neutrality, giving Britain a reason to declare war.

We were all tumbling in – as countries and as individuals. White feathers for those eligible men who had not enlisted. Patriotism the name of the insane game. How different (in home-context only: the horrors in the field remain) it is for today’s soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, painfully conscious that the vast majority of us back home do not support them as they risk and give their lives in theatre, watch their marriages fall apart when they return home, and that for shorter and shorter periods between jobs.

And today we have just faced the real possibility of another war square on between Russia and Georgia. As I type, Russian operations have been called off. We’re in two wars now already. While domestic economic gloom refuses to break its staring competition with our great leaders, I think we in the UK and US may be safe. But how long is that?