Happy New Year

As Max Ehrmann said: With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy...

Happy New Year

Okay, kids, it’s a new year. Happy New Year. I like markers and milestones as much as the next guy. The truth is, every single day is the beginning of a new year, and every moment is a new opportunity to magnify the moment—to expand the boundaries of who you think you are and what you think you can do. When you expand your boundaries, you’re not just doing it for yourself; you’re doing it for me, too. Me as a representative of humanity.

You are making art, life art. You are creating space that helps others to see wider possibilities.

Magic and Tragic

Oh this life. Magic and tragic. And temporary. Is that a feature or a bug?

Maybe that’s the magic. The tragic is us—humans, what we are capable of. How can this life be such a moral gauntlet? Is there any other creature, animal or angel, that has as much freedom to do right or wrong? I’m not seeing it.

By ‘moral’ I do not mean any fixed set of rules which must be obeyed… if only it were that easy. It’s a moral gauntlet we run. We can only ever act out of our awareness du jour, shaped and driven by ancestors, genetics, circumstances, experiences, health, the weather. And yet.

There is a sweet call, always, to something more, whether we are able to hear it or not. And that call is always an invitation, never a command.

Everything on this earth is temporary

Recently I read about mycelium coffins, which struck me as a bit of an oxymoron. I mean, if you like the idea of your body rotting in the ground and turning into compost, then do you really need a compostable coffin imported from Europe that costs big bucks? Wrap me up in a dirty sheet and throw me down about 50 feet, etc. will do just fine.

As I said to my son-in-law, “even if I express certain wishes about what I want done with my corpse, it’s really up to the family. I’ll be dead.”

There’s the ‘you can take it with you’ methods of burial, like ancient Egyptians packing people up with everything that might come in handy in the next life, or the Chinese custom of burning paper effigies of what you’ll need in an imaginary future which is somehow the same as this life… where you will need cars, money, houses, servants, etc.

All of this, including fancy satin-lined coffins that are intended to keep an embalmed body from decay as long as possible, are ways that we, the temporarily living, try to deal with the mysterious inevitability of death. We try to manage it, control it.

We have no choice. We have to grieve and we have to dispose of dead bodies. And we have to go on living, temporarily.

If you don’t move your hands, you won’t be able to make anything.

This 4-minute video is so worth watching. This man is a pure artist. He inspires me.

He makes beautiful paper objects to be burned as offerings to the dead. In their destruction lies their purpose and power. Deep philosophical/spiritual implications here which haunt me. It’s the temporary thing… maybe our purpose and power can only be fulfilled by being temporary, by dying.

Human Remains—the other kind

I’ve been home from my estate dispersal job for around 6 weeks. There is a continuing involvement with my mother and stepfather’s remains—what they didn’t need anymore when they left the field. I’m not talking about objects as much as what they made—their art, writings, documents, evidence of their lives and work.

This has been a puzzle to me from the beginning. What to save; what to throw away. What to take; what to leave.

At this point almost everything has been done and I live with some regrets, but mostly not. I think I did a pretty good job of dispersing their belongings in thoughtful ways.

What is the meaning of what I saved? And what I didn’t. Why do I want evidence of who they were? Is it so I won’t forget them? Is it so I can better understand them and thereby better understand myself? Is it because I don’t want to think that all my ‘stuff’—the evidence of my lived life, can be so easily discarded when I am no longer?

Past, Present, Future

No matter how I ponder these questions, the bottom line is that if my connection with the past isn’t helping me to live in the present, what good is it? Past, present, future. We are all that. Our roots hold us to the earth and our branches reach up and out to the sky. We offer our fruits as nurture for others.

What comes next

This year it is my hope and plan to reinvent my business as a money-making vehicle for my art and writing. I want the ‘business’ to be part of the art form. I want to use capitalist systems in ways that don’t make me sick to my stomach. That make me feel good because I am engaged in a freewill exchange of one kind of energy for another. To do this will require me to face some of my fears and inhibitions. Wish me luck!

I want to make stories and share them. I’m with Jesus in my conviction that stories (parables) are a more powerful and effective means of communication that even the most elegant prose expressing ideas and concepts.

I can’t help wanting to express ideas and concepts. It’s in my DNA. I want to allow my ideas, concepts, and emotions to go through the art filter, the character filter, the story filter, and see what happens.

I will use this publication to share my work, and to share thoughts on everything under the sun. Especially process. Examining process protects me from judgement. It deepens my understanding of myself and the eternal flow in this temporary life.

How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

Some may feel that Nina Simone, in the clip above, is saying that artists have to make their work socially relevant. That’s not how I interpret it. I agree with her sentence above. You are in your time so you are reflecting it no matter what you do.

What it means to me to be socially relevant is to be in the world, to feel and respond. That is a tall order. The world can be so harsh, so frightening, so full of suffering and troubles that any response seems too feeble.

I can barely look at what is going on now as ‘politics’ is usurped by capitalist overlords who are only in it to win it—for the money and power, not even the glory. What they are willing to do to get what they want is too self-serving, stupid and cruel, to have any glory. They will cause harm and they will not succeed. Nothing can succeed for long that goes against the flow of life.

And the world can be beautiful, tender, astonishing, mind and heart-expanding. We can be that. We can be socially relevant by bringing love and tenderness and humor and creativity to the endless process that flows through all its sparkling temporary manifestations.

May the force be with you

Dear ones, in this new year, may we be as present and full of love and life force energy as possible, given whatever circumstances we must contend with. May we love ourselves as we love others. May we forgive ourselves for all our shortcomings as we forgive others. May we revel in our glorious temporality. May we live as artists responding to our time.