"Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!"

Another point my writer-friend mentioned that struck a chord in my heart was the idea of noise and specifically whether we should be adding to it.  That is a question I have often asked myself on a conscious and subconscious level.

There is so much writing out there on the interweb.  People have written so many blog posts that you could spend decades reading them.  Then there are all the online messages, email correspondences, magazines, good old-fashioned books, and on and on....  Every now and again I try to catch up on my reading and I realize how futile it is.  I will never be able to read enough.  Maybe if I could get a job reading it would be possible, but the odds of finding someone to pay me to do such a thing are about as good as being able to build an amazing full-size schooner solely out of toothpicks.

All that potential seems overwhelming.  It begins to feel just like noise.

So why in the face of such noise should I do anything that might add to it?  After all it seems a little presumptuous to assume that I could contribute something of substantial enough merit to warrant the effort.

Yet who am I to say that I have not the competence?  We are not actually very good judges of ourselves or our own skills.  As Sir Thomas More put it in Robert Bolt's wonderful play A Man For All Seasons: "This is not the stuff of which martyrs are made."  He then goes on to become precisely that despite his best efforts to save his life and still remain true to his conscience.

Why should we not be equally poor prophets of our own future?  We may say that our writing is futile, that it is like dry shriveled leaves tossed about in the wind or some other suitably melancholic metaphor, but how do we know that it will not move someone's heart?

We like to think that we are good judges and that we know what will come of our work.  Yet many authors scorn the works that we consider their masterpieces.  It is a strange paradox.

It is almost as if there is some other power at work....

Approbation

Would it surprise you if I told you that I write on this blog solely in order to receive the approbation of my readers?  Would it surprise you if I told you that one kind comment could fuel several future posts here, a general feeling of well-being, and a belief that maybe I can actually be a successful writer?

Even if that is not wholly true, it is a little too near the truth for comfort's sake.

I mentioned in conversation the other day how much we artists seem to need that approval.  The response I received was that this fact does not apply only to artists.  Certainly that is true, for it is after all a very human trait.  Perhaps the difference for artists lies elsewhere: it is not that artists need approbation from others more than other humans, but that we are more willing to admit that we need it.  We can excuse that need as a natural consequence of creating for others.  It thereby sounds somehow less selfish and therefore more publicly acceptable.  There again we hide behind the mask of truth.

As I began to ponder that need for praise and recognition, I took up my directing book to read another chapter.  (The book, for those who are curious, is A Sense of Directing: Some Observations on the Art of Directing, by William Ball.)  There I found the idea of needing recognition, as applies specifically to actors, accentuated in quite strong language:

"Each actor who enters the profession carries with him from childhood a starvation for approbation.  As he grows older, he finds that acting is a socially acceptable form of doing something in hope of getting the kind of approval that he missed in his childhood.  A director understands that to an actor praise is like food.  The actor cannot live without it, cannot flourish without it."

It would be nice to pretend that the need for attention from others was somehow restricted to actors, or even to artists, as somehow that makes it less personal—because it is about the profession and not the person.  Yet if we are strictly honest with ourselves, we know that is a lie.  Our need arises from a deep reality of human nature: from the fact that we are not individuals, that we cannot truthfully sing out, "I am a rock, I am an island," but must rather recognize that we need others.  We are made for community.

I would extrapolate further that we find our need for approbation from others to be greatest where we find the least community.  When we live in a society broken apart from the root of true community life, we must seek ever harder to fill the hole left behind.  We connive our way into getting "likes" on Facebook, take "selfies" to show off our good looks, collect friends we have never met, haunt online forums where we can pretend to be experts on whatever topic we choose, produce clever 140 character tweets, and so on.  All of these things create a physical response as the brain produces dopamine, telling us that this is pleasurable.  They do not require much risk, but neither does the fruit last.  Only a few seconds or minutes later, we need another dopamine response, and another and another and another....

The alternative?  Someone brought to my attention that a good portion of land in Todi, Italy, was up for sale for a fairly reasonable price.  We could go and found a community there, live it out with all of its challenging and gritty details, and see which brings lasting peace.  Any takers?

Why Can't Humans Be More Like Spock?

Me: Why can't humans be more like Spock?

What in the Klingon Empire would've made them cry
Over something so paltry and small?
What could've depressed them,
What could've possessed them?
I cannot understand the wretches at all.
Humans are irrational, that's all there is to that!
Their heads are full of feelings and dramatics!
They're nothing but emoting, simpering,
grieving, sighing, whimpering,
sorrowing, maddening fanatics!

Socrates, why can't humans be more like Spock?

Socrates: I beg your pardon?

Me: Yes...
Why can't humans be more like Spock?
Spock is so careful, so neurological,
Eternally right, elementally logical,
Who, when you fight, will always show you what's true.
Why can't humans be more like Spock?

Why does every one do what the others do?
Can't the humans learn to use their heads?
Why do they do everything their parents do?
Why don't they grow up—well, like computers instead?
Why can't the humans take after Spock?
Spock is so reasonable, so predictable,
Whenever you're with him, you needn't fear.

Would he be slighted if I didn't speak for hours?

Socrates: Of course not!

Me: Would he be livid if I looked at him wrong?

Socrates: Nonsense.

Me: Would he be wounded if I never sent him flowers?

Socrates: Never!

Me: Well, why can't humans be more like Spock?

--

Dear readers, you must excuse me for that rather long and perhaps not so very clever parody (I hope you recognize its source), but it was so terribly much fun.  Also, it provides an apt introduction to my current topic: the matter of emotions.

Perhaps it is an entirely too personal topic at present, but I think I shall dare once more to do what the aforementioned (as in the last post) writer-friend of mine describes so perfectly.  I shall take all of the rawness, all of that vulnerable humanity, place it out where anyone may look at it should he so choose, and thereby hide myself.  In his words (and follow the link if you want to read more) about the use of words:

"...I am so frightened of being seen behind them, that I arrange them in ways that hide me too. In anything you see me write, you see me — whole and unbroken. But I am scared, so I’ve hidden myself among precisely painted lines spread out over huge canvases. I’m hoping it’ll make me a little less vulnerable." 

It is amazing to me how cleverly one can reveal one's deepest feelings and fears and yet remain perfectly concealed.  Often I find that all I need to do is substitute a plural first person pronoun instead of the singular and a deep, personal thought becomes a common statement of reality taken for granted.  It seems trite, unoriginal, and therefore scarcely worth a second glance.  What I can't say of myself, I can say of the whole of humanity.  I gain release of the built-up fears and emotions hidden behind the layers of walls and yet I remain behind the mask.

Emotions are such a strange thing.  Ultimately they seem to be the very warp of the fabric of vulnerability.  Hide your emotions and you hide your vulnerability.  Hide your vulnerability and you cannot be hurt.

Years of small disappointments and seeming carelessness on the part of others led me to build up such walls—walls that formed a defense of mistrust so sure that none could penetrate them with battering rams or kind words.  Something happened to change that.  It started with one persistent enough to gain trust.  Others came afterward and various characters and events and theatre and the walls began to crumble....

Vulnerability is lovable said my dear professor of theatre.  I didn't believe him quite.  At least I didn't believe him that my vulnerability was lovable; I hated it.  The vulnerability of others certainly made them lovable, as it revealed them as humans in need of love and support and not bastions of inimitable skill and unsurpassable rightness.  Maybe my vulnerability would make me lovable to others, but not to me.  And somehow we perfectionist types care less about what others think than about what we ourselves believe.

Sometimes I allow myself to be vulnerable these days.  Sometimes I even love myself for it.

Yet then there are the times when a piercing dart wounds that soft inner core.  It threatens to undo all the practice of allowing vulnerability.  I question: why does love have to hurt?

A wounded animal retreats from the world and hides itself until it has healed lest it should become prey to some hungry predator.  The instinctive response to hide oneself behind walls after being hurt thus has a perfectly natural origin.

I have heard often through my life that pain can lead to hardness of heart or to compassion.  The instinctive response—the natural one—is to steel oneself against all further attacks and build up wall upon wall to save the heart—that vulnerable (able to be wounded, as directly translated from the Latin) part—from future pain.  If this is natural and nature is good, then why should one choose differently?

We seem to admire that which is not natural.  (Take skyscrapers and movies for instance.)  Yet perhaps I may be so bold as even to say that we admire what is supernatural.

It is natural to build up walls, but supernatural to remain soft.  It is natural to save ourselves from pain and supernatural to choose to be hurt out of love.  It is natural for me to run from emotions and relationships that cause me heartache, but supernatural to remain at peace therein, trusting that good will come from constant effort to love.

I suppose the only conclusion that I can draw from the above ramblings on emotion and our human response thereto is this one: Spock is less than human.

The logic: if supernatural means above nature (as it does; see the Latin) and Spock can never choose to be vulnerable (it not being in his nature to have emotions in the first place), then he can never choose the supernatural path.  Since humans can choose to act supernaturally, they therefore are superior to Spock.

That is the head's response to the heart's question.  Yet which is ultimately more satisfying?

When it comes to art, I have absolutely no doubts about the answer.  I want to find in literature, in drama, in music, in all the arts, the pain, the heartache, and the loneliness that I would never bear in daily life.  Great art requires it.

However, when I must put my raw self into my art, I hesitate.  Somehow I carefully conceal myself while pouring out what I believe are my deepest feelings, but which fail to touch the deepest core I have hidden.  Maybe I have hidden it even from myself.  Maybe I must learn to live with that vulnerability—as both my director reading and spiritual reading these days suggest—before I can bring it forth in my art.

Alternatively, I could choose the path of logic and reason.  In short, I could try to be like Spock.

Could Spock ever be a great artist?

The Roads Not Taken

Throughout my life I have referred fondly to the road less traveled by, either for purposes of adventure while following trails through the forest, or, more personally, to refer to the winding road that I have taken through my life.  Lately, I have been thinking much about all those other roads, the ones I have not taken.  One of those roads is the one leading to prolific blog posts.  I was thinking about that particularly after an old friend of mine who is a fellow writer posted some of his rambling thoughts on writing that struck several chords in my heart.  He made me want to write again.  So this post owes its existence somewhat indirectly to him (thank you, my friend), even though I likely will not actually comment upon those elements that struck me; that I will leave for future posts.

For now, I want to reflect upon how that sense of the roads not taken often darkens the present.  Sometimes we get so caught up in fretting over skills not learned, places not seen, friends not made, and so many not-things, un-things one might say, that we can mire ourselves deeper and deeper into a place of dissatisfaction and despondency rather like the pit of despair.

Here there comes to mind some lyrics from a beautiful song of which I first heard through a wonderful musician I know; it is called Song of Sacrifice and here is a particularly stirring verse:

And the things you love begin to fade
Though you try to hold on
As you grip the sands with aging hands
Til all that's left is gone....

Not a particularly cheerful outlook on life, but so often true.  So many times I try to cling to things from the past, but they slip from my hands like the sands mentioned in that song.  Sometimes the thought of all those things lost, and all those un-things, make me think I might as well give up.  Today, though, I reflect that my focus on those things makes me forget that one powerfully present thing which is the road that I have actually taken, the road less traveled by.  There is great beauty on that road, perhaps greater beauty than upon those not taken.  If only I can learn to see it through all of the pain and heartache and un-things....

I hope whoever stumbles upon this blog will find here an encouragement to live more fully in the here, in the now, in the kaleidoscopic glory of the present moment.  Here's to the present, my dear readers, whomever you may be!