Are we having fun yet?
Time flies whether you are having fun or not.
I was amazed recently to realize that it has been a whole year since I began this publication. I keep thinking I started it a few months ago. Here are some thoughts on how it’s going, and a few posts from early on that you might like to revisit.
One of my earliest posts:
As Zippy the Pinhead is fond of saying, “Are we having fun yet?” One of my dreams for this publication is that it offers some FUN, in addition to other qualities.
Having fun is so important and so subversive! The more fun a person has, the harder it is to be scared and angry and want to control other people. Humor has the power to open us up. It is a high art form to which I aspire.
I will admit that lately my experience of having fun, or at least feeling good, is more dependent on what’s going on inside me than what’s going on outside. Sure, there are some experiences, like being burnt at the stake, or reading the news, which are probably going to be unpleasant no matter how I feel inside.
But when I feel a tickle in the belly and an open heart, I get ideas, funny ideas. I see luminous colors and patterns. I see the beauty and mystery of other people. I hear the birds singing and I feel the breeze. When I think about the parts of my life that are the most difficult and scary, I don’t feel scared into paralysis.
What has changed in a year
I have managed to keep up a once-a-week posting schedule for a while now. It continues to be challenging. It takes a lot of time, and I don’t have a tried and true method.
When I get an idea, I still don’t know what I’m going to write until I start writing it, and even then I don’t know what the result will be. I surprise myself, and that’s good. What has changed is subtle. I would say it’s a little more faith in myself and in the process. It’s a deeper commitment to doing what I keep saying I want to do: make art.
This publication is about making art
I want to talk about making art, and I want to talk about process. What I want the most, though, is to trust myself, and you, and the universe, enough to let my child mind co-exist fully with my strategic planning mind. To make art.
I use the term ‘making art’ to cover just about everything I see and feel and think about how we humans can function in this world without causing harm. Here is something I wrote 30 years ago:
I want to create not arguments, but appeals (that which has appeal) to the importance and worth of crossing the divide, or at least building bridges, between logos and eros, masculine and feminine, thinking and feeling, insight and action, heaven and earth. Everything, every subject, every angle, every classification and division, contains the spiritual DNA of the whole. You can look at it any way you want; up or down, in or out, in front or behind, cross-section or biopsy, and see the whole; intuit the whole. But you can’t say the whole. You can only make art. Even if it is very careful, logical, intellectual art, it’s still art. Art is what human beings make. Art or Trouble.
It’s also about living in the world
The weekly schedule means I have to settle for imperfect. Also being human means I have to settle for imperfect. The imperfect part is important to me. I am a perfectionist! I want what I make to be perfect. And when I say perfect I’m not talking about external criteria. I’m talking about wholeness, integrity, love.
The paradox is that this can only happen incompletely because I am incomplete. The closest I can get to feeling my way towards wholeness is to let go of any ego attachment to perfection. There is no destination, not that we can see… it’s a journey.
Are we having fun yet?
I need to work on more potentially income-producing projects before I can get serious about the comic strip/graphic novel I want to make. I hope to begin sharing the Daisi & Jane project in the fall. More on this to come. That’s when the real fun starts.
Usually I feel that I can respond to the turbulence in this world, the upheavals, the terror and suffering, the transgressions, by standing up for and encouraging what is best in us—our potential to respond to life with a creative spirit.
What I try to avoid is having opinions based on insufficient information. For example, Joe Biden: should he stay or should he go? It’s obvious that some newspapers of record are doing everything in their mighty power to make him go. It’s obvious he himself doesn’t want to go. It’s obvious that both the stay team and go team declare that their motive is to beat the other guy in November, and it’s obvious the other guy needs to be beaten. What is not obvious is what the result will be of Joe staying or going. I can imagine various different scenarios.
Beating the other guy in November seems extremely important. Ruthless, undiluted self-interest given access to one of the most powerful positions in the world is a recipe for nothing good. If ever there was a time when the system needed to work to protect itself, that time is now! And I guess I’m part of the system…
I want to help people understand why it is so important to vote in the upcoming election. How best to do this? I don’t know. I’m starting with the postcard project and we’ll see where I go from here. In a few days I’m attending a workshop put on by the Center for Artistic Activism.
I rest in the comfort that what Martin Luther King, Jr. said is true:
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
I love that sentence. The picture of an ‘arc’ shows us time and space, and the bold assertion that there is a ‘moral universe’ bending toward justice, in other words, seeking justice, attracted to justice (which in itself is a word of such deep mystery), combine to make what I call art—something crafted that is far more than the sum of its parts.
I want to give kudos to all the amazing people who are working tirelessly to help the moral universe get where it wants to go.
I associate the word justice with sustainability, with balance, with the Way of Life described by Lao Tzu and others. Maybe even with having fun. Maybe the arc of the moral universe bends toward having fun. I hope so.